According to a report emanating from the USA Government Accountability
Office, contracts for over $ 766 million have been awarded to private
security companies in Iraq. Criticisms have been raised pointing out that,
on the basis of such contracts, unethical mercenaries are being recruited
complicating the reconstruction undertaken by the Coalition and receiving
sometimes salaries up to several thousand dollars daily. In addition, these
companies are accused of fraud and of overt confrontations with the US Army
under which they should operate.

With the globalisation of the economy, the use of force has become another
business to be privatized. The privatized military and security industry
which was estimated, in 1990, at $ 33 billion, reached in 2006 some $ 100
billion and will reach probably over $ 200 billion in 2010. During the first
Gulf War, in the 1990’s, one out of every 100 soldiers was a private
contractor. A few years later, during the former Yugoslavia’s wars the rate
was one of every 50 and presently it is one out of every ten. The armed
conflicts in former Yugoslavia, Angola, Colombia and Sierra Leone, among
others, have favoured the expansion of such private companies. But it has
been the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the instability that followed in
the post war period in those two countries which has been the driving force
in the extension and multiplication of the private military and security
industry. It is also in those two countries where the limits of the grey
zone, where these companies
operate, which very easily becomes blurred: security activities and human
rights violations are often inextricably
linked.

The thousands of armed contractors operating in Iraq represent one of the
major problems in the reconstruction of the country for they carry out their
activities without any control or accountability. Their behaviour is often
similar to those of the employees of CACI and Titan working in the prison of
Abu Ghraib. These two USA private security companies have been allegedly
implicated in the 2004 human rights violations. The report of USA General
Antonio Taguba indicates that two CACI employees were directly or indirectly
implicated in the use of dogs on prisoners, forced sexual abuses and other
types of violations perpetrated on prisoners. Another report suggests that
one of the 27 employees of CACI working for the USA Army in Iraq knew
pertinently that the instructions he was giving to the soldiers
interrogating the prisoners was a form of torture. CACI sources argue that
their personnel were at all times performing under military instructions.
According to Titan their
employees are translators and interpreters working for the USA Army and they
were not implicated in the tortures committed on prisoners. The inquiries
carried out to establish the implication of both of these two companies in
the crimes committed in Abu Ghraib has not prevented the USA Government from
renewing their contracts: one of some $ 15 million to CACI under which it
will provide interrogating services with a view to obtaining information in
Iraq and the other of $ 400 million to Titan to recruit more
translators.

At the time of the incidents in Abu Ghraib, the United States Government as
Occupying Power had jurisdiction in Iraq. The fact that the human rights
violations were allegedly perpetrated by employees of private security
companies, such as CACI and Titan, does not exempt the USA Government of its
obligations according to international human rights and international
humanitarian law. However, contrary to the comments made by the US
authorities to United Nations affirming that “contract personnel of the US
are under the direction of the Coalition and are subject to criminal
jurisdiction in US Federal Courts”, not one single civil employee allegedly
implicated in the abuses perpetrated in Abu Ghraib has been investigated
impartially by a US Federal Court or has been legally sanctioned.

In the presentation of the 2006 Amnesty International report in Washington,
the USA Director emphasized that United States were creating the equivalent
of Guantanamo “- a virtual rule free zone in which perpetrators are not
likely to be held accountable for breaking the law”. He said that “business
outsourcing may increase efficiency, but war outsourcing may facilitate
impunity”. He added that “illegal behavior of contractors and of those who
designed and carried out U.S. torture policies and the reluctance of the
government to bring perpetrators to justice are tarnishing the reputation of
the United States, hurting the image of American troops and contributing to
anti-American sentiment”. According to Amnesty International, out of 20
known cases of civilians suspected of criminal acts, there has only been the
indictment of one contractor on assault charges in connection with the death
of a detainee in Afghanistan: there has not been a single prosecution of a
private military
contractor in
Iraq.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, in view of the growth of these
private military and security companies, has decided to examine the
activities of these non state actors and how to relate with them in a more
systematic approach, focusing on the companies operating in situations of
armed conflict or those which provide training and advice to armed forces.
In addition, the Committee maintains a dialogue with the authority which
contracts the company and with the state of origin.

