The increased power of contracting firms in Africa and expansion into other businesses has been the subject of much controversy in the United Nations and elsewhere. Contractors have been accused of competing not just for contracts, but for vital interests protected by other firms in the less visible war behind the war. They are alleged to be wielding their influence and power to colonize nations. Some of these contracting agencies have even launched public relations campaigns to clean up their image.
To stem the flood of mercenary activity in Africa, several nations have passed laws prohibiting their citizenry from involvement in military actions outside their borders. In Zimbabwe, more than sixty mercenaries were imprisoned for a plot to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea. Conversely, the requirements and opportunities in Africa for mercenaries continue to grow. Some are even being retained to shoot wildlife poachers. In spite of efforts to curtail contractor activity in Africa, the law of supply and demand will continue to drive a robust contracting business for many years to come.
By contrast, contractors conducting business on behalf of the U.S. government would like nothing more than to avoid the hit-man designation. That is not to say that the United States does not have a few mercenary-type contractors, nor is it beyond consideration that a foreign government might request mercenary services from a U.S. firm. This type of activity operates beneath the radar of public scrutiny, with good reason. If caught, they can kiss the possibility of future contracts—and their business—good-bye.
That said, some U.S. firms have a Teflon-like ability to conduct direct combat operations without leaving a telltale signature. Contractors’ slipperiness keeps them in business. For instance, the contracting agency involved in planning and executing Croatia’s successful campaign against the Serbs in the 1990s publicly denies any direct combat involvement to this day. Their explanation—training assistance—is hard to refute without any evidence. But the fact that some of these training exercises with Croatian forces turned into hostile encounters with the enemy hardly seems coincidental.
Construction and infrastructure contractors are the most diverse and come from every conceivable trade, skill, profession, avocation, and career. They are clerks, cooks, truck drivers, carpenters, bridge builders, engineers, machinists, communications specialists, computer technicians, utility installers, and oil drillers. For reasons known only to them, they are willing to risk life and limb in a war zone. They develop companionships similar to those typically found only in combat military units. Contractors share experiences on the Web, in chat rooms, and around their often abysmal living conditions. Even after returning home, they keep in touch with one another and on occasion host contractor reunions.
Military hardware has become exceedingly high tech. Units are equipped with computers, lasers, biological sniffers, mass spectrometers, robots, night-vision systems, people sensors, satellite radios, video recording equipment, and ground and aerial surveillance radar. Helicopters use advanced microchips and firing systems. High-tech gear is placed in the hands of the military years before the Department of Defense can develop the training programs to provide the required maintenance experts. Contractors are hired in droves to keep these critical battlefield devices operating. They live and work with the military units they support. There is constant pressure to reduce turnaround time on broken equipment. Increasingly, they are brought farther forward on the battlefield. The idea is to fix and repair as close to the user as possible. Increasingly, they are placed in harm’s way.
Civilian logistics, infrastructure, trucking, and technical contractors are caught in the conundrum of modern war. They are prohibited from carrying weapons. When the rules were made, war zones and the geographical employment of these contractors was perceived to be something different from the realities of counterinsurgency conflict now taking place in countries like Iraq. The law was meant to prevent contractors from losing legal protections afforded noncombatants and to reduce the chances that civilian contractors will shoot the wrong people. These prohibitions do not sufficiently resolve the environmental realities these men and women face. Today’s enemies do not respect a civilian’s noncombatant status. The enemy shoots civilian contractors as casually as they shoot soldiers.
When the military is unable to provide civilian truck convoys with even a token armed escort, as is often the case, the convoys must employ private security companies to protect their personnel, supplies, and vehicles. But with convoys frequently stretching long distances over winding roads, one or more segments might face enemy fire with escorts unaware or unable to respond.
The number and complexity of logistics and construction operations in Iraq stretches the army too thin to adequately provide daily protection to these activities, so utility and construction firms are forced to employ private security contractors. The war zone proliferates with civilians protecting civilians. These contractors quickly become streetwise to nuances of war, developing a keen sense of danger and planning for all contingencies.
The thought of having to shoot one’s way out of an impending ambush leaves many contractors on edge. Employees want to get home to their families, and it gets expensive for companies to replace the ones that get hurt. Fueled by survival instinct and simple economics to use the very best weaponry, protection, and employees, firms turn to ex-military and law enforcement personnel to give them the upper hand.
Former special forces, Navy Seals, Marine Force Recon, Air Force pararescue, and law enforcement personnel are flooded with opportunities to join the war zone contracting industry. Many become trainers, personal-security agents, and asset-protection guards. Security and training contractors often seek and receive permission to carry weapons. If they are not authorized to carry a personal firearm, they get around this limitation by theoretically having to conduct firearms training, twenty-four hours a day. They have been attacked while training police or military units or protecting their assignment. Under these conditions, they are authorized to use lethal force to subdue their attackers. And they do.
