Indian Defence Review

The term “private military companies” or, as some prefer, “private security companies,” has only recently entered the lexicon. The issue became pertinent to a lot of Americans when the headline “Blackwater Mercenaries Deploy in New Orleans” appeared in a September 10, 2005 news report.

Overnight, we were told, squads of heavily-armed private security contractors were out on patrol in the streets of this stricken Louisiana city. That followed serious hurricane and flood damage in the wake of America’s biggest catastrophe since the Civil War.

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Details were sparse. What soon became clear was that some of these mercenaries-many who had just returned from stints of active duty in Iraq-had not only been “deputized” but wore gold Louisiana state law enforcement badges on their chests. That was in addition to their Blackwater USA photo ID cards. The pay, one of them intimated, was $350 a day, only a fraction of what the men were earning out east where a good operator can get anything between $80,000 and $180,000 a year depending on specialties and risk.

Blackwater USA is one of the field leaders among PMCs/PSCs in Iraq an Afghanistan. The company has numerous government contracts! Its men provide security to American embassies, VIPs, government”¦

When asked what they were doing there, those who would talk to the media-there were many who wouldn’t-said that they were part of a Homeland Security deployment. They had the authority to use lethal force to maintain order, they declared, though once the matter had become controversial, that was disputed by Eddie Compass, the New Orleans Police Commissioner.

Whatever the truth, Blackwater is no novice when it comes to operational matters. I know Gary Jackson, the CEO quite well, having visited him at his Moyock, North Carolina headquarters. We stayed in touch afterward and shared a few insights bye-mail including the fact that his men provided security to employees of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, including its former U.S. administrator, L. Paul Bremer.

British-born and a SEAL-team veteran, Gary’s first choice of recruit for work in remote and dangerous parts is somebody with solid Special Forces credentials. He started out by recruiting many of his former SEAL buddies, though by now many nations are represented within the company’s ranks. Essentially the market is something of a moveable feast, with supply dictated by demand, and in Baghdad these ‘lays, the need for such pro e sionals remains desperate.

Also, it is no secret that Blackwater USA is one of the field leaders among PMCs/PSCs in Iraq an Afghanistan. The company has numerous government contracts! Its men provide security to American embassies, VIPs, government officials, workplaces and construction sites (including getting crews to and from them on often-dangerous roads) and so on. In fact, the list is extensive, especially when determined and competent groups of zealots are in the business of killing people.

Blackwater works extensively with private corporations in other parts of the globe. Indeed, Gary told me in late 2004, company contracts were rapidly edging up toward the billion dollar mark, which, he admitted, is nice work if you can get it.

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More recently, the company was involved in a huge and complex retraining program of members of the U.S. Navy following the bombing of the USS Cole in Aden. Its members put several thousand sailors through their paces in an intense training program in the close-quarter use of firearms. For that purpose, the company built a mock ship superstructure on one of Backwater’s extensive properties about ninety minutes by road south of Virginia Beach.

Blackwater was linked to the in-flight destruction of a Bulgarian owned and operated Mi-8 helicopter that was brought down during an action just north of Baghdad?

Significantly, the name Blackwater first rose to prominence when four of its staff members were caught in a road ambush in Fallujah, Iraq in March 2004. Who can forget the horrific images of charred and dismembered bodies strung up on one of the bridges leading into that city?

More recently. Blackwater was linked to the in-flight destruction of a Bulgarian owned and operated Mi-8 helicopter that was brought down during an action just north of Baghdad? The “commercial helicopter” was owned and operated by Heli-l1ir Services, a Bulgarian subcontractor to SkyLink Air and Logistic Support, a Canadian firm under contract to Blackwater in support of a Department of Defense’ contract. Though the pilot managed to bring the damaged chopper and everybody in it safely to ground, all eleven people onboard were murdered by al-Qaeda-linked insurgents immediately afterward.

