R.J. Hillhouse points us to an important but neglected feature of the Blackwater scandal:
The Blackwater shooting incident has provided the Pentagon an opening
in the turf wars because the CIA's paramilitary arm, the Special
Activities Division is heavily outsourced,
particularly in Iraq. If all security contractors fell under the DoD,
the Pentagon could not only monitor the Agency, but could control their
operations by denying them ground and particularly air assets. In one
simple move, putting all security contracting under the control of the
Department of Defense would effectively hand over control of most CIA
paramilitary activities to the DoD, ending CIA unilateral offensive paramilitary capabilities in Iraq. (The Spy Who Billed Me)
There is no doubt, however, that the Department of Defense has responded to the Blackwater issue with remarkable alacrity. As Hillhouse points out, if the Pentagon takes control, the obvious beneficiary is its key contractor, Tim Spicer's Aegis.
Picture the scene: The head of a private military company is appearing before the legislature. For years, his firm has prospered from the occupation of a resource-rich Asian country, protected by its shareholders' powerful political connections. Only now are years of long-ignored abuses coming to light.
The setting is not Washington 2007, but London 1787. The occasion is the trial of Warren Hastings, the first governor general of India and an employee of the British East India Company,
the government-backed private monopoly that had conquered Bengal in 1757.
The mother of a north Belfast teenager shot dead by Scots Guards 16 years ago has hit out after one of Iraq's biggest defence contractors claimed the troops were "wrongly convicted" of murder.
Aegis Specialist Risk Management - run by the soldiers' former CO, Tim Spicer - posted the claim on its website earlier this month.
The former colonel was the commander of the Scots Guards in 1992 when two of his soldiers shot 18-year-old Peter McBride. (Belfast Telegraph)
Spicer's comment are no longer on the Aegis website, but they are still accessible via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. As well as his comments on the Peter McBride case, the July version of the Tim Spicer webpage includes Spicer's view of his involvement with Sandline, the Arms to Africa Affair, and events in Papua New Guinea and Equatorial Guinea.
It seems that the Iraqi Government is not giving up in its efforts to get rid of Blackwater. It will be interesting to see how this plays on Capitol Hill, given the way Henry Waxman's committee has targeted this issue:
Iraqi authorities want the U.S. government to sever all contracts in
Iraq with Blackwater USA within six months. They also want the firm to
pay $8 million in compensation to families of each of the 17 people
killed when its guards sprayed a traffic circle with heavy machine gun
fire last month.
The demands - part of an Iraqi government report examined by The
Associated Press - also called on U.S. authorities to hand over the
Blackwater security agents involved in the Sept. 16 shootings to face
possible trial in Iraqi courts.
The tone of the Iraqi report appears to signal further strains
between the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the White
House over the deaths in Nisoor Square - which have prompted a series
of U.S. and Iraqi probes and raised questions over the use of private
security contractors to guard U.S. diplomats and other officials. (AP via Huffington Post)
The Monitor of Kampala has a piece today on the border tensions between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo that points up once again the links between Heritage Oil and private armies:
Kinshasa remains suspicious of Kampala, while according to a UN
official who spoke to Sunday Monitor on condition of anonymity, the DR
Congo is also wary of Heritage Oil Corp, one of the companies
prospecting for oil in Albertine Basin.
Sources familiar with this matter say Kinshasa is
unhappy about the relationship Heritage might be enjoying with
Executive Outcomes (EO) - a mercenary outfit of ex-South Africa army
commandos. They also see EO's probable links with President Museveni's
brother, Gen. Salim Saleh, through his Saracen Guards company, as being
potentially problematic. (AllAfrica.com)
Ironically, the comparison with the East India Company was made by Tim Spicer, the head of Aegis, which holds the largest private military contract in Iraq, in a speech to the Royal United Services Institute. (audio link)
Just as the East India Company had its roots in the decline of the Mughal Empire, so the modern private military industry has it roots in the existence of weak resource-rich African states in the 1990s.
The US Congress this week held hearings on Blackwater, the private military company whose involvement in a massacre in Baghdad has roused the anger of the Iraqi Government, and prompted renewed scrutiny of US use of mercenaries in Iraq.
It seems there is a genuine power-struggle developing over security contractors in Iraq in the wake of the Blackwater shootings:
A draft law that would place American private security companies under
government supervision and make their personnel accountable for their
actions has been submitted to a state legal committee for review, an
Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman said Tuesday. (New York Times)
This proposal was the main subject of a very interesting briefing yesterday by Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell:
Q What's the Pentagon's position on the draft Iraqi law that would strip security contractors of their immunity?
MR. MORRELL: You
know, I don't know. I read that today, but I'm not so sure the Pentagon
has a position on it. You know, obviously this is a sovereign
government, and they have -- if this is one of the laws that they wish
to pass, it would be sort of ironic in the sense that it would
certainly show their ability to work together and pass laws. But I'm
not so sure it would be something that we necessarily want to weigh-in
on. (Defenselink News)
The Pentagon may be more concerned than this jibe would suggest, given the actions Mr Morell went on to outline:
I
think I mentioned to you last week, that the secretary had some
questions about -- in the wake of the Blackwater incident with regards
to the Department of State, he had some questions that he wanted
answered about our exposure, our reliance on contractors in Iraq. And
those questions have -- they've provided some answers to those
questions which have led to still more questions.
Following the decision of the Iraqi government to expel private security company Blackwater from the country Belfast mother Jean Mc Bride has appealed to the Iraqis to ‘also show the door’ to British company Aegis Defence Services. The CEO of Aegis is former Scots Guards officer and mercenary Tim Spicer. Soldiers under Spicer’s command murdered 18 year old Peter Mc Bride in Belfast in 1992 yet Spicer refused to accept that his soldiers did wrong in shooting an unarmed teenager in the back in broad daylight.
The Iraqi government has ordered the American private security
contractor Blackwater, which provides protection for US officials in
the country, to shut down its operations after its guards were accused
of killing 10 civilians and injuring 13 others in Baghdad.
Employees of the company are alleged to have opened fire indiscriminately
after a bomb exploded on Sunday in the Mansour district of the city, packed
with people shopping for Ramadan. (Independent)
War on Want is calling for the company to face corporate homicide charges:
Ruth Tanner, Senior Campaigns Officer at War on Want, said: “These
horrific killings are a reminder of the havoc which private military
and security companies have wreaked in Iraq over the past four years.
There have been hundreds of human rights violations by mercenary
troops, yet not a single prosecution has been brought against them.
These new killings provide the strongest argument for legislation to
ban the use of mercenary soldiers in conflicts such as Iraq.” (War on Want)
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