Civilian Contract Security in Afghanistan and Iraq - Literature review Example

Mercenaries in Afghanistan and Iraq The word “mercenary” takes on an academic context and perception in meaning in the minds of most people as one associated with individuals who sell or trade their military tactics and expertise for personal financial gain; a gain not reflective of the political or religious ideologies of the hiring entity, but a personal and singled-minded gain that compels the mercenary to perform acts of inconceivable violence and cruelty outside the conventions of state or international law to achieve goals on behalf of the hiring agency, which, because of state and international laws and conventions, could not be otherwise achieved. As a result, the use of mercenaries in legitimate warfare, while as old as warfare itself, is not a generally accepted practice; and certainly not a modern day publicly condoned practice. The use of mercenaries is the circumvention of national and international law and convention, and in order to dispel pre-conceived images and notions, the term “mercenary” is now more commonly referred to as “contractor” or “consultant”, individuals and entities who nonetheless sell goods and services, including military tactics and expertise, to governments and insurgents, including the United States. The political, economic, legal, and moral implications of the use of contractors, consultants and mercenaries will be examined here. In what exists as one of the most well organized and comprehensive briefs on the subject of the complexities within system of contracted services, which include every conceivable item that might be needed to conduct government or business from pens and paper to cooks and mercenaries – the latter two sometimes crossing over; Laura A. Dickinson’s William and Mary Law Review article titled “Government for Hire: Privatizing Foreign Affairs and the Problem of Accountability under International Law (2005) untangles and demystifies the subject to reveal the pertinent points on the use private contractors, or mercenaries. Included in Dickinson’s article are facts related to and specific to, but not limited to, the use of mercenaries in Afghanistan and Iraq. Several significant concepts immediately emerge during Dickinson’s discussion on the subject. First, that contracted services, even those that include mercenary services, the contracting of which has occurred over a period of decades, are imbedded in every facet of US military, disaster, and humanitarian relief service offered by the United States to foreign governments, and it is not a practice that is going to go away (Dickinson, 2005). Privatization of these services, including the use of mercenaries, is not necessarily a bad thing, because it draws on the expertise of a profit-oriented corporate entity in providing specialty goods and services at reasonable and affordable costs and, thusly, those services could potentially achieve a better outcome for the government (p. 2). The problems associated with the use of private entities in providing these services is the circumvention of law in assigning accountability, which, if resolved within an international legal arena, resolve, too, the political, economic, and moral problems arising from the use of mercenaries (p. 2). That accountability must be assigned in legal terms and definitions arising out of internationally recognized and accepted legal arenas not unlike those from which came the Geneva Conventions (p. 2). Also, there must be a component of international monitoring to ensure compliance with any emerging standards or conventions governing the privatization of military services. While Dickinson concedes that “. . .international scholars have not offered a systematic analysis of how privatization in the international and transnational sphere might affect norms of accountability crucial to both the rule of law and to democratic legitimacy (p. 3),” mercenaries now operate outside of the bodies of national and international law that govern acts of war, such as the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949, Protection of Victims of War (Baxter, Charney, et al, 1987, p. 348). “The International Convention against the Use, Financing, and Training of Mercenaries arose from understandable African concerns about the influence of European mercenaries in the continent during the decolonization in the 1960s and early 1970s (Smith, 2004, p. 1); but do not properly address the subject of mercenaries from the private sector perspective. While concerns over the obvious reappearance of mercenaries on the continent were expressed by writer Gus Constantine, writing for The Washington Times (1997, p. 1), Constantine conceded that the role of the mercenary and the image of the mercenary has metamorphosed into some very different than that which gave rise to the Geneva Convention arising from decolonization (Constantine, 1997, p. 1). Thus, the Geneva Conventions are not the proper legal authority, according to Dickinson, to govern the privatization of military services, such as those provided by the 20,000 mercenaries in Iraq (at the time of Dickinson’s article) (Dickinson, 2005, p. 39). Unfortunately, it is the lack of legal authority and accountability that has given rise to allegations and actual incidents in abuse of human rights and law in scandals in Iraq such as Abu Ghraib; the prison scandal (p. 2). Thus, with the proliferation of private entities, NGOs (non-government organizations) like Halliburton (responsible for the non-military personnel interrogators at Abu Ghraib); Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), Military Professional Resources, Inc. (MPRI), to mention but a few of the private entities now providing the United States Government with privately contracted military services in Afghanistan and Iraq; there is indeed an urgent need to bring these entities into a fold of legal accountability. While private entities providing military services to the United States Government are not without their success stories, as