Ride Across the River (post SJ Version) Robert Young Pelton, Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War

on Terror. Crown, 2006.

Colonel Gerald Schumacher (ret.), A Bloody Business: Americas War Zone Contractors and the Occupation of Iraq. Zenith Press, 2006.

Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater The Rise of the Worlds Most Powerful Mercenary Army. Nation Press, 2007.

In September 2007 questions of contractor malfeasance in Iraq dominated the headlines. Blackwater, the center of previous storms was embroiled in a controversy over the unnecessary shooting of civilians while protecting a US State Department convoy. The situation provided a focal point for Iraqi distrust and Prime Minister Maliki quickly tried to distance himself from the Americans. The Iraqi government initially attempted to ban Blackwater which resulted in a temporary halt to the movements of US diplomats. Although the order has been described as a test of sovereignty, practically speaking there is simply no other force present that can provide the security for State Department personnel on such short notice. The inability of the US military to provide security for the Sate Department exposes one of the dangers of relying too much on contractors to fill in what were once official government functions. The vital US Government civilian contingent simply could not fully function in Iraq without its Blackwater bodyguards. At the same time charges surfaced against Blackwater employees for smuggling weapons into Iraq that ended up in the hands of the Kurdish PKK (the Partiya Karkern Kurdistan

or Kurdistan Workers Party, wihch is classified as a terrorist organization by the US Government). It is open to question whether Blackwater is being held to a higher standard by the Iraqi government and used as a scapegoat for more generalized anger against the US presence. In many ways the contractors could be said to reflect the worst in US military training without the countervailing forces of discipline and feedback from lessons learned through the broad experience of American forces in Iraq.

The controversy over Blackwater has yet again exposed shortcomings in the legal framework surrounding the use of contractors. Although the Iraqi government demanded jurisdiction over foreign contractors, it is not clear why contractors connected with the US government should be treated differently from US soldiers. Some claim fewer would risk their lives in such a dangerous area if they were open to charges from as flawed a justice system as prevails in Iraq. Just how contractors would react to being judged under the Uniform Code of Military Justice Americas comprehensive body of military lawis a more open question.

In terms of the academic press, private military companies (PMCs) first came into focus with Peter Singers book Corporate Warriors (2003). Singer however, mainly explored the phenomena outside of the United States, especially the activities of the South African and British based companies fighting without home country support. Although the market for such companies in Africa and Asia grew during the 1990s, the concept remained a relatively small though deeply entrenched part of American military policy. In the US, the history of logistics contracting goes back to the Revolutionary War when George

Washington hired civilian wagon drivers. The US military also made extensive use of logistics contractors during the Vietnam War, but by the time of the Balkan wars in the 1990s, things began to change. American military manpower shortages were acute and private armed security firms were retained for perimeter security at bases in Bosnia. The meteoric rise in armed security companies and the large scale hiring of contractors did not occur however until the second Iraq war when the US found itself critically short of troops to carry out its mission.

Over the past four years, congressional hearings have occasionally opened small distorted windows onto the world of private military contractors in Iraq. The election of a democratic congressional majority was expected to put some teeth into the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The committee hearings which were convened under Senator Henry Waxman on February 7th 2007, fell far short of a comprehensive examination of the industrys ongoing problems. Despite the show trial atmosphere, the Waxman hearings were enough to raise troubling questions about the industrys operation. The theatre-like format lent a platform to verbose congressional members. They interviewed relatives engaged in a suit against the former employers of their loved ones who were brutally executed in Falluja. The forum proved inadequate for in-depth analysis. Through a largely unobserved process, private military contractors of all types have become an integral part of the US military machine. The involvement of private citizens in an arena largely reserved for the government during the last two centuries has changed the political equation of warfare and with an astounding lack of public debate. Regrettably, the same lack of debate and analysis hobbles each of the current books

dedicated to the post-9/11 explosion in private contracting. The authors include Robert Young Pelton, a freelance journalist/explorer, Gerry Schumacher, a retired Colonel and Jeremy Scahill, a political journalist. All three books are largely anecdotal and have a tendency to place good story telling ahead of serious analysis.