Although they are not official combatants and are not subject to the same law of war/armed conflict and rules of engagement as military personnel, they are restricted on the type of firearms they are authorized to carry. Theoretically, they will use weapons only in a self-defense mode. Other than the military and police-unit trainers, some contractors are not allowed to carry fully automatic weapons and some are restricted to handguns. These restrictions seem to change daily. This is yet another example of the U.S. government’s failure to adapt to new exigencies. On the other hand, weapons manufacturers are not so slow at the draw. They are one step ahead of government and have recently been offering personal sidearms that tread a fine line regarding these limitations yet provide the user with a higher level of accurate, lethal firepower.
John Karuza, a military training contractor, tells a story of weapons being acquired in an unconventional way. Karuza spent a year training Iraqi soldiers, who bonded with him as their teacher—a kind of bond Iraqis are known for, one that crosses cultural, ethnic, national, and religious borders.
While training the Iraqis, Karuza had not been authorized to carry a personal sidearm. By the time of his subsequent return to Iraq, the soldiers he and his fellow contractors had trained were in leadership positions. They confronted the U.S. military, demanding that their friend Karuza and his fellow contractors be properly armed. Their demands were nonnegotiable. The confrontation concluded with the U.S. Army coughing up about a hundred weapons.
The United States continually struggles to keep control in the war zone. But the government’s muddled bureaucracy is slow to recognize new developments and adapt accordingly. Politicians seem surprised by the organization, structure, and dynamics, or lack thereof, in the twenty-first-century war zone. The battlefield spirals out of control with insurgents armed to the teeth who mix with the Iraqi populace, with no telling friend from foe. Faced with the constant threat of being killed or captured, contractors have no il
lusions about a cavalry coming over the hill to rescue them. Self-sufficient and street-smart, many contractors, including truck drivers, technicians, and construction workers, have resorted to buying unauthorized weapons on the black market. It’s every man and woman for themselves.
It doesn’t do much good to fix training problems at the front lines, while leaving a country’s leadership unchanged. In Vietnam, we saw example after example of corrupt or incompetent mid- to senior-level leaders. In that country, much of the military and political leadership was not fit to lead or employ the civilians and soldiers in their charge. There was a breakdown of confidence at every level, with the South Vietnamese army’s morale in the toilet. The rural people were indifferent or opposed to the elected provincial and national leaders. To witness the void between Vietnam’s leadership and the people, one only had to wander into a thatched hut in some rural village or hamlet. In accordance with the law, each hut was adorned with framed photographs of their president. A common image showed him in a suit and tie standing next to a Lincoln Continental. Little wonder that peasants and farmers related more to Ho Chi Minh than the government we were there to support.
The U.S. State Department and the Department of Defense have done little training of advisors for local and regional officials and senior-level military officers of developing nations in the time since Vietnam. They have deemphasized counterinsurgency training and focused more on conventional combat tactics. Many post-Vietnam special forces units were deactivated, and funding for these types of units was severely curtailed. The basic premise of military thinking was that nation-building was not part of the U.S. military’s charter. Recently, the army has taken steps to expand the reserve component of civil affairs. But civil affairs soldiers remain limited in what they can do to help local civil, military, and law enforcement authorities in third world nations, and they know next to nothing about rebuilding decapitated militaries.
With the shortage of advisors, trainers, and strategic planners for these countries, it seems that the U.S. government has left these difficult tasks up to contract agencies. Firms like MPRI and SAIC have answered the call. Accordingly, the entrepreneurial vision of these companies has brought them a wealth of business in reconstruction and force development.
The president and founder of MPRI is former U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Carl Vuono. His right-hand man is retired General Ron Griffith, who, among his many distinguished assignments, was the army’s vice chief of staff and commander of the 1st Armored Division during the first Gulf conflict. They are surrounded on a daily basis by a support staff of high-level government employees and accomplished civilian and military professionals, many with offices in the State Department, Department of Justice, and the Department of Defense. It is fair to call them part of the Beltway establishment.
MPRI projected a need and delivered the expertise to train and advise both senior civilian and military leaders in several conflicts. They assist and review military, political, tactical, and strategic objectives. MPRI is under contract to advise leaders in dozens of countries. Former U.S. colonels and generals teach principles of military decision making and leadership; provide feedback from their field-level operators, both civil and military; and act as a conduit for communication between leadership levels for their counterparts.
Organizing elections, developing governmental agencies, managing economic growth, developing new trade relationships, and creating impartial judicial processes are complex, sensitive, and often alien endeavors to war-torn countries. When elected officials and candidates for office in Afghanistan and Iraq sought help in effectively communicating their messages to the people, U.S. advertising agencies came out of the woodwork, providing expertise and marketing savvy in a neutral—and sometimes clandestine—manner.
