Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army

by Jeremy Scahill

  Blackwater wasn’t just talking about Darfur. Taylor also broadened the private-army-for-hire theme, floating the idea of the Iraqi government hiring Blackwater’s men to quell attacks by resistance groups. “We clearly couldn’t go into the whole country of Iraq,” Taylor told the Virginian-Pilot. “But we might be able to go into a region or a city.” Cofer Black and other company officials spun their vision for “peacekeeping,” “stabilization,” and “humanitarian” operations as being born of moralistic outrage over human suffering. The international community, they argued, is slow to respond and ineffective, while, as Black said in Jordan, “Blackwater spends a lot of time thinking, How can we contribute to the common good?” What Blackwater executives rarely, if ever, discuss in public is the tremendous profit to be made in servicing disasters, crises, and wars. In Jordan Blackwater and other mercenary firms aggressively promoted an internationalization of the rapid privatization of military and security the benefits of which they now enjoy in the United States. Under the soft banner of “humanitarianism,” these companies hoped to take “business” away from international governmental bodies like the UN, NATO, and the African and European Unions. For Blackwater, such a transformation would mean permanent profit opportunity, limited only by the number of international crises, disasters, and conflicts. “World stability and peacemaking/-keeping operations have been criminally cost-ineffective and operationally failed,” said Blackwater’s Taylor. “Send 10,000 UN troops to Darfur? A colossal waste of money. You do not create security and peace by throwing more mediocre, uncommitted people into the fray.”29

  Singer, who has extensively studied the role of private military firms in international conflicts, observed the following about Blackwater’s Sudan pitch:

  The firms go about talking about how they would save kittens in trees if only the big bad international community would let them, but the situation is just far more complex than that. This kind of lobbying often attempts to confuse folks. . . . The issue preventing effective action in Darfur is not simply a matter of financial costs. That is, there is not some imaginary price point that only if such firms could come in under, it would solve things. The real problem is that it is a political mess on the ground, there is no effective UN mandate, no outside political will to engage for real, plus a Sudanese government that is obstructionist and effectively one of the sides (meaning if you go in without a mandate, you gotta be willing to kick the doors down, destroy air bases, etc. which no firm has the capacity to do, and sends the issue back to US/NATO/UN), thus far preventing a useful deployment. So even if you got firms willing, you still have to solve those problems.30

  But Sudan’s value to Blackwater stretched beyond a single peacekeeping contract or purported humanitarian concerns for the victims in Darfur. It was Blackwater’s ticket into a whole new world of potential growth—Darfur became the rallying cry for a rebranding operation aimed at winning massive international contracts for mercenary firms. Unlike the invasion and occupation of Iraq, which was overwhelmingly opposed by a majority of the world, calls for intervention in Darfur are much more widespread and, therefore, an easier sell for Blackwater and its allies for increasing the use of private soldiers. Indeed, even at antiwar rallies, scores of protesters held signs reading, “Out of Iraq, Into Darfur.”

  A quick survey of Sudan’s vast natural resources dispels any notion that U.S./corporate desires to move into Sudan derive from purely humanitarian motives. First off, because of Sudan’s designation by the State Department as a sponsor of terrorism, U.S. corporations are prohibited from investing in Sudan. As a result, China has become the major player in exploiting Sudan’s tremendous oil supplies.31 While Sudan is not a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, it was granted observer status in August 2001, a distinction reserved for significant global oil producers. 32 Four years later, its proven oil reserves had expanded sixfold to 1.6 billion barrels, the thirty-fifth-largest in the world33—all inaccessible to U.S. oil corporations. The China National Petroleum Corporation owns 40 percent—the largest single share—of the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company, the consortium that dominates Sudan’s oilfields.34 Sudan also has a significant natural gas reserve, one of the three largest deposits of high-purity uranium in the world, and the fourth-largest deposits of copper.35 Regime change in Sudan would open up extremely lucrative investment opportunities to U.S. corporations, potentially capturing them from Chinese companies. It would also mean the end of a strong Islamic government that has continued to modernize, despite tough U.S.-led sanctions. Sending in private U.S. forces, under the guise of an international humanitarian mission, could give Washington a major foothold in Sudan for future action.