The most journalistic effort is Peltons Licensed to Kill. Pelton is a skilled writer who has produced a book that is both more fair minded and more informative than his competitors. Once past a somewhat shaky introductory history of contractors in Vietnam, Pelton moves onto territory where he has first hand experience; either as a journalist covering Afghanistan during the 1980s or travelling as an outside observer with security contractors in Iraq. Through the tautly written episodes Pelton keeps the dangers of the industry in view while he explores paradoxes inherent in the growth of private contracting. This is exemplified by Blackwater Corporations desire to expand both into peacekeeping and peace-enforcement operations beyond US official involvement. Pelton also avoids the twin problems of vilifying or idolizing the individuals involved. Although not one to let analysis get in the way of a good anecdote, Pelton offers a critical view of the oversight and structural problems of the PMC industry, even if it is only in a peppering of paragraphs.

Some of the industrys problems are not immediately obvious. Although most contractors have previous military or police training, it is not necessarily germane to the types of missions they are required to undertake in places from Iraq and Afghanistan to New Orleans. One of Peltons most interesting observations is the reliance of many PMCs on

former Navy SEALs (the US Navys special operations force trained for Sea, Air and Land operations). Americas SEALs generally train for short-term missions and their ethos of overwhelming force is at odds with the requirements of both personal security details and current counter-insurgency (COIN) doctrine. The intricacies of reading a tense crowd situation do not play a significant part in SEAL training. Unlike other Special Forces units that train for long missions and interaction with foreign forces, the SEALs are almost an entirely offensive unit focused on short-term contact with the enemy. Added to this, contractor retraining is inconsistent across the various companies, and individual contractors are not necessarily assigned to missions based on their previous experience. Pelton gives the example of Afghan President Karzais security detail. Initially his security was provided by Navy SEAL Team 6. In the case of Karzais subsequent security detail however, disputes over pay rates led to whole teams walking off and having to be replaced. The large variation in the background of security personnel can produce cultural differences or tensions within mixed teams. There is an argument to be made that former police officers may be more appropriately trained for bodyguard duty than SEALs. Since the publication of Peltons book, his observations have been reinforced by a letter to the New York Times in which a former Blackwater employee complained about the transference of the SEALs culture of combat to the streets of Iraq.

Pelton manages the theme of the ugly American quite deftly. The contractors are shown to be an extension of existing problems in the US military. One contractor, whom Pelton travelled with, refused to eat with the local Afghans that Pelton had befriended,

preferring his own MREs (Meals Ready to Eat - prepared ration packets) to local dishes. In turn the contractor was rudely handled by the US military when he tried to turn in information he had gathered during the trip with Pelton. To add insult to injury, the ethnocentric warrior was completely insulted by the fist full of rupees he was given for his trouble. While one might be hesitant to accept any journalistic account, the incident does have a ring of truth to it. Pelton underlines the difficulties of the US military and its contractors by later comparing US and British companies in Iraq. Typically, the British are much more attuned to using indigenous personnel and operate with a much lower tactical profile than American outfits. Former American soldiers, trained in the doctrine of overwhelming force, have a much greater tendency to indulge in so-called thunder runs featuring excessive suppressive fire, without even a minimal counterbalancing of hearts and minds training. Having such an important part of US force in the region at variance with current counter-insurgency doctrine only makes for a greater disconnect between strategy and tactics.

The selection of which PMCs are awarded contracts also receives some scrutiny in Peltons book, including how the US government hired Tim Spicers Aegis Corporation to work in Iraq. Spicer, a retired member of the British armed forces, formed a company named Sandline that was once at the center of several scandals. Several of Sandlines personnel were from the generation of private military providers which gained notoriety in Africa during the 1990s. Spicer avoided prosecution for his African actions but was eventually forced to face trial for events linked to an attempted coup in Papua New Guinea. Pelton reports that British Brigadier General James Ellery provided advice and

assistance to Spicer during the selection process and subsequently went on to work for Aegis in Baghdad. The contract itself was awarded through another senior British officer, Brigadier Anthony Hunter-Choat. Even if the contract was granted simply on the basis of British interests, Aegis further underscores the extent of the old boys network involved in the Iraq gold rush.

