Corporate Soldiers
The U.S. Government Privatizes
the Use of Force
by
Daniel Burton-Rose and Wayne Madsen
After having privatized in whole or in
part nearly all other government functions, the U.S. government is now
outsourcing the use of force.
The latest stage in the privatization of
military functions is the contracting out of training of Third World armies. The
U.S. military establishment is relying not just on rag-tag groups of
mercenaries, or front groups that do the bidding of the CIA or other
intelligence agencies, but on genuinely independent corporations.
The Department of State has turned to
Arlington, Virginia-based Military Professional Resources, Inc. (MPRI), a
self-described "corporation of former military professionals ... ranging from
commanders to tank gunners" to carry out its African Crisis Responsive
Initiative (ACRI). At State Department prodding, seven nations, spanning the
African continent, have already signed up for the program.
The ostensible purpose of ACRI is to
create an indigenous peacekeeping force in Africa. Military forces from nearly
all of the seven nations currently participating -- Benin, Ghana, Malawi, Mali,
Senegal, Uganda and, most recently, the Ivory Coast -- have already received
some training from the Fort Bragg, North Carolina-based 3rd Special Forces.
In March 1999, Ghana received the first
"follow-on training" of ACRI, with U.S. Special Forces overseeing the MPRI-conducted
event. Senegal is to follow soon after.
Why use a private corporation to conduct
military trainings? Government officials say privatization can save taxpayers
money. In the case of ACRI, the State Department says MPRI and LOGICON, a huge
Arlington-based electronics company, can do the advanced training cheaper, and
more effectively, than the Army.
But whatever the cost savings, the
privatization of military and quasi-military functions raises huge questions of
accountability and the misuse of force that are sure to loom large as MPRI and
other military service companies like South Africa's Executive Outcomes and the
U.S. Dyncorp grow.
PRIVITIZED PEACEKEEPING
Some of the potential dangers even in a
privatized peacekeeping training operation are foreseeable in the
still-in-its-infancy ACRI program and in MPRI's former operations.
The State Department is quick to
emphasize that the ACRI program does not transfer lethal equipment, but quality
training by definition builds a residual lethal force -- soldiers -- and can
alter regional balances of power. MPRI, whose motto is "The Greatest Corporate
Military Expertise in the World," has provided clear illustration of the value
of good teachers. Within months of receiving expert tutelage from MPRI, Croatia
launched a series of intense, well-planned and successful offensives against
ethnic Serbs. Military experts noted that the Croatian military machine was
vastly improved in a just a few short months, an up-grade that likely
contributed to its decision to go on the offensive.
Before MPRI entered the picture, ACRI had
already begun compiling a similar record. Uganda and Senegal, each of which
received Special Forces trainers as part of ACRI's initial deployment in July
1996, have become deeply involved in wars with bordering nations. ACRI equipment
has been found on Ugandan soldiers fighting against Kabila in the Congo. Human
rights groups, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have also
linked ACRI-trained battalions to murders, rapes and beatings committed against
Ugandan civilians in areas of the country contested by rebels. Senegal is
supporting Guinea-Bissau rebels, against authoritarian General Asumane Mane.
The quandaries posed by ACRI and MPRI are
just the tip of the iceberg, for MPRI is at the top of the military training
field. The U.S. government sees the firm's much-vaunted roots in the highest
levels of the Pentagon as something like a stamp of purity. "Committed to
ethical business practices," is written prominently on the firm's promotional
pamphlet. MPRI has been very careful to avoid connections to the violence it has
facilitated.
More hard-boiled mercenaries express
disdain for the distance MPRI keeps from the guts and gristle of battle. "MPRI
is so desperate to avoid being called mercs that they just scratch the surface,"
says Tom Marks, a contributing writer to the quintessential mercenary magazine,
Soldier of Fortune. "They're a glorified transportation corps, as opposed to
being a military outfit. They're almost like the FedEx of government service."
Some government officials' descriptions
of MPRI almost make the firm seem like a high-quality job-placement agency. Phil
Egger of the State Department's African Affairs bureau says MPRI quickly and
effectively recruits in response to State Department requests for trainers,
utilizing both a large database of retired military and web-advertising. As the
United States trained most of the people MPRI hires, they are ideally suited to
fulfill U.S. missions. "Most of the people they've hired for us are retired
colonels," says Egger. "All have African experience -- some at embassies."
COURTING THE PRIVATE WAR MAKERS
The foil to MPRI has been Executive
Outcomes (EO), a Pretoria-based firm founded in 1989 [see "Guarding the
Multinationals," Multinational Monitor, March 1998]. EO's specialty was
mobilizing highly trained veterans of South Africa's counterinsurgency wars to
reverse the odds in deadly engagements elsewhere on the continent. Its public
relations strategy was to portray the company as a convenient shot-in-the-arm
for besieged democracies; in reality, the firm's activities largely consisted of
propping up governments amenable to the continued outbound flow of Africa's rich
mineral wealth. Heritage-Branch, the oil and mining combine of British investor
Tony Buckingham, had an intentionally obscured interlocking directorate with EO.
Heritage-Branch has mining interests in countries such as Angola and Sierra
Leone, two countries in which EO has spent violent time.
On January 1, 1999, Executive Outcomes
disbanded. Nico Palm, EO's owner, put a clean face on the demise of the firm:
"African countries are busy working out solutions in Africa," reads her press
statement. "Let's give them a chance." Another EO statement cites "the
consolidation of law and order across the African continent" as a reason for the
company's purported obsolescence.