In January 2005, the Iraqi people were presented with a series of slick television ads that promoted unity among Iraq’s three major parties. One video clip portrayed Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds engaged in an angry exchange. Children from the three groups rush forward to hug one another. The adults in the video clip look on with embarrassment over their own prejudicial behavior. The ad ends with the message: “Divided, we won’t conquer.” No firm has stepped forward to take credit for the paid advertisements, and the stations themselves remain mum on the subject, but the skills behind them had all the hallmarks of a Madison Avenue ad agency.
U.S. law enforcement personnel, including senior officials such as former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, continually contract their services to various foreign countries. These services include providing security for U.S. enterprises and developing the host country’s police force. Sometimes they work directly for a U.S. government agency, other times as an employee of a government contracting firm.
Sometimes it isn’t clear exactly who they are working for, a disquieting and not-so-infrequent experience in the extremely tight-lipped world of war zone contracting. Contractors are often hired for jobs that they assume represent U.S. interests, but being that the hiring party might be three or four rungs removed from the original contracting agency, they could be at cross-purposes to the United States and not even realize it. Dozens of firms in Iraq have been said to represent themselves as being associated with “the Agency”—the CIA. In fact, they are really with one of a number of other government agencies (OGAs) or sub-subcontractors, many levels removed from the original contracting firm or OGA. Unlike the CIA, the activities of numerous OGAs and subcontractors in the war zone are unaccounted for in Pentagon records.
The United Nations has proven to be slow and inefficient when it comes to planning free elections in newly democratic countries. When such bodies fail, contracting firms, including nonprofit organizations, frequently step in to fill the vacuum. They help plan elections, identify polling stations, design ballots, distribute election materials, and provide observers to monitor the voting process. One such nonprofit, the International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES), has rendered election assistance in more than 120 countries. Profit or nonprofit, it doesn’t make much difference to the individual paid contractor.
War zone contractors are like baseball free agents—the best ones go to the highest bidder. In this environment, salaries and benefits packages have skyrocketed.
The demand for contractors is so high that it has spawned recruiting activity known as “contract jumping.” Companies that lose employees this way lambaste it as corporate theft, but those that benefit call it fair competition. Firms that hire contractors on the cheap, they say, get what they deserve. In-country recruiters have been known to solicit employees from other companies right in the middle of the war zone. In one such scenario, a recruiter from ABC firm drives onto a base and approaches a contractor from XYZ company. The recruiter informs the contractor that if he gets into the car with him, he’ll guarantee a 50 percent increase in his compensation package. Sometimes they negotiate up to twice the salary, with a signing bonus to boot. It’s no wonder contractors have a hard time saying no. While many firms consider this blatant thievery, they would have a hard time proving it in court. The offending companies are too clever about getting around the legal and ethical restrictions.
In business terms, the demand for contractors exceeds the supply. The result has been a deterioration of hiring standards and a flood of relatively unskilled and inexperienced contractors on the battlefield. We’ll explore the consequences of this in a later chapter.
Chapter 2
Five Criticisms of Private Military Contracting
As the numbers of private military contractors (PMCs) has grown, they have been subject to more and more criticism. The public image of contractors might be near the bottom of any opinion poll, right there with lawyers and politicians.
While the critics are most vocal about the corporate entities themselves, the individual employees have also faced their share of criticism. Detractors apply the term mercenary in its most derogatory sense—money-grubbing opportunists who kill for mone
y.
The criticisms might be divided into five general categories: greed, cronyism, disproportionate role in the mission, lack of self-restraint on the battlefield, and lack of accountability. Let’s address them one by one.
Greed
Without a doubt, corporations and individuals are motivated by money to get into the war zone contracting business. But there is another aspect of human nature at play; people tend to gravitate toward what they do best. This is true of individuals, and it is true of corporations. One corporate example is Halliburton, which, along with its subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR), has been operating in the Middle East for decades.
As for individuals, there are plenty of military veterans who will jump at the money and bring a lot of skills to the table. The military’s up-or-out promotion system for officers forces people into retirement at relatively young ages. It’s common for a soldier to retire between the ages of thirty-seven and forty-seven. Employment opportunities are not abundant for them, so it’s no surprise that they gravitate toward contracting for the Department of Defense. It’s the area they know best.
Some talking heads have declared that the best military men and women are being lured out of the service for high-paying contractor jobs. Many highly skilled career soldiers feel insulted to have their loyalty questioned in such a way. There is little or no evidence to support this contention. The benefits of resigning a military career to pursue a contracting opportunity aren’t as great as many people think. After years of specialized training, to jump ship, thus foregoing retirement pay and benefits for what is certain to be a short-lived financial opportunity, can be a very shortsighted decision. Contracting income is tied too closely to uncontrollable and unpredictable national and international developments. The most skilled soldiers are who they are and get to where they are because they are educated, analytical people.
A Bloody Business Page 3