  At the time of Cofer Black’s trip to Jordan, Darfur was very much in the headlines. Black himself had spent a significant amount of time in the country as part of his work for the CIA. “Cofer and I have been speaking about our ability to help in Darfur ad infinitum, and that just pisses off the humanitarian world,” said Chris Taylor. “They have problems with private security companies, not because of performance but because they think that in some cases it removes their ability to cross borders, to talk to both sides, to be neutral. And that’s great, but the age-old question—is neutrality greater than saving one more life? What’s the marginal utility on one more life?”36 In February 2005, the month Black joined Blackwater, Erik Prince publicly raised for the first time the prospect of private peacekeepers at a symposium of the National Defense Industrial Association. “In areas where the UN is, where there’s a lot of instability, sending a big, large-footprint conventional force is politically unpalatable; it’s expensive, diplomatically difficult as well,” Prince told the military gathering. “We could put together a multinational, professional force, supply it, manage it, lead it, put it under UN or NATO or U.S. control, however it would best be done. We can help stabilize the situation.”37 Prince suggested that Blackwater could deploy a “Quick Reaction Force” to protect nongovernmental organizations in Darfur or other conflict areas. “You talk about Darfur: I don’t think you need an 8,000-peacekeeper force,” he said. “If there’s an atrocity in progress, it’s the Janjaweed [militia] that has to be stopped, and we have to move and stop the problem, and solve the immediate threat. Not bring an 8,000- or 10,000-man force.”38

  Similar to the company’s use of the Columbine “massacre” to win new business, Blackwater was taking advantage of a global crisis that found parties spanning the political spectrum calling for intervention and decrying the perceived indifference of the UN and other international bodies. Sudan has become a pet cause of many of the right-wing Christian forces Blackwater is in bed with, not the least of which is Christian Freedom International—on whose small nine-member board both Erik Prince and his lobbyist Paul Behrends sit. Christian Freedom, founded by a consortium of well-connected Republican evangelicals, has been accused of using its “humanitarian aid” designation as a cover for missionary activities. Despite operating largely in Muslim countries, the group publicly states, “We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.”39

  The leadership of Christian Freedom has had a long relationship with the crisis in Sudan because of the Christian/Muslim conflict. Early on in its work there, CFI engaged in the practice of “slave redemptions”—purchasing Christians it believed to be enslaved—but later denounced the practice, saying the “redemptions” had become a source of funding for rebel groups and that people were “faking their stories of enslavement in an attempt to make money.”40 For years, CFI has cast its vision for Sudan in the very economic terms that have fueled the Bush administration’s global policies and Blackwater’s corporate strategy. “Many Christians in Southern Sudan desire to break free from international handouts and learn free-market principles, useful skills and technologies that will move them from dependence to independence,” wrote Christian Freedom founder Jim Jacobson, the former Reagan official, in a 1999 column. “It’s time
to help the Christians of Sudan begin to walk. When this day comes—and it will come—slavery in Sudan will end.”41 Like Blackwater executives, Jacobson has disparaged the work of the United Nations, charging that the UN has a vested interest in keeping refugees impoverished. “I consider a lot of the [UN] organizations to be merchants of misery,” Jacobson said. “The UN welfare organizations need people in miserable conditions to justify their own existence. The more people they have depending on them, the more money they get. We are trying to promote self-sufficiency to get people off handouts.”