If there is a fault with Peltons work, it is that his book focuses on the sharp end of security contracting while US military dependency on civilians is actually much more extensive. In a twist on the old saw that military professionals focus on logistics, the most informative part of Colonel Gerry Schumachers book, A Bloody Business, is his description of the US militarys reliance on contractors to provide logistical support. One wishes that he had spent some time on the questions the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has raised regarding the logistical support being provided by contractors. For example contractors can only fix Strykers ( six wheel armoured vehicles) if they are disabled in combat, while soldiers could fix them and fight. The GAO also found an over-reliance on contractors at the battalion level. (GAO-03-695). Schumachers work addresses some of the more well known criticisms in a grudging fashion that suggests the unavoidability of the subject rather than a serious and objective inquiry.

There are things to be learned from reading between the lines of Colonel Schumachers book, providing one can ignore the laudatory tone that at times makes it sound like a PMC recruiting tool, which it no doubt is. Private military companies do offer immediate short-term advantages to the under-manned and inappropriately trained US military.

Schumacher asserts, Grenada remains the only convincing victory for US forces since World War Two. For years the US military trained mainly to fight a high-tech war against similarly armed opponents and the US government simply is not prepared to engage in the nation-building necessary to win a counter-insurgency struggle.

Colonel Schumacher argues that contractors can be used to ameliorate some of these deficiencies such as lack of training relative to nation-building and policing. Yet there would seem to be some flaw in the logic here. To take the same basic ingredients of US military training, but expect a different result, because these people are now private contractors, does not seem reasonable. Re-hiring retired personnel and former police officers may be an effective way to ramp-up numbers in the short term, but as long as they reflect American doctrine unsuited for counter-insurgency, they suffer many of the US militarys well-known deficiencies.

The problems faced in training Iraqi forces, both military and police, are legion. Unfortunately, none of the books under review gives a detailed account of why MPRI (Military Professional Resources, Inc), a company that succeeded in Croatia, failed miserably in retraining the Iraqi army: instead we are left with anecdotal information. The difficulties faced by Iraqi recruits however, come across clearly in the recollections of one former policewomen teaching in Jordan. Between the acceptance of torture by the Iraqi recruits and the fact that many of the trainees had relatives killed during their training period, it is evident that there are immense challenges inherent in retraining the Iraqi police and measuring whether contractors are the best source is extremely difficult.

Locating the reasons for MPRIs failure would go some way towards quantifying the use of PMCs, and a military mans view of the matter would be beneficial. Unfortunately none of the current books, including Colonel Schumachers, adequately addresses the issue of MPRI. It is possible that the cause of the difference in the companys performance between Croatia and Iraq lies in either a change of leadership at MPRI and/or the much more difficult situation on the ground in Iraq. A thorough examination of the subject is called for as it might shed light on when and under what circumstances contractors should be employed.

Despite his boosting of contractors, Colonel Schumacher fails to discuss how the work of contractors might be better integrated with military action. The critical interaction of PMCs and the US Army remains difficult to delineate. Although General Petreaus has talked as if he included security contractors in his force numbers, in practice, the use of independent contractors means that a critical part of the battle space is opaque to regional commands. For several years articles published in American military journals have complained about the inadequacies of military doctrine pertaining to US military relations with contractors. The US military simply does not have the requisite framework to use contractors to its best advantage with existing guidelines spread over disparate documents at odds with each other. Despite claims about the importance of battlefield awareness, there have been instances were contractors have deployed to locations unbeknownst to US Army ground commanders and without the basic US government support needed to carry out their mission. Many field commanders have limited awareness of all the contractor activities taking place in their facilities or area of

operations.1 If awareness and comprehensive networking is a key to victory, the military has ceded some of its advantage through a lack of foresight. The line between civilian and combatant was disturbingly blurred on occasions such as that which occurred at Najaf, where the PMCs - highly trained former US soldiers - were reluctant to withdraw under fire. Consequently, the private military contractors seized the command initiative and issued orders to an active duty marine to commence fire. How such situations are to be handled needs further examination.

