Fwd: Torture for Hire: Outsourcing War and Terror

[Guest guest]

Torture for Hire: Outsourcing War and Terror

 

by Kari Lydersen

 

Murders and kidnappings of civilian U.S. contractors

by Iraqi insurgents over the past few months raised

public awareness about the high number of civilians

employed by U.S. contractors in Iraq, earning far more

than they could at home and often two or three times

what military employees doing similar jobs make. Less

well-known is the role of hundreds of private

contractors working for U.S. and foreign governments

and private businesses in Colombia, Mexico, Bolivia

and other parts of Latin America.

Virginia-based Dyncorp is just one of a number of

private companies which cash in on wars and other

conflict situations around the world by providing

various contract services for the U.S. government,

including security, training, translation,

intelligence-gathering and transportation.

 

In Iraq, Dyncorp is being paid by the U.S. military to

hire police officers, prison guards and law

enforcement-wannabes from around the U.S. to work as

security officers and train Iraqis in security and

policing techniques.

 

In Colombia, Dyncorp flies small planes across

mountain hamlets and farms spraying toxic chemicals to

fumigate coca plants. The fumigation process also

kills other crops like rice and causes massive health

problems for local people.

The use of private contractors is likely to increase

as low-intensity and drawn-out conflicts in countries

like Colombia drag on. The privatization of oil, gas

and other natural resources in politically unstable

countries like Ecuador and Bolivia also creates an

incentive for companies to hire more private security

and surveillance contractors. In bits and pieces,

information is emerging about the notorious histories

of some contract employees. In 2000, for example,

Dyncorp employees in Bosnia/Kosovo were found to be

running a prostitution ring of women and children.

" These people aren't citizens of the country they're

in, and they're not U.S. military, so they can't

really be tried for crimes, " said Pratap Chatterjee,

program director of Corpwatch, a nongovernmental

watchdog organization. " They do whatever they feel

like. If they don't like someone, they will just shoot

him. "

 

 

Stretching and Dodging the Geneva Convention

 

In theory, military behavior is limited by the Geneva

Conventions, which prohibit torture and other

mistreatment of prisoners. As revealed by the Abu

Ghraib prison abuse scandal in Iraq, however, many

U.S. military commanders condone or use extreme

tactics in prisoner interrogation. At the School of

the Americas, U.S. generals trained Latin American

soldiers and officers who returned home to kill and

torture their fellow-citizens. The brutal intimidation

and counter-intelligence tactics taught at the School

of the Americas (now the Western Hemisphere Institute

for Security Cooperation or WHISC) have generated

protests for decades. [For details, see

www.soawatch.org.]

 

Private contractors, who are increasingly being

employed by the U.S. government for war-time functions

including security, translation,

intelligence-gathering and even policing, are not

really subject to the Geneva Convention. Not being

official members of the military, they operate in a

murky gray area where it is not clear what, if any,

authority they are accountable to.

" They're in legal limbo, " said Sanho Tree, a fellow at

the World Policy Institute, citing an example of

private contractors using hollow-point bullets which

shatter inside someone's body upon impact and cause

near-certain death. The military is banned from using

these bullets.

 

" [These contractors] are accountable only to the

market, " said George Washington University political

science professor Deborah Avant. " Yet the 'consumers'

who hire them don't have access to information about

their backgrounds and performance. "

 

 

Hiring Human Rights Abusers

 

Private security contractors sometimes employ people

with records that could be called dubious at best. For

example, Lane McCotter was hired to supervise Abu

Ghraib (he left before the recent scandal) despite the

fact that the U.S. Justice Department had launched a

civil rights investigation against him for abuses at a

private New Mexico prison he headed. Similarly, South

Africans wanted for murder and torture of

anti-apartheid activists and Serbian war criminals

have been hired by international security firms to

work in Iraq. The English security firm Erinys

International hired several South African militants

for its Iraq operations, despite their admissions of

massive atrocities during their country's Truth and

Reconciliation hearings. Their identities became

public only after one of the men, Frans Strydom, was

killed in the January 28 Shaheen Hotel blast.

 

 

Contractors and Privatization

 

Currently Colombia is the Latin American country with

the most private foreign contractors acting as part of

a domestic conflict. The Bush administration is now

trying to increase the number of U.S.government

contractors allowed in Colombia from 400 to 600,

though the House blocked the move and it looks like

the Senate may follow. [For latest developments, check

http://www.americas.org Take Action alerts on 2005

Defense Authorization Bill.] Avant notes that these

caps apply only to U.S. citizens working as

contractors in the country. U.S. or other foreign

companies are still free to hire as many employees

from other countries—Salvadorans, Germans, Chileans—as

they like, including ones with experience in

counter-intelligence and strong-arm tactics.

 

Chatterjee noted that in Iraq, as in some Latin

American countries, Chileans who worked as part of

former dictator Augusto Pinochet's brutal regime are

particularly popular employees of private security

firms.

 

Security firms often use various legal maneuvers and

loopholes to become actively involved in military

operations themselves. For example when the Colombian

military dropped bombs on the tiny hamlet of Santo

Domingo on December 13, 1998, killing 18, they were

acting with intelligence and planning from the private

security firm AirScan Inc., a U.S. company owned by

former Air Force commandos which was contracted by Los

Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum to guard their oil

pipeline about 30 miles from Santo Domingo.

 

Guarding oil pipelines or other natural resource

extraction points is a common function of private

foreign contractors throughout Latin America (and

Africa). And while some of these countries, such as

Ecuador and Bolivia, may not be in actual war-time

situations, high levels of popular unrest and local

tension mean that violence is common. As natural

resources like gas and water are increasingly

privatized in Latin America, the presence of private

security firms is increasing.

 

Private firms operate in countries under the guise of

pure market motivation, but in reality they are

playing an important role in geopolitical dynamics.

For example, the widespread use of Dyncorp

crop-dusters to fumigate coca plants in Colombia is

portrayed as part of the war on drugs, not the civil

war. But the fumigations play a critical role in the

civil war in that the flights provide a source of

intelligence and intimidation as well as creating

economic turmoil and desperation in dissident

communities. Like the security contractors, the

companies and individuals carrying out the fumigations

are virtually above the law.

" They are fulfilling a private function, but if you

try to find information on them they say it's

classified trade secrets, " said Tree. " They're using

public air fields and using helicopters supplied by

the U.S. government, but when it comes to

accountability there is none. "

 

http://www.americas.org/item_15395