The US & UN mercenary Industry of Iraq
This is what is happening in Iraq... and nobody talks about it... The mercenaries are much much much more than 50 thousand. The UN knows it. US officials know it. The Iraqis and the entire Middle East knows it. The so-called simple "sectarian" conflict is a cover-up for the real sects of mercenaries which are deliberately recruited by the US and freely operate in Iraq. If the American people knew what was really happening in Iraq, they would never accept it.... But the US government knows what is happening.
C
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/05/united-nations-mercenary-industry-...
www.countercurrents.org/mychalejko270407.htm
United Nation’s Mercenary Industry Poses Problems for Latin America
by Cyril Mychalejko / May 1st, 2007
The United Nations quietly released a report in March exposing an array of human rights abuses associated with a growing mercenary industry that is recruiting large numbers from Latin American countries.
“We have observed that in some cases the employees of private military and security companies enjoy an immunity which can easily become impunity, implying that some States may contract these companies in order to avoid direct legal responsibilities,” said Jose Luis Gomez del Prado, Chairperson-Rapporteur of the U.N. Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries in a statement before the Human Rights Council.
The alleged human rights abuses are not just against civilians from the countries in which they operate, but also against there own employees. These “soldiers of misfortune” are often recruited from vulnerable populations in developing countries, such as Honduras and Ecuador, countries the U.N. group visited last year to conduct investigations. The massive unemployment, low wages, fragile governments and the history of violent conflicts in these countries make their populations an ideal labor pool. In addition, the report expresses worry about the “phenomenon” of Latin American governments outsourcing domestic security and military functions to the private sector and the use of such operations to “protect” oil and mining companies.
“There needs to be international regulations as well as domestic regulations in these countries,” said Sanho Tree, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.
Tree, who has been monitoring this “out of control” industry for years in its role in the “War on Drugs” in Latin America, said that the lack of regulations and oversight is due to the fact that that it’s been under the radar for years and just coming to light because of the Iraq War. It’s estimated that there may be as many as 50,000 mercenaries working in Iraq—making it the second largest force in the so-called “coalition of the willing.” Many of them may end up fighting alongside U.S. soldiers in combat situations. “The number of personal security specialists we utilize in Iraq alone is more than all the Diplomatic Security agents we have globally”, said Gregg Starr, a State Department official in testimony before Congress in June of 2006.
Although there has been some reporting on high profile companies, the issue still may not be garnering the attention it deserves as no media outlets have reported on the U.N. report. According to the Working Group, there may be as many as 280 private security companies operating illegally in Honduras. A number of Honduran nationals working in Iraq, for a subsidiary of the Illinois-based Your Solutions Inc., are believed to have suffered “irregularities in contracts, harsh working conditions, wages partially paid or unpaid, ill-treatment and isolation, and lack of basic necessities such as medical treatment and sanitation.” Some former employees have filed labor and criminal claims against the company with Honduran authorities.
Another scandal unearthed against the company in the Working Group’s report involves illegally training Chilean recruits for Iraq in Honduras. The report states that in September 2005 the company brought 105 Chileans, some ex-soldiers, into the country under tourist visas. The Chileans, alongside their Honduran counterparts, were then sent to a former army base in the municipality of Lepaterique to receive training. The former base, now a development center of the Honduras Forestry Development Corporation, was once used by Washington in the 1980s to train mercenaries of a maybe not-so-different sort—namely Contras, Honduras’s infamous death squad Battalion 316, and Argentina’s 601st Intelligence Battalion, a “counter-terrorist” unit initiated under Operation Condor.
The possibility for industry changes in Honduras may be slight as the Working Group pointed out a “campaign of harassment, death threats and slander against the [human rights organization] Associacion para una Sociedad Mas Justa (Association for a More Just Society).” On Dec. 4, 2006 Dionisio D?az Garc?a, a lawyer and journalist with the Tegucigalpa-based AJS, was shot in the head while driving in his car to court where he was scheduled to represent a group of security guards who had their labor rights violated.
In a statement, the AJS wrote: “These companies have resorted to intimidation, smear campaigns, and open hostility toward AJS workers. On Monday, December 11, a board member and staff of CRWRC-Honduras partner group Genesis received a text message stating, ‘You are the next.’”
In Ecuador conditions are more of the same: immunity, impunity, exploitation and human and labor rights violations. The report expressed concern that private security companies were using the U.S. military base in Manta to recruit employees for foreign operations (Iraq and Afghanistan) and to conduct aerial spraying and other counter-narcotics operations under “Plan Colombia”.