The lack of clear and practical guidelines has carried over into the handling of LOGCAP (logistics suppliers) contracts. The previously mentioned Waxman hearings made evident that there is no one overseeing the contract compatibility of the various subcontractors and their interface with US policies under the LOGCAP provisions. What the hearings did not address was whether LOGCAPs contract policies, such as prohibiting contractors from carrying weapons, are sensible under the conditions prevailing in Iraq. Authors Pelton and Schumacher make it clear that the line defining civilian and combatant in a 360 degree insurgency is extremely difficult to draw. In Iraq, the US military could not provide security for every contractor run convoy and convoys without security run the risks of insurgent and/or criminal attack. To provide the necessary security needed for logistics operators, someone in authority will have to authorize a dramatic increase in troop levels, or the policies will have to change. Logic dictates that you cannot reasonably ask someone to haul a load of valuable supplies through a country full of insurgents and criminal bands without a weapon or some type of security.

GAO-03-695

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Although many contractors are former servicemen, there are several differences which distinguish them from active duty soldiers. The most striking is pay. Even Special Forces soldiers do not receive the pay packets of American security contractors, but there are other considerations. Pelton suggests that individuals capable of making a $150,000 / year in a safe civilian job do not generally become contractors. While some might agree with Scahill in calling this a small fortune, this type of short-term employment lacks long-term health care and disability, or pensions. While basic insurance needs are met with very rudimentary provisions of the Defense Base Act, contractors must buy their own supplimentals. Insurance companies such as AIG may pay only half or less of posttraumatic stress disorder (P.T.S.D.) claims. There is a shortage of combat related health care available in civilian hospitals, especially in the rural areas and small towns where most contractors live.2 Pelton, as neither a military man nor a political writer, sees most of these contractors as more or less average Americans with a limited skill set trying to pay off mortgages and send their children to college. A view which seems closer to the mark than the Dogs of War stereotype.

Rules on alcohol consumption comprise another major difference between contractors and active duty personnel. The US military, which includes many soldiers that under U.S. civilian law would be consider under-age, prohibits drinking in theatre. Not that such activity does not take place. According to news reports, the military has mainly succeeded in driving the drinking underground. For private contractors, security and otherwise, the rules have been much looser and in at least one case a civilian contract

New York Times Contractors Back from Iraq Suffer Trauma from Battle July 5, 2007 www.nytimes.com/2007/07/05/us/05contractors.html

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driver used a bottle of 80 proof liquor to secure accommodations for his team from a local military unit. Pelton relates nightly drinking sessions with Blackwater personnel members. Such indulgence may be ending as security contractors come in line with US military policy, for instance Dyncorp, has recently banned alcohol in theatre.

The relationship between contractors and active duty soldiers is difficult to pin down and undoubtedly varies from soldier-to-soldier and the given situation. Although envy and disdain are prevalent, Pelton details how grenades and LAW (light anti-tank weapon) rockets from the US Marines made it into contractor hands, and Schumacher relates one occasion in which an otherwise unarmed contractor was handed a weapon in the middle of a firefight. In other cases soldiers express a willingness to resign and become contractors for higher pay.

Jeremy Scahill attempts to take all the political points he can, in Blackwater: The rise of the Worlds most powerful Mercenary Army. Scahill covers much of the same ground as Pelton, but less effectively, and with long excursions into anti-fundamentalist Christian diatribes. Scahill spends much of the book grinding his axe, to the point of ruining the blade. Scahills details about Blackwater CEO Erik Princes ties to right-wing Christian supremacy groups is alarming, but one wishes it could have been done without the long asides about individuals tangential to the main story. In some cases it amounts to guilt by association. Another serious flaw is his painting of all corporate security personnel involved in Iraq as mercenaries until the chapter on the Falluja incident. At that

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magical moment the mercenaries are suddenly transformed into innocent security contractors taken advantage of by an evil corporation. Newspaper reporting suggests that the motivations of individual contractors are more complex and that the American contractors at least still see themselves as part of a national military effort.