Which begs the question: If the United States is in control of the situation in Iraq-and around Baghdad especially-why then didn’t one of the many U.S. helicopters-gunships included-in the air around the Iraqi capital just then not hasten to assist when the pilot reported that his machine had been hit and he was going down?

Apart from the three Bulgarian crew members, there were two Fijian PMC contractors and six Blackwater employees onboard, which brought the number of Blackwater USA operators KIA in the Middle East in the previous two years to twenty-four, surely a record’ for any private military company.

Though the jury is still out on the future role of the hired gun in international politics, a landmark decision was made in London in early 2002, when Whitehall gave the nod to regulating Private Military Companies. The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office-in response to a request from a parliamentary committee-released a briefing paper on the subject which noted that in the post-Cold War world, “The demand for private military services is likely to increase.”

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More important, it advocated the advantage of relying on private companies rather than national militaries. Its thrust was that a “strong and reputable private military sector might have a role in enabling the (United Nations) to respond more rapidly and more effectively in crises.” A rider almost perfunctorily added that the cost of employing such people for certain UN functions, “could be much lower than that of national armed forces.”

Peacekeeping deployments in Africa are doomed to failure until the United Nations recognizes that issuing blue helmets to ill-equipped adequately trained troops from helpful nations is a futile exercise

It is fortuitous that British minister Jack Straw released the paper when he did. Five months earlier, the strategic international focus had been reversed by the events of September 11, 2001. Overnight, small wars like those that blighted Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Sudan, Liberia, the Congo, East Timor and elsewhere didn’t get anything like the attention they warranted.

Shortly before that, Colonel Tim Spicer-today head of Aegis and a major PMC player in Iraq-made a comment that was both prescient and timely. Though he was talking about Africa, what he had to say was relevant to any country struggling with an insurgency, particularly in the Third World.

“Peacekeeping deployments in Africa are doomed to failure until the United Nations recognizes that issuing blue helmets to ill-equipped adequately trained troops from helpful nations is a futile exercise.” Just because these were the countries that came forward and profered help was not enough reason to use them, he declared to what must certainly have been silent applause in many of the West’s corridors of power.

“Establishing, enforcing and maintaining peace in volatile regions of Africa requires a more robust and effective form of intervention,” stated an employee of the British firm Sandline. The major powers should continue to accept the offers of other nations, he stressed, but they needed to supplement this with the kind of expertise available from private military companies that could provide cadres of experienced officers and NCOs. They, in turn, could plan, lead and enhance the skills of these forces in the field.

Looking at the game board today, it has become clear that, being composed almost entirely of former Special Forces, the majority of PMCs are ideally suited to accomplish peacemaking tasks, which is exactly what Sandline pointed out in its original policy statement. It wasn’t lost on many observers that PMCs, mercenaries, hired guns — call  them what you will-had on numerous occasions already proven their mettle,’ not just to monitor, but actually to end conflict. If they needed to fight to achieve their aim, so be it, since that is a capability that comes with the job.

This was aptly illustrated in April 2004 when eight members of Blackwater USA-together with a single U.S. Marine and four military policemen-fought off an attack by hundreds of Iraqi militiamen in the Shi’ite town of Najaf south of Baghdad. Most significantly, though the company men took three wounded and the marine was critically hurt, U.S. military forces only arrived when it was all over. By then Blackwater had sent in its own helicopters to resupply the embattled occupants and to take out the wounded. During the scrap, which lasted three-and-a-half hours, the defenders’ house was completely surrounded and all the injuries apparently came from a single sniper on the roof of a nearby building.

Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt arrived at the battle zone shortly afterward and his observations at a press conference the next day are instructive.1 Of the Blackwater people he declared: “They knew what they were here for. They’d had three of their own wounded. We were sitting there among the bullet shells. . . the bullet casings… and frankly, the blood of their comrades, and they were absolutely confident.’

In contrast, it was later established, the attackers took an awful lot of casualties.