“A transnational private security company was performing counter-insurgency and counter-narcotics tasks from the military base in Manta,” said the U.N.’s Gomez del Prado, adding that these functions should be carried out exclusively by U.S. military personnel. Manta has become a political lightning rod as Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa has threatened to not renew the “Agreement of Cooperation” with the U.S. (which expires in 2009) that allows Washington to use the Air Force base. The agreement also grants immunity to U.S. military personnel and civilian contractors—a clause which the Working Group views as problematic. The report and its documentation of abuses of the use of the base along with public opinion firmly on the side of Correa may make it even easier for him to kick Washington out when the agreement expires.
Jeffrey Shippey, a former DynCorp International employee at Manta created a ghost company, Epi Security and Investigations, and recruited more than 1,000 Colombians and Ecuadorians to work in Iraq. The report noted that the company wasn’t registered in Quito nor with local provisional authorities. NGO’s told the Working Group that the company allegedly was using Chilean instructors and former Colombian military personnel. Shippey wrote in an advertisement promoting his company at the Iraq Job Center Web Site that, “These forces have been fighting terrorists for 41 years and … have been trained by the U.S. Navy Seals and the U.S. DEA to conduct counter-drug/counter-terror ops in the jungles and rivers of Colombia.”
Another virtue of his mercenaries is that they get paid considerably less than their U.S. counterparts. In July 2005, Shippey told the Los Angeles Times, “The U.S. State Department is very interested in saving money on security now. Because they’re driving the prices down, we’re seeking Third World people to fill the positions.”
Adam Isacson, Director of Programs at the Center for International Policy, worries about the stories that haven’t come to light yet. He mentioned a report translated on his website about Colombians working in Iraq for a subsidiary of Blackwater USA who had their return tickets taken away from them when they complained that they would only get paid $1,000 a month after being promised $4,000. They were essentially held hostage. “It was almost slavery,” said Isacson. “Lord knows how many more cases there are.”
Tree, of the Institute for Policy Studies, said that there are other consequences that we might not see for years. One of the most worrying is that these people may take this training and use it for violent criminal activities. An example of this is the story of the “Zetas”, a group of Mexican paramilitary commandoes trained by U.S. special-forces to fight drug gangs. Many members of this group now work for the notorious Gulf Cartel, which is believed to supply large amounts of cocaine to the U.S. “Don’t train people if you don’t know what side they are going to fight for at the end of the day,” said Tree.
Cyril Mychalejko is an editor at UpsideDownWorld.org. He can be reached at Cyril[at]upsidedownworld.org Read other articles by Cyril, or visit Cyril's website.
_______________________________
http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2007/feb/27/yehey/top_stories/200702...
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Mercenaries in Iraq include Filipinos
Filipino ex-cops and soldiers are among the growing number of “mercenaries” recruited to provide security in Iraq, a UN report said.
The UN report, which will be presented next month, warned that methods used by private western security companies do not prepare recruits for the conflict. The strain, the report warned, could place recruits “in a situation where they can violate human rights because they are armed.”
Private security guards employed by western companies make up the second highest number of armed forces currently posted in Iraq, after the US military but ahead of the British troops, according to Jose Luis Gomez del Prado, the head of a UN workgroup on the use of mercenaries.
Many of the recruits stem from former police and military forces in the Philippines, Peru and Equador, according to the workgroup, which recently conducted missions to the latter two countries.
Unprepared
“They are trained quickly but not prepared for armed conflict situations,” Gomez del Prado said.
“They are sent there, they receive M16 [assault rifles] and are placed in very dangerous areas like the Green Zone [in Baghdad], convoys and embassies,” he added.
While the recruits sometimes carry out important and honorable tasks like protecting humanitarian organization convoys, they are also “in a situation where they can violate human rights because they are armed,” according to the UN expert.
“At least 160 companies are operating in Iraq. They probably employ 35,000 to 40,000 people,” Gomez del Prado said on the sidelines of a second workgroup session in Geneva last week.
More than 400 of these private employees have died in Iraq since 2003, putting their casualties below the number suffered by US armed forces but ahead of British military deaths, he said. “And a lot more have been injured.”
The workgroup is scheduled to deliver a report to the UN Commission for Human Rights next month emphasizing concerns over mercenary recruitment methods used by US companies like Triple Canopy and Blackwater.
While Americans and Europeans working in war zones for private security companies often make as much as $10,000 (7,600 euros) a month, Peruvians doing the same job seldom make more than $1,000, and their working rights are often violated, Gomez del Prado said.
“The contracts they sign often hide things that aren’t clear. The original is in English, which most of them do not speak,” he said.
Labor rights
The recruits are entitled to the labor rights applied in the country where the company hiring them is headquartered, but the UN expert pointed out that it is hard to imagine “a poor Peruvian filing suit in an American court.”
The number of private security companies working in war zones like Iraq has exploded in recent years, with one private security employee for every four US soldiers currently stationed in Iraq.
