In a war filled with too-strange-for-fiction stories, this may be the strangest yet. Was Iraq’s former electricity minister, jailed on corruption charges, really “sprung from a Green Zone prison this weekend by U.S. security contractors?” If so, how did they pull it off? And what does it say about the rapidly-expanding, ridiculously-lucrative, morally-ambiguous field of private militaries?
Robert Young Pelton, author of the recently-published Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror, tells Defense Tech that his “guess (if the story is true) is that they simply presented their DoD and other credentials and said [the contractors] were there to accompany him to some mythical destination. Once out of prison it is very easy to leave the Green Zone and then take a taxi to Jordan, Syria, Kuwait or Kurdistan.“
He also figures that “there was no gunplay or violence involved… [A]nother likely scenario would be to simply bribe the jailer (by paying a family member) and then the jailer making up some cock and bull story.“
Brookings Institution Senior Fellow P.W. Singer — who wrote Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry, which has become the ur–text on this new wave of mercenaries — is less interested in the particulars of the break-out. It’s the long-term trend that bothers him: guns-for-hire running around war zones, with almost zero accountability, undermining the U.S. war effort again and again. He tells Defense Tech:
So the Great Private Military Escape joins the lengthy list vying to be made into a bad Hollywood movie (sorry, Blood Diamonds). My other favorites include the Triple Canopy lawsuit which alleges that a company supervisor told his employees that he had “never shot anyone with my handgun before” and then fired his handgun through the windshield of a parked taxi, killing the driver; the Aegis “trophy video,” in which employees posted footage on the web of shooting at Iraqi cars on the web, set to Elvis music; the Donald Vance case, in which a US contractor was held 97 days without charges in a US military prison; the various Blackwater episodes, ranging from the 4 guys sent to Fallujah without maps, intell, or proper equipment, to the plane crash in Afghanistan, in which the plane lacked basic safety equipment and didnt even follow basic flight safety procedures, flying by guesswork into a box canyon, killing 3 civilians and 3 US Army; and of course dont forget the wonderfully named Custer Battles charging for all sorts of fraud at Baghdad airport, such as a bomb-sniffing dog that in the words of a US Army colonel turned out to be “a guy with his pet.“
At what point do we accept that this whole situation has gone well beyond the original idea of privatization and start to rein it in? Then again, the Army Under Secretary testified to Congress 2 months back that the Army had never authorized Halliburton or its subcontractors to carry weapons or guard convoys, denying we even had firms handling these jobs. So, I guess its like the end of Dallas, where the whole private military industry in Iraq (estimated by Centcom to be 100,000) was “just a dream.”
Phil Carter, just back from a year-long Army deployment in Iraq, notes that the 100,000 contractors (mostly logistics guys, not trigger-pullers) “very nearly doubles the size of the U.S. force in country. However, there has never been an open, public, meaningful debate over the wisdom of using so many contractors in so many battlefield roles. Instead, it has happened over time as the slow result of small policy decisions made by myriad actors. I think this will be one of the major policy questions which emerges from the Iraq war once it is over.”
How are we sure it was an escape and not a kidnapping/murder?
A murder — not likely — the guy just had an interview with the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/20/world/middleeast/20minister.html
– When asked how he could have pulled off such an escape, Mr. Alsammarae, who moved to Chicago in 1976 but returned to Iraq just after the invasion, laughed uproariously for 20 seconds. Then, recycling a famous line from an exchange about Al Capone in
The gentleman did not escape he just wanted to relocate to Club Gitmo.
As for the “private contractors” they are the 21st Century version of Naval Privateers with out the bounty opportunity.
Mr Singer has a very bad habit of exaggerations in order to perpetuate the myth of the unregulated mercenary. The truth is that the contractors have been subject to Iraqi law since the end of the CPA and more importantly are subject to the very high scrutiny of the agency they have been hired, aka the Army, DoD, DoS, Corps of Engineers etc. More exaggerations meant to stir up class warfare would be the myth of the poor army private making only 15k for a year in country. Not even remotely true. He mentions that a contractor gets tax free pay, which is false, yet fails to mention that the military pay IS tax-free. Contractors follow the IRS rules and guidelines set for any other American working overseas. Let us not forget that the contractor “hired guns” are many year seasoned veterans whom are paid for their expertise and professionalism. Just like the free market in any field. I could go on forever about his yellow journalism, but I have contract money to go earn.
As a security company owner I take exception to the one sided and obviously bias article as written. We are highly regulated and every aspect of our movements and deployments are prior approved by the military authorities. In every organization you will find loose cannons, this one is no exception, however to paint everyone with the same brush is unfair and incorrect! Our company does not tolerate illegal or criminal activities and we will prosecute any employee accordingly.
Yes we make large amounts of money, yes we risk our lives and yes we take 100% risk every living minute we are in country, for that we are not sorry, this is a free market driven business, if and when the demand ceases most of these so called freeloaders are jobless (me included)!
Next time your reporter would like to get a true picture of the “real” situation in Iraq we will be delighted to arrange it for him, printing one sided untrue and bias articles is irresponcible and unprofessional!
There is obviously a strong bias on the writer’s part to portray contractors in a negative way and the reality is that some of what he says is true yet it represents the smallest percentage of the work contractors do in Iraq. But there is a much broader and more positive side to what contractors do and unfortunately it is never reported. The hundreds of millions and in fact billions of dollars of revenue made by U.S. companies in the rebuilding of Iraq could not be possible if not for the security provided by private contract security. These dollars provide jobs to folks back home, it contributes to the US economy, and lastly benefits the Iraqi people while allowing the coalition the ability to focus on the insurgency. Private security contractors are a valuable part of the solution in Iraq and not the problem as these writers suggest.
Obviously, neither Singer nor the authors/editors, have been to Iraq or at the least have not been in the field (Outside a relatively safe camp). Good comments have been made in feference to the “tax free” money. Military, with the exception of high ranking officers have full tax free advantage while the contractors, at a minimum, must pay taxes for anything over $80K, depndent on their actual time out of CONUS. *)K being for one year.
I personally know one of the “whistleblowers” on contractor actions and he quit, after pulling a gun on our Director, refused missions and was about to be fired, and perhaps prosecuted. They are the people who throw the fuel on the fire. These people are being paid to make up stories so that idiots like the author can spread their lies.
99.9% of the contractors are fine, upstanding former troops who enforce the rules of enagement, etc. Try getting facts, walking the walk, the you may talk the talk!!!
This is an intriguing world. In flyff world, I do not know that has been deceived many cheap penya how many time, some people are may resort to all means for the personal interest.
But he lost two numbers and all Archlord cheap because he practiced two numbers at the same time. Finally, he withdrew.