in the case of KBR which provides logistical support services to the U.S. Military, appears to have achieved more success, and much less notoriety than Halliburton, in its work in Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, Afghanistan, and Iraq (p. 9); although the disastrous events of Somalia, where KBR was responsible for logistical support functions, cannot be ignored in KBR’s scorecard. Also, it cannot be ignored that intelligence is being supplied the US Government by private entities, and in lieu of post Iraq-invasion allegations of poor intelligence (Wester, 2004, p. 1), there emerges a strong need for establishing standards of quality and quality control between the providing entity and the governmental receiving agency to ensure validity and accuracy of information provided and received. Any conventions or standards of accountability should incorporate and include requirements for private entities to offer support and corroboration for information provided; and to be held liable for providing false and misleading intelligence that by way of action of the entity or government it was provided to, as in the case of Iraq, cause irreversible losses on a widespread, large scale level. However, this emphasizes, too, the need for governments, including the United States, which are moving in a direction of privatization of services to be very concerned about the information and services they receive, and by whom that information and those services are being provided. Currently, the FBI is investigating more than $10 billion in private contracts with KBR in Iraq; as well as the Abu Ghraib prison scandal (Dickinson, 2005, p. 9). Privatization of military services occurs not just within the US Government, but in nation-states where the response to that nation’s military security has not been fully achieved on that state’s behalf by the United Nations Peacekeeping efforts or forces (Brayton, 2002, p. 1). Terrorism has both served to tax and weaken the financial and political processes of the states targeted by terrorists. In response, the United Nations has found it difficult to both respond to the needs of nation-states seeking aid and peacekeeping force protection from the United Nations, resulting in nation-states outsourcing their needs to private entities (Brayton, 2002, p. 1). In a 2002 Journal of International Affairs, an article by written by Steven Brayton discusses the outsourcing of military services by nation-states in need, and for whom the United States has not been able to adequately provide services to (p. 1); as does Dickinson speak to the issue of “failed” nation-states hiring mercenaries help them achieve military protection and thwart insurgency (Dickinson, 2005, p. 2). “If other nations, individually or collectively, are not willing to contribute to multilateral peacekeeping or peacemaking forces, why should not a state have the right to hire a force to keep order?” Brayton questions (p. 1). “In March , 1998 employees of Sandline International (filling a vacancy created by the withdrawal of Executive Outcomes), help restore the elected president of Sierra Leone to power a year after he was ousted by a military coup. Officers of the Sierra Leone army had seized control in May, 1997 and begun a series of murders targeting possible political opposition. Despite the coup and the public killings, Washington and other governments were unable to mount effective action. In October of that year, after all diplomatic attempts to oust the generals failed, the UN Security Council imposed an ineffective arms embargo . Although publicly depicted as a private as a private security firm guarding mining and construction interests , Sandline told the press that it had been asked by the British High Commissioner in Sierra Leone to equip and assist a local force capable of removing the generals. The US State Department was apparently kept fully informed, and the US Government lent at least tactical support (p. 1).” Thus, Sandline demonstrated the potential for success to be achieved by and through privately outsourced military assistance. Another company, and amongst the first to perform these kinds of services, Executive Outcomes, has experienced its fair share of in kind successes in Angola and, before Sandline, in Sierra Leone in a post genocide Rwanda in establishing relief and aid outcomes (p. 1). MPRI is a company with an emphasis on mercenary services, and has likewise achieved successes in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and, before that, in Croatia (p. 1). But there remain, too, and looming large, equally unsuccessful stories; stories that, if proven true, of the most heinous acts of cruelty and violence perpetrated against the most vulnerable and helpless of people (Dickinson, 2005, p. 12). “For example, employees of Dyncorp, Inc., a private corporation under contract with the U.S. Government to train police in Bosnia in the 1990s, joined a sex-trafficking ring and committed numerous acts of rape, sexual abuse and exploitation. Even staff members of not-for-profit organizations have at times been implicated in abuses. For example, in a recent study of refugees and internally displaced persons in West African Camps in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, reported wide-spread rape and sexual exploitation of women and children by many actors, including aid workers (Dickinson, 2005, p. 12).” Additionally, not all of the “free-world” nations have jumped on the outsourcing bandwagon. New Zealand has enacted their Mercenary Prohibition Act of 2003, designed to “. . . implement in New Zealand law New Zealand’s obligations under the Mercenaries Convention and the reason that New Zealand would want to do this is that: Becoming a party to it demonstrates to the international community that New Zealand is among those countries that consider the recruitment and use of mercenaries to be unacceptable as a method of conflict resolution (Smith, 2004, p. 1).” Ron Smith is highly critical of New Zealand’s position, and finds it lacking and