That number is up from one private security guard for every 50 US soldiers who took part in the first Gulf war in 1990/91, Gomez del Prado said.
He is alarmed at the legal vacuum in which these companies operate, pointing out that their activities are not actually covered by the strict definition of mercenaries given in the 1989 International Convention against the Use, Recruitment, Financing and Training of Mercenaries, signed by 28 countries.
“It’s a bit like the difference between the privateers and the pirates in the old days,” he said.
--AFP
======================================
http://www.niagarafallsreporter.com/hanchette170.html
MOUNTAIN VIEWS: MERCENARIES MOUNT IRAQ OFFENSIVE
By John Hanchette
OLEAN -- There are plenty of aspects about the Bush administration's occupation of Iraq that approach sitting-duck status for criticism. The fighting in Iraq is, as the military likes to define promising battlefields, a "target-rich environment" for journalists, academics, politicians, peaceniks, talking heads and sidewalk opponents of the war alike.
But one important facet of the controversial war -- until recently -- has drawn little attention from the critics.
The Pentagon, using your money and mine, has gone into a costly competition with itself for able bodies to take on dangerous security assignments that include almost routine combat.
If a dunderhead college student submitted this loser business plan in Industrial Management 101, he'd flunk.
We've all heard and read the stories about troubles the Army and Marines are having meeting recruiting goals as the unpopular war rages. In the early part of 2005, for the first time in years, both branches missed recruiting goals by a wide margin for several months in a row. The Pentagon -- which hasn't had the draft to rely upon for new personnel since 1973 -- reacted.
More recruiters were thrown into the breach. Signing bonuses were increased from $6,000 to $10,000 to -- in some cases -- $20,000. College scholarships ballooned from $50,000 to $70,000. Standards were relaxed. The percentage of allowable volunteers without a high school degree was raised dramatically. TV and print commercials were changed to target reluctant parents instead of the sons and daughters. Some recruits were told they'd only have to serve 15 months instead of the normal two years.
Despite the 1,800 dead and 14,000 wounded in Iraq, the new strategies seemed to work. The numbers are up for July -- with the Army and Marines back above monthly goals -- but the Army, Army Reserve and Army National Guard are all expected to fall below annual recruitment targets by Sept. 30, when the federal fiscal year ends.
But the shortened training times now in force and the hurry-up aspect of shipping new grunts directly to Iraq soon after boot camp have made retention of trained, hardened and skilled veteran personnel -- particularly Special Operations, Delta Force, Navy Seal and Ranger types -- especially important.
This is where the people running this war have painted themselves into a costly corner.
Special Forces personnel -- key to any eventual success in Iraq -- are now being offered re-enlistment bonuses of up to $150,000 each. And these huge amounts are being spurned.
That's because retention of key combat personnel is being eroded by far better money offers from federally hired "private security companies" -- as their executives insist they be called. Once on board and back in the private sector of dangerous military operations in Iraq, these highly trained fighters and specialists can make up to a quarter of a million dollars or more (most of it tax-free) in a year's worth of salary -- certainly better than Army pay.
These men, of course, are mercenaries -- professional soldiers hired for pay in an outfit other than their country's armed forces. The "private security companies" recoil from that designation, but that is what they are, nonetheless. They are private, well-paid gunmen.
In one of its best articles of the year, The New York Times Magazine of Aug. 14 detailed the quiet expansion of these new hybrid forces in Iraq. Author Daniel Bergner writes there are about 80 private firms, maybe 100, with approximately 25,000 armed men -- about 15 percent of the weapons-carrying allied personnel in Iraq -- guarding big American corporations that are reconstructing Iraq. They, side by side with American troops, shield American compounds from attack, keep safe workers who are rebuilding power stations and sewage plants, guard generals, protect military bases, and hold off insurgents so supplies can be delivered.
Some of the private gunmen -- not all Americans -- are drop-outs from law enforcement and soldiers of fortune who participated in other global conflicts in past decades. Many come from Chile, Ukraine, Fiji, Great Britain, Romania, South Africa, even Iraq itself.
No one seems to be keeping track of how many there really are, or of the totals being paid these firms, or who authorized them, approved them, or signed the contracts. The Pentagon, after promising these details to The New York Times, stiff-armed the newspaper and "detoured fully around the questions," according to Bergner.
The Defense Department would only state that "private security companies" are not being used "to perform inherently military functions." (That word "inherently" carries a lot of freight. The private armed firms, all by themselves, have already held off unexpected full-scale insurgent attacks upon regional Coalition Provisional Authority compounds in the Iraqi towns of Kut and Najaf.)
But one can do the math. One of the biggest private firms -- Triple Canopy (headquartered in the United States), with about 1,000 men in Iraq -- receives about $250 million a year from the Defense Department, and is so highly regarded in Washington that the State Department has designated it one of three such companies that will divide $1 billion a year in new protection work in powder-keg nations around the planet -- formerly a job the Marines usually performed. That's just one firm.