  As Blackwater continued to aggressively push its Sudan campaign, Behrends—the company’s top lobbyist—hit the airwaves of conservative radio to push for support. “We can be a huge help and catalyst and enabler to save those people,” said Behrends in a 2006 interview on The Danger Zone, the syndicated radio program of the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies. On the program, Behrends was simply identified as a representative of Blackwater. “I’d like to make a point that any money that we made, we would pour back into the community there, clinics, schools, roads, whatever, because this is not a place that we want to make any money, this is just a place that we feel very strongly about helping,” he said.42

  As with many of Blackwater’s deployments under the Bush administration, the company could rake in profits while serving the political and religious agenda of the administration and Erik Prince’s theoconservative allies. But aside from the political and religious motivations for Blackwater’s push to deploy in Sudan, the proposal provided a vivid glimpse into the corporate strategy Blackwater sees as a key to its future—repackaging mercenaries as peacekeepers. “There’s a lot of crises in the world,” said Singer, author of Corporate Warriors. “If they could get their foot in the door in them, it potentially opens up an entire new business sector for them.”43 While media reports at the time of the Jordan military conference suggested that Cofer Black’s “peacekeeping” proposal was a new development in Blackwater’s strategic vision, it had actually been in the works for at least a year. Author Robert Young Pelton said the company developed a detailed proposal for Blackwater deploying in Sudan soon after then-Secretary of State Colin Powell visited Darfur in June 2004. “If you look at the presentation, it includes not only men with guns. They’re offering helicopter gunships, a fighter bomber that has the capacity to drop cluster bombs, and [satellite-guided weapons], armored vehicles,” Pelton said. “You say: ‘Wait a minute. That’s a lot of offensive force. What does that have to do with peacekeeping?’”44

  In January 2006, three months before Cofer Black was dispatched to Jordan, Prince spoke to yet another military conference attended by scores of U.S. military officials. “One of the areas we could help is peacekeeping, perhaps. In Haiti you have a 9,000-man peacekeeping brigade at a cost of $496 million a year, the garrison commander just committed suicide, it’s in total disarray,” Prince said. “List for me—if you could—any really successful UN peacekeeping operations. I mean, I see the movie Hotel Rwanda and I get sick, and I say, Why did we let that happen? We can do something about that next time without a huge U.S. footprint. We can build a multinational brigade of professionals vetted to the same kind of State Department standards that they use for guarding embassies so we know we’re not employing war criminals and bad guys, train them, vet them, equip them, and now you have a multinational capability to do something with.”45 But, as Singer pointed out, “there is simply no support for such an overall privatized operation at the UN. The official line from the spokesperson is that it is ‘a nonstarter.’ I find it telling that two separate high-level panels of world leaders look at how to fix peacekeeping, and neither one even put privatizing peacekeeping as a point of discussion, let alone support it. They also didn’t talk about Martians coming in and running the peacekeeping operations, but then again, I guess Martians don’t have the same lobbying effort.”46 In a highly promotional cover story about Blackwater in 2006 in the neoconservative Weekly Standard, Mark Hemingway wrote, “Currently the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations has an annual budget of $7 billion, to say nothing of the billions in private charities and foreign aid pouring in to the world’s worst places. Even those suspicious of Blackwater’s motives must realize it makes good business sense that they would be interested in the work. Why chase after shady corporate clients when the mother lode is in helping people?”47 He called Blackwater “the alpha and omega of military outsourcing.”48

  Not long after Black’s Sudan proposal in Jordan, Blackwater received boosts for its cause from several prominent commentators. Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, penned a widely distributed column in the Los Angeles Times called “Darfur Solution: Send in the Mercenaries.”49 Boot wrote:

  If the so-called civilization nations of the world were serious about ending what the U.S. government has described as genocide, they would not fob off the job on the U.N. They would send their own troops. But of course they’re not serious. At least not that serious. But perhaps there is a way to stop the killing even without sending an American or European army. Send a private army. A number of commercial security firms such as Blackwater USA are willing, for the right price, to send their own forces, made up in large part of veterans of Western militaries, to stop the genocide. We know from experience that such private units would be far more effective than any U.N. peacekeepers. In the 1990s, the South African firm Executive Outcomes and the British firm Sandline made quick work of rebel movements in Angola and Sierra Leone. Critics complain that these mercenaries offered only a temporary respite from the violence, but that was all they were hired to do. Presumably longer-term contracts could create longer-term security, and at a fraction of the cost of a U.N. mission. Yet this solution is deemed unacceptable by the moral giants who run the United Nations. They claim that it is objectionable to employ—sniff—mercenaries. More objectionable, it seems, than passing empty resolutions, sending ineffectual peacekeeping forces and letting genocide continue.50