But given the mind-numbing quantity of
blood being spilled across the continent, these explanations ring hollow.
Almost all serious commentators agree EO
is simply breaking itself into less identifiable parts, and will continue its
dark work, using other countries as bases. At a December 1998 seminar in
Johannesburg on the privatization of security services in Africa, Princeton
University Professor Jeff Herbst described EO as a "virtual firm" set to
"mutate" into a less visible, but still potent, organization. With weapons
easily procured, EO can reconfigure itself in response to each contract it
obtains, so long as it maintains a rolodex of ready-and-willing mercenaries.
Herbst's contention appears well
grounded. At least two organizations developed by EO are still alive: Saracen,
in Uganda (part-owned by President Museveni's half-brother, defense minister
Salim Saleh) and Lifeguard Security, in Sierra Leone. For Herbst, the solution
to EO's war-making is to "co-opt" the firm and turn it into a "legitimate"
organization -- like MPRI. Herbst's thesis is that such a desirable
transformation can be achieved without any government regulation, but simply by
governments, the United Nations and non-governmental organizations like the
International Red Cross providing business to "clean" companies like MPRI. This
financial incentive, he argues, will be enough to spur a transformation of EO
and its progeny.
THE PEACEKEEPING / WAR-MAKING
BLUR
There is clearly a growing market for
corporate logistics and quasi-peacekeeping services. The largest firms filling
this market niche are the Reston, Virginia-based DynCorp and the Alexandria,
Virginia-based Betac. They both construct physical and electronic
infrastructures and, in most cases, offer personnel to fill them.
DynCorp, with 17,500-plus employees, over
550 operating facilities around the world and annual revenues of more than $1.3
billion, is particularly massive. One of the Pentagon's largest contractors,
DynCorp's services are also integrated into the Drug Enforcement Agency,
Department of Justice, Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Communications
Commission, Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department.
The company is already well established
in the peacekeeping market. It provided support services for famine aid in
Somalia in 1992, and has been supporting UN peacekeepers in Angola since
December 1997. As with MPRI or EO, DynCorp's on-the-ground personnel have been
prepared by their government for dangerous situations: "Our leadership is
typically retired military," says Frank Henderson, director of international
logistics support at DynCorp. Most of the workers are locals.
DynCorp also recently landed a contract
with the State Department to provide the U.S. contingent of cease-fire verifiers
in Kosovo. That contract was suspended with the commencement of the NATO bombing
of the Balkans.
Having workers so close to the action has
proved costly to DynCorp in human terms. Five workers have been killed so far in
Angola -- four in two separate C-130 aircraft crashes, and one in an ambush.
DynCorp sees the deaths as an ugly near-inevitability of working in or near a
war zone. "Just like women and children get killed, contractors get killed,"
Henderson explains. He adds of the DynCorp workers in Angola: "They are clearly
non-combatants."
One country in which it is not clear that
DynCorp employees are non-combatants is Colombia. Officially, the employees are
engaged in providing pilot training and technical support for the Colombian
National Police's illicit-plant eradication effort in southern Colombia. But
several reports, including from the Dallas Morning News' Ted Robberson in August
1998, suggest DynCorp personnel -- many veterans of U.S. wars, overt and covert
-- are actively involved in counterinsurgency in the south, which is controlled
by the Colombian insurgents FARC.
The State Department and DynCorp
stonewall inquiries on the subject. When asked about the program, Henderson
responds, "You're getting into an area I wouldn't want to see in print." DynCorp
personnel at the San Jose del Guaviare military base in southern Colombia told
Robberson they were under strict orders not to speak with the press. The Buenos
Aires daily Clarin reported that DynCorp employed 20 to 30 Vietnam vets in
Colombia. Like the EO men in African, the DynCorp men have a reputation for
being rude and arrogant. They "refuse to subordinate themselves to Colombian
officials," wrote El Espectador.
Andy Messing, Jr., a 17-year Special
Forces veteran who heads a small right-wing think shop in Fairfax, Virginia
called the National Defense Council Foundation, finds the scenario of DynCorp
being involved in counterinsurgency work in Colombia plausible. "If they're not
involved in counterinsurgency work already, they will be, from what my
understanding is," says Messing.
Messing, who has close ties with the
Colombian National Police and was instrumental in getting the police additional
military aide last fall, is opposed to DynCorp's role in Colombia. "You can't
control them as well as you can American military," he says, adding, "when they
wind up getting whacked, it only adds to the confusion."
But Messing also asserts: "They're way
too expensive." That U.S. Special Forces could do the job cheaper points to
political, not financial, advantages to contracting.
AVOIDING ACCOUNTABILITY
For the United States, the crucial
benefit of privatized military services is lessened scrutiny of its foreign
activities, and a level of disassociation from activities it deems unpleasant
necessities. With the U.S. populace particularly averse to having nationals
fight and die in foreign quagmires, the idea of outsourcing peacekeeping
activities is especially attractive to the U.S. military establishment. The
State Department and the Department of Defense both gain because the capture or
murder of contractors carries almost no political fall-out. Look for MPRI,
DynCorp and friends to do well in future years.
Daniel Burton-Rose is the editor of
Win: a Newsletter on Activism at the Extremes and the co-editor of The
Celling of America: An Inside Look at the U.S. Prison Industry (Common
Courage Press, 1998). Wayne Madsen, a former naval officer, is the author of
Covert Actions In Africa, 1993-1999 (Edward Mellen Press, 1999).
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