The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What They Mean for World Order (25 page)

Fearing Anglo-Saxon domination of the industry, a bipartisan French parliamentary report has called for the recognition and regulation of PMCs, suggesting that the industry has become too important to ignore. The largest French PMC is GEOS Group, with average annual sales of 40 million euros, followed by Risk & Co at 28 million euros. A visit to post-Qaddafi Libya exposed significant presence of “Anglo-Saxon companies” that threaten French political and commercial interests.
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A group of French companies—Geodis, GIE Access, Sodexo, and Thales—has formed the Global X company to bid for contracts for UN peacekeeping operations, should it begin outsourcing such activities. Such thinking reveals a market-driven approach toward stability operations.

The private military industry is booming everywhere. Former foes of the industry such as the European Union now employ PMCs such as Argus Security Projects in postconflict Libya, where personnel carry weapons under French diplomatic status. Kenya has turned to British-based XFOR Security Solutions to help ward off Somali pirates from its shores and protect its tourism industry. Russia is drafting legislation establishing a Russian industry based on the American and British model. It would permit Russian PMCs such as the Oskord Security Group to deploy ex-soldiers and police abroad to protect oil, gas, and mineral holdings in conflict zones.
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Africa is another market for force in waiting, given its high degree of conflict, natural resources, and commercial interests. DynCorp’s work in Liberia and the burgeoning market in Somalia are the beginning of a trend. The profitable Gulf of Guinea has brought oil money and conflict to countries such as Nigeria, which has the second-largest oil reserves in Africa and is one of the top exporters to the United States. The Nigerian government has awarded a ten-year contract worth $130 million for maritime security to fight pirates and insurgents. The awardee, Global West Vessel Special Nigeria, will provide platforms for tracking ships and cargo, enforcing regulatory compliance, and surveillance of the Nigerian
Maritime Domain. The PMC is run by a former commander of a local insurgent group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND). The most infamous private military expedition in recent years must be Simon Mann’s attempted coup in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea in 2004, which could serve as a model of how not to go about overthrowing a country.

Another new market is developing in Latin America, which is ravaged by drug wars. MPRI is training Mexican soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques; DynCorp has job openings there for aviation instructors and mechanics; and Kroll and other antikidnapping specialists protect business executives operating in Mexico. Corporations are not the only ones spending money on private security in Latin America. The United States’ annual spending on counternarcotic contracts in Latin America rose by 32 percent, from $482 million in 2005 to $635.8 million in 2009. These contracts went to five primes: Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, ITT, ARINC, and DynCorp, which received the majority of the work.
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Most of the contracted tasks were not PMC-related but rather private military support functions such as surveillance and aerial spraying to eradicate drug crops.

Perhaps the most anticipated market of all is the United Nations. In the early days of Rwandan genocide, Executive Outcomes met with Kofi Annan, who was then head of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations. They discussed the possibility of the PMC staging a humanitarian intervention to arrest the rapidly developing genocide until a larger UN peacekeeping mission could take over. Executive Outcomes said it could have “boots on the ground” in fourteen days, followed in six weeks by a fully equipped, brigade-sized element of fifteen hundred personnel, complete with its own air and fire support. The firm estimated that it could establish “security islands” and refugee safe havens in the region for $600,000 per day over a six-month period ($150 million in total). This is cheap compared with normal UN peacekeeping costs.

(In)famously, Annan refused Executive Outcomes’ proposal, later explaining that “the world may not be ready to privatize peace.”
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However, the world was also not ready for genocide, which killed more than eight hundred thousand people in approximately one hundred days, making Annan’s Westphalian sentiment an expensive ideology.
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By the time the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR II) arrived in Rwanda, it was too late, and it cost more than five times Executive Outcomes’ estimate for its own operation.
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The United Nations’ strong Westphalian bias against privatized peacekeeping has long made it a critic of the industry. Until recently, the institution was content to avoid this issue altogether, but the persistent shortage of peacekeepers, the legacy of Rwanda, and ongoing mass atrocities in Darfur and the Congo have led many to quietly question the United Nations’ unofficial embargo on PMCs.
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The option of private peacekeepers versus none at all, which is the condition in many parts of the world today, is a Hobson’s choice.

