Golden days have come for private military companies that had begun to wither due to the absence of major wars on the planet. In recent years, firms engaged in hiring mercenaries had to content themselves with fees from “banana republics” for participating in their slow-burning conflicts. Iraq changed everything. News instantly spread among professional soldiers of fortune: Americans and their allies pay mercenaries generously. According to Itogi, last year the turnover of the private military services market reached a record $100 billion. American, British and South African companies have already sent multi-thousand alternative armies to Iraq. Their soldiers die there no less often than regular ones, and it is they who make up the majority of foreign hostages captured by rebels. But the professional risk is justified by salaries several times higher than those received by servicemen of national armies.
If during the first Gulf War the U.S. ground forces numbered 780,000 personnel, now they have only 480,000. If in 1991, during the American landings in Kuwait, there was one soldier from the so-called auxiliary forces for every 50 regular military, then at the start of the second Iraq campaign, one PMC (private military companies - that's what firms that provide the client with professional soldiers are called) employee was for every 10 military. According to some data, after a year of combat operations in Iraq, this ratio reached one mercenary for every five servicemen. And these “civilians” are not sutlers or medics. They are the strike force of the US-British coalition, its vanguard and main support.
“Civil” War
“There are now more generals per square meter in PMCs than in the Pentagon,” says a very knowledgeable source. And this is not a joke, but a statement from a specialist close to the command of the U.S. armed forces. The fact is that regular military personnel, including those from countries that did not support the Iraq war, are leaving service en masse and going to Iraq as “hired guns.” An Itogi correspondent met with one of these “contract workers.” The meeting was arranged outside Paris in the lobby of a cheap hotel on the side of a highway. He had just returned from Iraq, where he worked for one of the PMCs. He is about forty years old. Military rank? He prefers not to say and asks to be called Monsieur Hervé. Naturally, the name is fictitious. But everything else he talks about looks very much like the truth.
“There is a lot of work in Iraq, but there is good money there. I left the French army; the officer’s salary did not suit me,” says Monsieur Hervé. “I went to Africa, where I first trained local non-commissioned officers in one country, and then joined the protection of the republic’s president. But he was overthrown, and we scattered in different directions... Then the South Africans contacted me. Only then did I realize what a real security firm is. Former military from South Africa were organized into a powerful international company that received multi-million-dollar orders from a wide variety of organizations. The range of work? The broadest: from training local military personnel to participating in combat operations...”
When the Iraq war began, Monsieur Hervé was sent there along with other mercenaries to guard Western specialists working at the oil fields. Our interlocutor admits that this is not the most pleasant job. “Emergency situations can arise 15 times a day. Don’t think that all evil comes only from terrorists, various mujahideen and suicide bombers... No, most attacks happen completely spontaneously. For example, some guy drives up in a beat-up car. He stops opposite a white man, grabs a Kalash and starts firing in all directions. Every corner in Iraq is stuffed with weapons. But even if an Iraqi doesn’t have one, he still tries, at the first opportunity, to throw a stone at an American or European from hiding. However, they pay well there. I received $350 for each working day. If the day involved shooting — and that’s about every other day — the pay rose to $500. Obviously, I won’t earn that kind of money in any army. Now I’ve come home on leave, and I’ll also meet old combat friends. Maybe one of them will decide to go with me to Iraq. Real professionals are needed everywhere.”
The Army Needs Protection
Not only Monsieur Hervé is drawn to Iraq. The big money paid to military specialists in PMCs creates a serious problem for traditional national armies. Thus, last year, after the start of the Second Iraq War, 64 people left the 22nd SAS battalion (Special Air Service) — one of the most prestigious airborne units of the British forces. Considering that it has only 350 personnel in total, the loss is quite significant. The paratrooper defectors went into private military companies. So did 80 members of the Special Boat Service, the elite British frogman unit. Note: training one fighter of this class costs the state about two million pounds sterling. How much does the recruitment of army professionals by private structures cost the British treasury? However, in London they don’t particularly complain: the situation in Iraq is such that there are clearly not enough people willing to fight at government rates. That is why the largest employers of soldiers of fortune are precisely the military departments of Great Britain and the United States.
The exact amount that the Pentagon paid to PMCs operating in Iraq (there are about forty of them in total) is unknown. But another figure is no secret: in addition to the costs of paying mercenaries directly in the combat zone, the U.S. Defense Department paid private military companies more than $30 billion last year — 8% of its annual budget.
In the past, such expenditures justified themselves - private armies proved their effectiveness. A well-known example: at dawn on August 4, 1995, Croatian armed forces launched an offensive in Serbian Krajina. Three days later, the self-proclaimed republic ceased to exist. Operation "Storm" - under this code name the action appeared in Zagreb headquarters - succeeded for the Croats because on their side fought 2,000 military instructors from Western PMCs. And note, formally the Pentagon had nothing to do with it! Everything was organized by a company called Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI) - a 100% commercial structure.