The North Carolina private security firm Blackwater USA (the firm whose four employees in Fallujah last year were killed, and their charred body parts hung from a bridge) is thought to receive at least as much.
The above number of private personnel on the ground in Iraq doesn't even include the 70,000 more unarmed civilians -- some of them Iraqis -- working for American firms and agencies that provide former military duties in Iraq, the most notable of which is Halliburton and subsidiaries, Vice President Dick Cheney's former company.
Halliburton, which received incredibly mammoth no-bid federal contracts at the start of the war for things like providing food, laundry, soft drinks, equipment washers and gasoline deliveries to the troops in Iraq, has recently been accused by Senate Democrats, whistle-blowers, Army auditors and the Pentagon's own Defense Contract Audit Agency of billing taxpayers more than $1.4 billion in questionable unsupported charges. (One food manager for Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root told Pentagon investigators that KBR officials threatened to dispatch any workers who talked to federal auditors to more dangerous zones of Iraq.) These daily duties now outsourced to private firms used to be handled by members of the Armed Forces themselves. At least a general or other high officer could crack down on waste and corruption in those saner days without fighting bureaucrats and needing a congressional investigation to get started.
The high pay for our armed mercenaries in Iraq is probably necessary to attract such danger-loving security workers.
Triple Canopy employees -- in just half a year in 2004 -- were attacked by insurgents at least 240 times and got in about 40 firefights. The company stopped keeping track, but estimates the frequency of assaults is about the same this year.
The Pentagon's difficulty in trying to retain Special Ops experts with non-competitive bonuses was evident in the article when the Times garnered a quote from a Delta Force veteran of 15 years who ignored the fervent pleas of his commanding officer and joined Triple Canopy instead of re-upping: "There was no way. Here (in the private security company) I get to be with the best and make so much more money."
Using mercenaries to fight your wars was basically outlawed by the Geneva Conventions of 1949, and pretty much ended after centuries of use in the 1700s, when sovereign nations came to the fore and better weapons required less professional skill. Nations found it easier to train any simple clod to fight and become cannon fodder rather than pay big sums to hire professionals. (We all were taught in grade school how dastardly and conniving King George III was in hiring 30,000 Hessians to spare British lives in fighting our brave boys in the American Revolution.)
But after 9/11 and even before we invaded Iraq, the Bush administration hired about 40 private gunmen from the U.S. company DynCorp to guard new president Hamid Karzai once we took over Afghanistan. Once we invaded Iraq in 2003, the commanding general, now retired, Jay Garner, immediately hired Nepalese Gurkhas and South Africans from a British security company to protect himself and his staff. It was off to the races.
No one has raised much of a fuss. Almost a year ago, Congress asked the Pentagon to provide a detailed plan for listing, managing, accounting for, and overseeing private contractors, but despite repeated promises, the Defense Department has yet to provide it.
One obvious reason the Pentagon and Bush administration warriors like the idea of mercenaries who don't draw much attention is that it allows them to pretend we have far fewer war fighters on the ground in Iraq than we really do. If any mode of operation makes it easy to fudge the figures or cloud the costs, the Bush White House and Pentagon like it.
Army chief of staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker said in a Kansas City speech over the weekend there are now 138,000 American troops on the ground in Iraq, and that plans to keep such a force there until 2009, if need be, are already drawn up. That number swells when you consider all the private armed gunmen.
There are a couple of dire conclusions here.
One -- It's going to be quite difficult in the near future to appeal to a sense of duty and patriotism in young Americans, as we have for two centuries when it came to fighting wars, when on the other hand we are using pure monetary gain as the main cudgel in keeping our people on the battlefield and showing up at boot camp.
Two -- This dangerous conundrum is merely a symptom of a larger and more deadly cultural problem: corporate greed. For the Iraq war, when you think about it, is being conducted by the Bush administration on the same crippling and wrongheaded strategy that has become so popular with the big business greedheads who are ruining our economy and the nation for their own personal gain: drastically downsize the workforce to free up billions of untrackable dollars, then outsource the vital production services to like-minded privateers, whether they be American or foreign.
Oh, and while you're at it, close down scores of military bases, shipyards and airfields in the name of economy, promise false savings, and ruin local economies across the nation.
Do American citizens and taxpayers get screwed in the end? Of course.
Do our leaders of government care? Of course not.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Hanchette, a professor of journalism at St. Bonaventure University, is a former editor of the Niagara Gazette and a Pulitzer Prize-winning national correspondent. He was a founding editor of USA Today and was recently named by Gannett as one of the Top 10 reporters of the past 25 years. He can be contacted via e-mail at Hanchette6@aol.com.