Private armies are just the beginning. Already, private forces are manifesting across the five domains of war: land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace. Small private navies such as SomCan patrol the Somali coast, seeking pirates and becoming pirates themselves when convenient. Other PMCs are exploring the use of flying drones, rendering private air forces cheap. While PMCs are not flying through space, there are now private companies that do. This would have been unthinkable a generation ago, and it is conceivable that in another generation, private spacecraft will outnumber national ones in orbit, including armed ones working on behalf of a government or themselves. Finally, cyberspace is already flush with virtual PMCs, offering clients offensive “hack-back” capabilities against intruders, making them the mercenaries of the fifth domain. Contract warfare may one day be available across all five domains of war, changing armed conflict as we know it.

The industry is going native. Matiullah Khan is one of several warlords-turned-PMCs that have emerged from the US war in Afghanistan, adopting the American model of private military contracting. Records in 2010 show that there are fifty-two government-registered PMCs in the country, with twenty-four thousand hired guns, most of them Afghans. However, many, if not most, of the indigenous PMCs operating in the country are not registered at all, and some are little more than profit-seeking militia, akin to medieval mercenaries who plundered the countryside.

The US outsourcing of security has normalized the market for force, inspiring warlords and other conflict entrepreneurs to start their own PMCs. This has resulted in the indigenization of the market. Worse, the United States has inadvertently encouraged this by hiring these homegrown PMCs, such as Matiullah’s army. Indigenous PMCs are the next wave of industry growth. In Iraq, fifty-six of the eighty-two PMCs registered with the Ministry of Interior are Iraqi, and they work for a variety of government and private sector clients. In Afghanistan, fifty-two PMCs are licensed to operate, arming about forty thousand civilian contractors. The presence of PMCs became so ubiquitous that in 2010, the Afghanistan government decreed that all PMCs must be disbanded by the end of the year. Tellingly, this drew sharp criticism from the United States, which said that it could not operate without the industry, and the Afghan government backed down, although it did close fifty-four mostly unregistered companies.
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Today most of the PMCs operating in Iraq and Afghanistan are local and less picky than their US counterparts about whom they work for and what they do. An example of this is the “Host Nation Trucking” contract. Under this $2.16
billion contract, the US Army hired eight civilian trucking firms to transport supplies to bases in Afghanistan and also required the companies to provide their own security. In some ways, this arrangement worked well: it effectively supplied most US combat outposts across difficult and hostile terrain while only rarely needing the assistance of US troops. However, in 2010 a US congressional investigation revealed that most of the prime contractors hired local Afghan PMCs for armed protection of the trucking convoys. The congressional report, titled
Warlord, Inc
., found that “the principal private security subcontractors on the [Host Nation Trucking] contract are warlords, strongmen, commanders and militia leaders who compete with the Afghan central government for power and authority. Providing ‘protection’ services for the United States supply chain empowers these warlords with money, legitimacy, and a
raison d’etre
for their private armies.” As with the medieval market for force, the report concluded that these indigenous “private armies” fueled warlordism, extortion, corruption, and likely collaboration with the enemy. It determined that “the logistics contract has an outsized strategic impact on U.S. objectives in Afghanistan.”
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That same year, a US Senate report confirmed the localization of the industry. In a comprehensive investigation into PMCs, the Senate discovered that the industry was going native, or, as one observer explained, “What used to be called warlord militias are now Private Security Companies.”
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American and British PMCs unwittingly produced the native industry by creating local subcontractors that went into business for themselves. For example, the British PMC ArmorGroup subcontracted two Afghan PMCs that it called “Mr. White” and “Mr. Pink” to provide a guard force. The Senate investigation found evidence that these local PMCs were linked to murder, kidnapping, bribery, and anti-Coalition activities and concluded: “The proliferation of private security personnel in Afghanistan is inconsistent with the counterinsurgency strategy.”
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Problematically, the only local organizations in conflict-affected states capable of providing private security are warlords, militias, and insurgents, who swell the ranks of the marketplace. The Bagram air base, a strategic military facility in Afghanistan, employs a local PMC run by Asil Khan, a former commander in the Northern Alliance, a guerrilla fighting force. The PMC Afghanistan Navin also supplies a guard force of five hundred men and armed convoy escorts to the air base and is owned by former mujahideen commander Lutfullah. A now-defunct American company, US Protection and Investigations, partnered with Northern Alliance military commanders such as General Din Mohammad Jurat to provide former militia members for protection. Other examples of indigenous Afghan PMCs include Watan Risk Management, Kandahar Security Group, Strategic Security Solutions International, NCL Holdings, Elite Security Services, and Asia Security Group. This model of force provision did not exist before the United States arrived.

