Privatizing War and Overlooking Abuses: The New Blackwater and their Recent Hundred Million Dollar Contracts with the United States Government

July 6th, 2010

The Washington Post’s Jeff Stein has reported that the Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide, has recently won a $100 million contract from the Central Intelligence Agency to provide guard services for facilities in Afghanistan. This news follows closely behind a new grant from the State Department for $120 million in contract work for Afghanistan.

Although Blackwater itself was expelled from Iraq, the new Xe has many other units operating under it, including U.S. Training Center, which won out on the contract.

According to the Commission on Wartime Contracting, the Defense Department of Defense had roughly 14,000 private security personnel under contract in Iraq during the first quarter of 2010. “That number is nearly equal to the personnel strength of a World War II American infantry division,” the commission said.

Blackwater itself has been fighting off prosecutions and civil suits since a September 2007 incident in Baghdad, when guards opened fire in a city square, killing 17 unarmed civilians and wounding 24. Although the federal case against them was recently dismissed on procedural grounds, the firm continues to be associated with questionable and dangerous practices, including a recent report that the Central Intelligence Agency conceived a plan with Blackwater to assassinate a man who allegedly helped fund the Sept. 11 hijackers in Hamburg. Such an action would violate not only German sovereignty but also laws against planning murder.

The above incidents are just some of the ongoing reports that have surfaced about private military and security companies (PMSCs). It is precisely this misconduct that has lead to the association of PMSC actors with the term mercenaries. Beyond the dangers of the private military actors themselves, the corporatization of these forces has the additional problem of reducing the control that States have over their own warfare and the overall level of state-based control over the use of force. Although international humanitarian law as embodied in the Geneva Conventions Protocol I, Article 47, denies private actors the privileges of lawful combatants , the first legal precedent to condemn mercenary activity stemmed from a regional African convention in 1977. Following this, the 1989 U.N. Convention Against Recruitment, Use, Financing, and Training of Mercenaries (“Convention Against Mercenaries”) went into effect in 2001.

On December 19, 2006, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 61/151 which calls on States to exercise vigilance against any kind of recruitment, training, hiring or financing of mercenaries by private companies offering international military consultancy and security services, as well as to impose a specific ban on such companies intervening in armed conflicts or actions to destabilize constitutional regimes.

However, there are tremendous problems with the patchwork of precedents prohibiting mercenary activity. For instance, although the Convention Against Mercenaries does make it a crime to be a mercenary, the enforcement of this crime depends on implementing legislation by the relevant state party. Additionally, to date, only thirty-two States are party to the Convention.

In a hopeful effort toward standardization and regulation over this industry, major players themselves are rallying around heightened standards applicable to their activites, including training on human rights. The emerging consensus focuses on the need to fill normative and accountability gaps through a coordinated industry-driven PMSC standard setting process, the Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs has partnered with the Geneva Center for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF) to support the development of a Code of Conduct (CoC) that seeks to develop operational guidelines, and to establish international PMSC industry norms and standards for the provision of private security services. Of particular importance is the binding nature of the Code on all those corporations that endorse it, as well as the agreement to undergo certification, monitoring and necessary remedial action by an International Accountability Mechanism operating as an ombudsman and/or arbiter of the Code.

Right Respect salutes the leaders in the industry pushing for the Code of Conduct. Given the continued growth of this industry, clear accountability standards need to be created. The fact that these are now being championed by industry players themselves is a sign of changing notions of corporate responsiblity. Business activity impacts multiple internationally recognized rights, including the right to life, liberty and security of the person. The tragic incident in Nisoor Square on September 16, 2007 stands as a reminder of the danger of private actors going unregulated. As UN Mission spokesperson Said Arikat stated in condemning the actions “[w]hen you kill 17 people like that, it’s a crime against humanity if it is proven that it was done in cold blood.”

For more on Xe Services, see our past posts here.