The same scheme operates in Iraq. The aforementioned company sets the tone there too. And no wonder: MPRI's records contain data on more than 10,000 officers and non-commissioned officers, including 340 generals. The company's annual turnover is estimated at $100 million. MPRI's headquarters is located in Washington, a stone's throw from the Pentagon, which is quite symbolic given the close contacts of war businessmen with the defense department. Indeed, under American laws, the consent of the Department of Defense is required for contracts worth less than $50 million. If a larger and therefore more profitable deal is brewing, approval from the US Congress is already needed. However, this is not a problem: PMCs have enough lobbyists in the highest echelons of power. The fact is that the largest American "security enterprises" are controlled by anything but random people.
Take, for example, the company DynCorp. It employs 23,000 retired military personnel and with the start of the war in Iraq doubled its profits. Incidentally, DynCorp guys provide personal security for Afghan President Hamid Karzai. So, recently the firm was acquired by the international electronics giant Computer Sciences Corp. And the company Vinnell Corporation, long established in Egypt and Turkey (its fighters guard the Incirlik air base) and the first to send its 'civilians' to Iraq, is owned by the aerospace industry giant Northop Grumman. The firm Kellog, Brown&Root (KBR), which supplies the American army in Iraq with full meals, laundry detergent and... manpower, belongs to the Halliburton concern, whose president until August 2000 was US Vice President Dick Cheney. It is no coincidence that KBR has already received $1.2 billion from the Pentagon since the start of the war, including for guarding Iraq's oil industry facilities.
The global market for military services is experiencing a boom. According to a report presented to the US Congress back in April 2002, in 2001 more than 650,000 PMC employees were earning their living around the American armed forces. With the deepening of the Iraqi crisis, this figure has certainly grown. On the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates there is now plenty of work not only for American 'civilians'. The British and South Africans are also successfully developing the new El Dorado. The English PMC Iriny's, under a contract with the Iraqi Ministry of Oil, guards oil pipelines in the north of the country for 35 million euros. Another British company - Control Risks - provides security for Western diplomats. And specialists from the South African firm Meteoric Tactical Solutions, previously engaged in training Iraqi guards for local ministries, received a contract to provide security services from the British Ministry of International Development.
It should be noted that this business knows no national borders. Paul Bremer himself, the head of the American administration in Iraq, is guarded not by American Marines, but by hired adventurers from various countries, including several dozen Nepalese Gurkhas who left the British army. Moreover, there are examples where PMCs were entrusted with the protection of ... regular coalition troops. In general, it turns out that one army in Iraq is guarded by another, a shadow army.
Invisible Soldiers
"The creation of PMCs is an exceptionally promising undertaking. One thing is bands of killers ready to do anything for a tidy bank account, quite another is legal security companies that the state can successfully use when needed to resolve the most delicate issues," believes Jean-Philippe Daniel, a leading French specialist in the history of mercenarism.
A curious detail: any American mercenary organization seeking to work abroad must obtain a license from a special government agency - the Office of Defense Trade Controls. But this is only the visible part of the iceberg. "Since 1997, the Pentagon's intelligence agency has every six months gathered representatives of private American military organizations within the walls of the law firm Cohen&Woods," says Olivier Hubac, a French political scientist. "The purpose of such gatherings is to check PMCs for loyalty and assess the effectiveness of these organizations' activities in protecting US interests in various regions of the world."
It turns out that the lamentations heard in Washington over the reduction in the size of the regular army are from the evil one. The authorities, despite the high fees of mercenaries, only gain from this simple combination. Treasury expenditures are significantly reduced: 'civilian personnel' brought in temporarily do not have to be paid a regular salary, they do not have to be insured as a matter of course, provided with medical and other services. If a mercenary dies, his family does not have to be paid a state lifelong allowance. 'Civilians' with machine guns do not fall into the mournful military statistics. Mercenaries killed or captured in Iraq are counted under a different article. Most of the foreigners killed or taken hostage are precisely employees of various security services sent to Iraq by private military companies. These include, for example, several Italians captured by Iraqi insurgents, because of whom the government of Silvio Berlusconi refused to enter into negotiations with the kidnappers. The authorities of the countries belonging to the anti-Iraq coalition treat the matter of freeing captured regular soldiers much more tenderly.
"If you send soldiers somewhere to a sultry region, someone will definitely find out about it; but if we are talking about sending several hundred employees of a private company there on a business trip, no one will notice it," asserts Deborah Avant, a professor at George Washington University. PMC is a splendid opportunity for the military to bypass both congressmen with their ambitions, and the government with its restrictions, and the press with its pacifist slogans.
The UN, whose 'blue helmets' have never been a particularly effective tool for resolving interstate and ethnic conflicts, is quite satisfied with this state of affairs. "If we need brave and experienced soldiers, I would prefer sending people from a private firm," admitted Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the UN. It is precisely this scenario that the tragic events in Iraq are pushing toward today. It is just interesting how this is consistent with the Security Council resolutions that resolutely outlaw mercenarism.