  Boot subsequently suggested that Blackwater or another mercenary firm could be deployed in Sudan after being hired “by an ad hoc group of concerned nations, or even by philanthropists like Bill Gates or George Soros.”51 But it wasn’t just conservatives lining up to support Blackwater. One of the most venerable newsmen in U.S. history, Ted Koppel, wrote an op-ed for the New York Times published on May 22, 2006, called “These Guns for Hire,” which opened with the line, “There is something terribly seductive about the notion of a mercenary army.”52 Koppel went on to provide “only a partial list of factors that would make a force of latter-day Hessians seem attractive:”

  Growing public disenchantment with the war in Iraq; The prospect of an endless campaign against global terrorism; An over-extended military backed by an exhausted, even depleted force of reservists and National Guardsmen; The unwillingness or inability of the United Nations or other multinational organizations to dispatch adequate forces to deal quickly with hideous, large-scale atrocities (see Darfur and Congo); The expansion of American corporations into more remote, fractious and potentially hostile settings.

  After running through that list, which seemed to have been lifted from mercenary industry talking points, Koppel opined that “Just as the all-volunteer military relieved the government of much of the political pressure that had accompanied the draft, so a rent-a-force, harnessing the privilege of every putative warrior to hire himself out for more than he could ever make in the direct service of Uncle Sam, might relieve us of an array of current political pressures.”

  Koppel then spent a fair portion of his op-ed presenting a virtual advertisement for Blackwater:

  So, what about the inevitable next step—a defensive military force paid for directly by the corporations that would most benefit from its protection? If, for example, an insurrection in Nigeria threatens that nation’s ability to export oil (and it does), why not have Chevron or Exxon Mobil underwrite the dispatch of a battalion or two of mercenaries?
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  Chris Taylor, the vice president for strategic initiatives and corporate strategy for Blackwater USA, wanted to be sure I understood that such a thing could only happen with the approval of the Nigerian government and at least the tacit understanding of Washington. But could Blackwater provide a couple of battalions under those circumstances? “600 people in a battalion,” he answered. “I could source 1,200 people, yes. There are people all over the world who have honorably served in their military or police organizations. I can go find honorable, vetted people, recruit them, train them to the standard we require.”

  It could have the merit of stabilizing oil prices, thereby serving the American national interest, without even tapping into the federal budget. Meanwhile, oil companies could protect some of their more vulnerable overseas interests without the need to embroil Congress in the tiresome question of whether Americans should be militarily engaged in a sovereign third world nation.

  What Koppel neglected to mention in his piece was the likelihood that the type of insurrection that Blackwater’s forces could potentially be fighting off in Nigeria in defense of Chevron or ExxonMobil could be a popular one, seeking to reclaim Nigeria’s vast petrol-resources from the U.S. government/oil corporation-backed kleptocracy that has brutally governed Africa’s most-populous nation for decades. Nor did Koppel mention that transnational oil corporations already use brutal forces to defend their interests from indigenous Nigerians, particularly in the oil-rich Niger Delta. Nigerian playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa was executed—hanged—with eight others in 1995 for his resistance to the Shell Oil Corporation, and Chevron has been deeply implicated in the killing of protesters in the Niger Delta.53 What was most disturbing about Koppel’s op-ed was that he appeared to be lending his credibility and reputation to the mercenary rebranding cause—at a crucial moment. In late 2006, Bush eased sanctions on Christian southern Sudan, paving the way for Blackwater to train the region’s forces.