Alarm has also been voiced by the Council of Europe. In view of the growing
concern in Member States in the increase and use of private security
services which in a number of states exceeds the number of police forces, in
2005 the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a
recommendation entitled “Democratic oversight of the security sector in
member states”. This recommendation underlines that “from being rather
limited in scope and action, private security services are increasingly
moving into areas which traditionally have been reserved for the public
police”. It also draws attention that “ensuring security in society through
the rule of law is a fundamental mission of public authorities”. And while
recognizing that security services may make a useful contribution “the lack
of public control over these services, the scope of their activities and the
professional conduct of their staff might well endanger the protection of
human rights and fundamental
freedoms”. The recommendation also underlines that “national regulations
developed by member states on this issue vary greatly and in some member
states such regulation is
non-existent”.

The mass media is increasingly interested in the activities of these private
security companies particularly those operating in Iraq. The Suisse Romande
TV disseminated, in March 2004, a program in which private contractors are
seen actively participating in direct combat. CNN, on 13 June 2006, also
devoted a program on the activities of those companies. It reproduced a
video in which someone was filming from the interior of an armed vehicle
going through the streets of Baghdad. From the vehicle a rifle is shooting
at another vehicle, a Mercedes, behind it. The impacts of the bullets hit
the Mercedes which bumps into a taxi parked on one side of the street.
People come out from the taxi but nobody from the Mercedes indicating that
the persons in that car have been injured or killed. According to CNN the
persons traveling in the armed vehicle worked for a private security company
named Aegis. It is well known to everybody that the personnel in the
vehicles of those companies,
when they travel through the streets of Baghdad or any other Iraqi city,
being afraid of being attacked, shoot indiscriminately right and left to
avoid any car approaching
them.

It seems that Aegis carried out an investigation about the incident but its
conclusions are confidential. A USA Army inquiry says that probably it would
not be indication of a crime having been committed. CNN tried a number of
times to interview without success the person who created Aegis, Tim Spicer,
who told the channel that he “had not the intention of responding but that
wished to inform that the contract to Aegis had been extended for a
consecutive third year”. The contract to which he referred totals some $293
million and is considered one of the most important awarded by the Pentagon
to a private security company. Tim Spicer, former Colonel of the British
Scots Guards, is the same person that survived allegations involving him in
several international scandals. In 1997, he was contracted by the Government
of Papua New Guinea in order to recapture the Island of Bougainville in the
hands of separatists. And in 1998, in Sierra Leone in a scandal of illicit
arms being
exported to both parties in the conflict breaking the UN embargo, a scandal
which endangered the survival of the then British Foreign Office
Secretary.

Aegis is one of the many private security companies which present themselves
as peace and security builders and which forms part of the International
Peace Operations Association (IOPA), a very active lobby in Washington which
strives to obtain respectability and legitimacy at the international level.

The use of mercenaries has been a historical constant till almost the end of
the XX Century, when their activities were criminalized by the international
community. Parallel to that phenomenon, governments authorized, since the
XIII Century, two other forms of non state violence: the corsairs and the
merchant companies such as the East India Company or the Hudson Bay Company.
What is the difference between the private security companies and the
mercenaries? In the same way as the corsairs differentiated themselves from
the pirates because the former were authorized by the governments and the
latter not, for they only pursued their own interests, the private security
companies, by the fact of being registered and paying an annual tax to the
government, cease to be considered mercenaries. When they contract these
private military and security companies, the USA and British governments,
among others, avoid parliamentary controls and at the same time can be
present in armed
conflicts where they have interests or wish to intervene deploying private
companies as auxiliaries. These companies thus constitute an element of
their foreign
policy.

Some of the activities of the private military and security companies, with
President’s Bush doctrine of preventive war, constitute another weakening
factor of the collective security system established in 1945 with the
adoption of the UN Charter. This Organization, in the framework of its Human
Rights Commission which in 2006, after the adoption by the General Assembly,
has become the Human Rights Council, an organ with more prerogatives, has
drawn the attention of Member States to the activities of these private
military and security companies operating at the international level through
the reports of the Special Rapporteur or the now Working Group on
Mercenaries. Reports that unfortunately up to present have had little impact
in Western countries, from where these companies mainly operate. It is to be
hoped that Member States will soon consider seriously to what extent the use
of force can be privatized.

Jose L. Gomez del Prado