Corporate Soldiers: The U.S. Government Privatizes 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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