In some cases, these native PMCs have restored order yet undermine the very institutions the Americans sought to build—a public police force, a national army, provincial administrations—elements of a Westphalian state. For example, Commando Security is a PMC that escorts convoys between Kandahar and Helmand Province to the west. Ruhullah, the company’s chief, is suspected of colluding with the Taliban, like most of his peers. According to one official at the Interior Ministry, “The rule seems to be, if the attack is small, then crush it. But if the presence of Taliban is too big to crush, then make a deal.”
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However, bribing the enemy does not eradicate the problem and perhaps makes it worse. Afghan officials believe that Watan Risk Management secretly pays the Taliban to attack NATO convoys in order to keep the PMC in business. Supply can generate its own demand in a free market for force.

Like medieval mercenaries, this new breed of PMC can prove overly brutal when executing contracts, with little or no concern for human rights. Ruhullah deals ruthlessly with those who impede the flow of his trucks, regardless of whether they are Taliban or civilian. “He’s laid waste to entire villages,” said one Afghan official. Watan Risk Management and Compass Security were both banned from escorting NATO convoys on the highway between Kabul and Kandahar after a pair of bloody confrontations with Afghan civilians. When asked why NATO would contract these native PMCs, one senior NATO official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity, “I can’t tell you about the sub to the sub to the sub.”
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The industry’s overutilization of subcontractors has produced an indigenous free market for force, replete with home-grown PMCs that act as mercenaries.

Liberia and Somalia demonstrate that the industry is simultaneously developing along two different tracks, one more desirable than the other for world peace. Both countries are examples of neomedievalism, albeit worst-case scenarios, yet they differ in their market for force. Liberia is a mediated market with military enterprisers, and Somalia is a free market with mercenaries. Consequently, Liberia is more secure and stable than Somalia, and this is instructive for the future.

Liberia is more stable, in part, because it has a mediated market. The United Nations secured the country while DynCorp raised its army in close conjunction with the United States, its employer, and to a lesser extent Liberia and the UN. DynCorp was a PMC in the tradition of military enterprisers such as Wallenstein, who built military forces rather than using them. Whether one is raising an army of two thousand or two hundred thousand, the methods are
essentially the same, differing only in scale and scope. The military DynCorp raised was a relative success compared with US efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan or UN experiences in the Balkans, Haiti, Timor-Leste, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This public-private partnership in the security sector proved highly effective and provides a model for a world with an effectual private military industry.

By contrast, the neomedievalism of Somalia is analogous to Italy in the age of the
condottieri
: warlordism and ceaseless conflict. Tragically, the country suffers a truly free market for force replete with unscrupulous clients, undisciplined companies, and neomedieval warfare. Overlapping authorities in this case result in anarchy akin to the mythologized “Dark Ages,” making Somalia one of the world’s most dangerous places.