insufficient in that it fails to properly take into account the positive points, so clearly delineated by Dickinson, who gives full consideration to the positive and the negatives, and comes out optimistic about the future of outsourcing military and mercenaries, and about which Dickinson writes: “By looking to domestic administrative law, we can first expand the framework of not only to include the norms of human dignity that are the primary focus of international law but also the norms concerning ration, nonarbitrary, non-corrupt governance (Dickinson, 2005, p. 15).” In other words, what can be achieved through the framework of legal work is an outcome that works in favor of humanity in an emerging world community wherein the change in approach to warfare, threats to a sovereign nation by other than nation-states (terrorism), and a response to those threats now call for responses and solutions that the world community is now forced to consider. That in considering these responses and solutions, it need not be without the consensus of the international law making arena that would put it into an international legal context to ensure accountability and responsibility in managing. Like this writer, Dickinson sees monitoring of entities, implementation, and actions as one of the necessary and essential components to success of the question of mercenaries and privatization of military services (p. 19). “Turning to external oversight, independent monitors can serve as an important check that may serve to enhance internal modes of accountability. For example, many state governments rely on a private accrediting organization, the Joint Commission on Health Care and Accreditation of Health Care Organizations (JCAHO), to set licensure standards and certify that the healthcare organizations are in compliance with those standards (p. 19).” Dickinson’s point being that military and service unique and specific entities can be created, which provide independent and unbiased oversight of the entities offering the outsourcing services to ensure not only compliance with the law, but to provide, too, physical and visual checks of the facets of operation that could otherwise lend themselves to undetected and unsuspected fraud and abuse. This can be accomplished in much the same way as when the Human Rights Commission acted in 1987 to appoint a special rapporteur on mercenaries, acting in response to, and for the first time on, human rights violations in Sri Lanka, as reported in the UN Chronicle, in May, 1987, which stated: “ The appointment of a new Special Rapporteur to examine the question of the use of mercenaries as a means to violate human rights and to impede the exercise of the right of peoples to self-determination, and review of the first global report on the subject of religious freedom were among the actions taken at the forty-third session of the Commission on Human Rights (Geneva, 2 February-13 March). The Commission, also for the first time, acted with regard to the question of human rights in Sri Lanka, calling for full respect for universally accepted rules of humanitarian law, and renunciation of force and violence. A text on the question of human rights in Cyprus was adopted for the first time in the past nine years. ("Human Rights Commission Appoints") What remains certain, as previously pointed out by Dickinson, is that privatization of mercenary and military services for hire is not going to go away; and in accepting that, it becomes the responsibility of the world community to establish and enforce standards of human rights and accountability. As has been shown in this discussion, there are success stories, as well as failures, and with oversight the failures can perhaps be converted to success stories. There is no attempt here to minimize the nature of the discussion; it is about war and conflict, especially given the ongoing dynamics of Afghanistan and Iraq where young American soldiers are in harm’s way and suffering daily losses; but also about pursing resolution to war and conflict in a way that minimizes the loss of human life and suffering. The move towards a global community with shared responsibilities of solving global problems is quickly emerging and taking on an ever increasing importance in the world. The challenges presented in that move must be met with equally strong and capable responses, and this can be accomplished through legitimate privatization and the use of mercenaries over state sponsored armies, thus removing the potential for political and economic self-interest and exploitation of vulnerable civilian populations. Works Cited Brayton, Steven. "Outsourcing War: Mercenaries and the Privatization of Peacekeeping." Journal of International Affairs 55.2 (2002): 303+. Questia. 30 Oct. 2006 . Carmola, Kateri. "Outsourcing Combat: Casualty Phobia and the Externalization of War Crimes." International Journal of Politics and Ethics 3.1 (2003): 113+. Questia. 30 Oct. 2006 . Constantine, Gus. "Mercenaries Roles Different since Cold War: Effectiveness in Zaire Is Questionable." The Washington Times 6 Mar. 1997: 12. Questia. 30 Oct. 2006 . Dickinson, Laura A. "Government for Hire: Privatizing Foreign Affairs and the Problem of Accountability under International Law." William and Mary Law Review 47.1 (2005): 135+. Questia. 30 Oct. 2006 . "Human Rights Commission Appoints Special Rapporteur on Mercenaries, Considers Religious Freedom Acts for First Time on Human Rights Situation in Sri Lanka." UN Chronicle May 1987: 30+. Questia. 30 Oct. 2006 . Meron, Theodor, et al. "The Geneva Conventions as Customary Law." American Journal of International Law 81.2 (1987): 348-370. Questia. 30 Oct. 2006 . Smith, Ron. "Mercenaries and the Law: Ron Smith Criticises Plans to Criminalise Mercenary Activity and to Enable New Zealand to Ratify the Anti-Mercenary Convention." New Zealand International Review 29.4 (2004): 11+. Questia. 30 Oct. 2006 . Wester, Franklin Eric. "Preemption and Just War: Considering the Case of Iraq." Parameters 34.4 (2004): 20+. Questia. 30 Oct. 2006 . Read More