Not fully explored in any of these books, is the limited legal framework the contractors operate under. Both Scahill and Pelton underscore the need for a more effective legal regime, although Pelton again offers the best insights through discussions with individual contractors. To take just one case overlooked by these three books, Dyncorp contractors abused their position in the context of peacekeeping in Bosnia. A lack of jurisdiction prevented the prosecution of several Dyncorp employees that were accused of buying and selling young girls as sex slaves. Lack of accountability and failure to set standards has meant Dyncorp is still free to bid for and win several large and vital contracts. Congressional reaction to the actions of the Dynacorp personnel in the former Yugoslavia merely resulted in the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (MEJA) of 2000. This poorly written law extended the federal criminal jurisdiction to allow the prosecution of serious federal offences committed by Department of Defense (DOD) contractors or civilians outside the US. The law did little to curb abuses as it applied only to DOD contractors who are also US citizens. Four of the Department of the Interior contractors were implicated in sixteen of the forty-four documented abuses at Abu Grahib. Yet as the MEJA applies only to DOD contractors, they simply returned home.

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Theoretically, the contractor could be made responsible for following host nation laws (except if the contractor is included in a SOFA or SFA Status of Forces Agreements), but the point is moot under the prevailing conditions of lawlessness extant in Iraq. Pelton makes it clear that most incidents are not reported and given the situation on the ground, it is hard to imagine that any American is going to sit and wait for the Iraqi police to show up. The struggling Iraqi legal system cannot be trusted and even without the immunity order signed just before the dissolution of the Provisional Authority, it is hard to imagine an effective solution aside perhaps from a new division of the Judge Advocate Generals (JAGs) office that would have responsibility. Until recently, the only accountability in U.S. civil court was for contract default or violations. While as Scahill notes a recent amendment that brings contractors under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), the US military has its hands full fighting a war and the usual JAG mechanisms are just not set up to investigate contractor malfeasance. Manpower is an issue and as author Peter Singer has commented, there remain questions of jurisdiction. The UCMJ includes the various injunctions of military discipline and insubordination that many individual contractors sought to avoid to avoid by leaving the military. In most cases the UCMJ provisions would have no practical bearing on contractor activities. The ranks of security contractors also contain third country nationals and Iraqi citizens, not all of whom are working either directly or indirectly for the US government. Subcontracting further muddies the waters. The amendment was snuck into law at the last moment meaning there was no discussion or guidance forthcoming in what parts of the UCMJ should be applied and how investigations should be carried out. New changes mean the possibility of placing the contractors under US civilian law, but it is still unclear how this

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would be achieved in practice or reconciled with the previous changes placing them under the UCMJ. The lack of a legal framework has not just affected security contractors. Colonel Schumacher relays the frustration of one driver who was concerned with why his employer - Kellogg Brown and Root - was not adhering to Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration rules. His outrage stemmed from equipment deficiencies. The tractortrailer trucks en route from Kuwait to Iraq had not been provisioned with handles with which to crank down the so-called landing gear needed for quickly changing truck cabs. This was seen as a mandatory safety requirement so that drivers could quickly decouple from their loads in combat. Drivers also complained about relying on an inadequate cell phone network for communications. None of the legal changes will matter one wit however, unless the military becomes more serious about investigations and prosecutions of its own soldiers - let alone independent contractors.

The lack of real information is a continuing problem in assessing the effectiveness of contractors on the battlefield. What exists is still largely fragmented and often conflicting information about how out of control the contractors are, and how many have been killed. Lack of statistics is a real problem and is part of the, at times deliberate, lack of oversight of armed men. Subcontracting is rife and further confuses the lines of command and responsibility making after action investigations difficult.

A more critical attitude towards the role of private contracting during conflict on the part of the American public and congress would itself be a welcome change. The current round of books each suffers a certain amount of insta-book syndrome and they do little

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to provide more than a brief and inadequate glimpse of the challenges raised by military contractors. Much of the data remains infuriatingly anecdotal and these books tend to provide repetitive accounts of the same central stories such as Falluja and Najaf augmented with the authors personal bias. The citizens of all democratic nations would benefit from a more complete analysis of the utility and morality of using private contractors. First there must be a serious discussion of the pros and cons of using contractors and then, if need be, the legal and administrative procedures must be put in place to properly regulate the industry.

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