Adonis Diaries

“Blackwater and Companies are back…” (September 8, 2009)

            Blackwater is back to Iraq in 2009 under a different company name.  Many US security companies have been in Afghanistan since 2002 guarding the most valued personality in the world Hamid Kardai.  Hamid is President “elect” of Afghanistan for many terms and control one square miles in the Capital Kabul. “I have no fucking idea who we are fighting.” A member of Task Force 11 in Afghanistan declared.  Last night a German politician admitted that there are no way to discriminate among civilian and Taliban fighters. “I want to kill every fucking Afghan I can” said certain contractor named Jack. A bar owner in Kabul retorted: “The only thing that Jack should be allowed to kill is his bar tab” 

            In a matter of months after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, private security firms increased haphazardly; many quickly secured multi-billion contracts such as HART, Triple Canopy, DynCorp, Blackwater, ArmorGroup, Control Risks Group (CRG), Erinys, and Aegis. “I can launch a thousand armed and trained men” had said Eric Prince, owner of Blackwater. The pentagon was officially contracting with 60 such “private security” firms but the unofficial subcontractors doubled the number of firms; for example, Zapata Engineering which handled gathering, transportation, and demolition of ordnance had its own security services; not to mention Halliburton and the like.

            At the end of the “Cold War”, the US military force was downsized by 30%; (In my opinion it was not just an economic necessity as it was a political shift of image control; Clinton didn’t want to be cornered by the military for alternatives that can be resolved diplomatically).  Thus, the military enhanced its policy of privately outsourcing logistical supports.  In December 1985, the first Army’s Logistic Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP) was introduced; it permitted for civil corporations to supply sanitation, shelter, maintenance, transport, food services, and construction.      

            The author of “Licensed to kill” Robert Pelton met a covert team of “contractors” at the Afghanistan/Pakistan border in the fall of 2003.  Robert embarked on an odyssey in locations where the CIA and the US State Department needed the services of private war contractors (read mercenaries and security service operators). “At the end, we all knew there might be a conflict of interest” said a private contractor.  (Foreign leaders are dependent on the US government when its interests collude to withdraw hired private security if displeased.  The US State Department could withhold further contracts if private providers of security do not obey the US Administration orders.)

A young security guard wrote on the internet (an e-mail from a Mamba Team House):

“T’was the night before Christmas in Baghdad, Iraq

All the Mamba Crewmen were tucked in their rack

The defenses were set in impeccable form

And I had just settled down to surf Internet porn

When out in the street I heard such a clatter

It wasn’t a mortar so what was the matter?

In full kit I ran out and what should appear

It was Rudolf, he was wounded, and he was one fucked up reindeer.

He said Santa’s sleigh had been hit by a Strela (a missile)

The old man burned in and was captured by al Qaeda…”

            In 1992, Dick Cheney, then secretary of defense to George Bush Senior, contracted Brown and Root (later acquired by the Texas-based Halliburton) to offer a dozen fictional scenarios that could require the deployment of 20,000 troops in 5 base camps for 6 months.  During the Clinton Administration, Cheney headed Halliburton from 1995 to 2000.  In 2001, Cheney secured to Halliburton an extended term of 10 years.

            Even with the over billing schemes of the private contractors, the military saved money but the main objective was political cost savings when things went wrong: the companies could be blamed, contracts annulled, and their employees lost their jobs without due prosecution.

            Bush Junior invaded Iraq with about 250,000 troops because, except Britain, no country would contribute forces. The total manpower on the field was much higher because of the private suppliers.  The US refused to increase its forces to at least 400,000 in order to maintain law and order; thus, the administration relied on private security services.  Without the necessary forces on the field Iraq drifted into total chaos.  “Yes, I’d give the Devil the benefit of laws, for my own safety’s sake” Thomas Moore had once said.

            The chaos sparked impunity for the violent criminal groups that didn’t exist during the reign of Saddam.  Colonel T.E. Lawrence warned 80 years ago about the region “A tissue of small jealous principalities incapable of cohesion, and yet always ready to combine against an outside force.”

            (Among the multitudes of private providers were dozens of Israeli companies, coordinating their activities with their Mossad intelligence service, looting Iraq, its historical monuments and artifacts, and assassinating the scientists and Iraqi intellectuals).

            While 50% of the Iraqi was unemployed the private suppliers hired foreigners from the Philippine, Turkey, Pakistan…because they could not trust the Iraqis.  The Iraqi population stayed quiet for 6 months hoping for the reconstruction of the country to take off but it never materialized.

            The US allocated $20 billions for the reconstruction, mainly from the Iraqi oil production (Bush Junior signed Executive Order to confiscate Iraqi property in the US and funds in American banks and the UN allowed 95% of the income from petroleum export sales to be diverted to the Development Fund for Iraq “to promote the welfare of the Iraqi people through the effective administration of the territory”).  In 2005, Congress increased the Fund to 55 billions to the year 2007, an influx that benefited the private US sector but not the Iraqi.

            “We should expect bad irrational behavior, disloyalty, rampant individual greed, back-stabbing, and bum-fucking activities.  It may be that getting us out comes down to a large splodge of wonga” said Simon Mann from prison.

            As of 2008, more than 600 private security contractors have so far died and were not accounted for in the total number of casualties. Blackwater is back to Iraq in 2009 under a different company name. “We are not merely imperfect creatures that need improvement: we are rebels that need lay down their arms” By C.S. Lewis in (The problem of pain)

Note 1: A major part of this article was extracted from the book of Robert Pelton “License to kill”.

Note 2: Mullah Omar, the leader of Taliban, was not targeted and he roamed freely in the Pashtun provinces in Pakistan where they enjoyed self-autonomy from the central Pakistani government.  Ussama Ben Laden was no longer seriously apprehended and lived also in the Pashtun provinces.

Note 3: It is my contention that the Saudi theocratic oligarchy valued Ben Laden as their best proselytizer of the Wahhabi sect in Pakistan and had made a very generous deal with the US Administration to sparing this Saudi asset!  If you recall that it is these extremist terrorist Wahhabi groups that finally managed to assassinate Benazir Bhutto PM because she wanted to clip the wings of the Wahhabi entrenchment in Pakistan and Afghanistan.  No wonder that the Saudi monarchy has started to negotiate with Taliban for power sharing in Afghanistan.  It is the same Wahhabi of Al Qaeda that tried to destabilize Lebanon by fighting the army in the Palestinian camp of Nahr Al Bared in the city of Tripoli.