Why does the government use blackwater

Blackwater, now renamed Academi, is just one cog in an industry that encompasses hundreds of private military companies.

The duties of these companies extend far beyond security. DynCorp , for example, was hired to train the new national army of Liberia, where a massive U. These companies are deeply engaged in countries dependent on mining and extractive industries. And as a simple Google search will show, many of them have been touched by scandal. Their deployment, coupled with extensive use of intelligence and surveillance contractors, makes it possible for the United States to pursue wars on the sly.

Who besides their families keeps track of contractor deaths — estimated at over 6, in Iraq and Afghanistan — on the battlefield? To be sure, the Pentagon and Congress have taken some steps to establish greater accountability and rules of engagement for these companies. When voters call for an end to incessant war, some politicians promise to bring troops back home.

Since his inauguration, President Trump has retracted U. The withdrawals, however, come without concessions, and leave many of these regions riddled with instability and lingering power vacuums. For the United States and a number of other international governments, private security firms like Academi formerly known as Blackwater , promise an effective, but costly, replacement to American troops.

To the United Nations and human rights groups, these PSMCs pose a growing threat to civilian safety and region stability , citing the impunity of non-state armed actors. Both organizations address concerns over the compliance of PMSCs with international humanitarian law, as these private companies lack the oversight and accountability measures that apply to state military personnel. While the United States military has mechanisms in place to provide oversight, such as the ability to impose a court martial as punishment for crimes committed on the battlefield, these mechanisms are more difficult to apply to PMSCs due to their higher degree of separation from the government.

As such, punishment for crimes committed for these contractors can be slow if not impossible to impose. Much of this stems from the highly visible role it has played in escorting U.

Iraqi government officials claim that there have been at least seven incidents of civilian harm in which the company has been involved. The most notable that has been reported in the press was on Christmas Eve , when a Blackwater employee allegedly got drunk while inside the Green Zone in Baghdad and got in an argument with a guard of the Iraqi vice president.

He then shot the Iraqi dead. The employee was quickly flown out of the country. Nine months later, he has not been charged with any crime.

Imagine the same thing happening in the U. In May , there were two more reported shootings of Iraqi civilians by Blackwater contractors, including an Interior Ministry employee, which led to an armed standoff between the firm and Iraqi police. Thus, many felt the great tension between the firm and the locals would soon erupt.

As far back as , for example, Brig. Karl Horst, deputy commander of the U. Over the course of two months, he found 12 shootings that resulted in at least six Iraqi civilian deaths and three more wounded. They shoot people, and someone else has to deal with the aftermath. They are planting hatred, because of these irresponsible acts. Jack Holly is a retired Marine colonel who, as director of logistics for the U. Army Corps of Engineers, has worked with several firms in Iraq.

As an example of the costs to key efforts, he described how Iraqi employees of the national rail system were so intimidated by Blackwater escorts that they refused to meet with State Department officials there to help them with the reconstruction effort.

These perceptions of a contractor force run amok help to undermine the very justification for the U. As an Interior Ministry official said of the Blackwater contractors hired by the U. We have seen what they do in the streets. This statement is by an official ostensibly working with the U. Much like the Abu Ghraib affair, the episode in which the civilians were killed by Blackwater employees may have been an anomaly. But it proved to be a perfect fact around which adversaries could wrap their wider propaganda.

For example, the same week that the Blackwater shooting incident occurred, radical Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr was planning the withdrawal of his coalition from the government. The global war on terrorism is not a traditional military conflict made up of set-piece battles, but rather made up of a series of small wars and insurgencies in places ranging from Iraq and Afghanistan to Pakistan and Egypt, where the U.

As the newly revised foreword to the famous U. They frequently are the main effort simply because of the criticality of the functions they perform. Unfortunately, here again contractors have proven to be a drag on efforts to explain and justify the already highly unpopular U.

The Blackwater episode resonated negatively not merely inside Iraq, but throughout the Muslim world. Every single media source led with the episode in the days that followed, focusing on how the U.

The Al-Jazeera satellite news channel reported on the U. They are famous for shooting indiscriminately at vehicles or pedestrians who get close to their convoys. No foreign mercenary can plead similar motivation, so all of them should go. What is telling about this episode is not merely the reaction in the press, but also how the contractor responded after the news broke.

Then a spokesperson in North Carolina issued a two-paragraph statement via e-mail, only targeted at a U. It continued to not to take any press calls. You could, however, continue to buy Blackwater apparel on the Web site, ranging from baseball caps to baby clothes. When the history books are written about the Iraq war, they will point to several critical turning points in U.

Certain to make the list are the battle for Fallujah, the revelation of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, and now the shootout in Baghdad that left as many as 20 civilians dead, the entire country seething and U. What will distinguish these accounts from histories of past wars is the new common denominator for each of these incidents: the private military industry. In developing a counterinsurgency operation, the ideal is that a strategy is developed and then implemented.

As Gen. What is not expected is for a third force to cause the strategy to be jettisoned, before it even has a chance to succeed. The recent Blackwater incident is not the first time that decisions made by the firm have diverted American strategy and resources, taking the U. There are two notable aspects about the Fallujah episode as it relates to counterinsurgency. As Maj. It was one ambush in a war full of them. But to the policymakers back in Washington, now feeling the pressure of the television news cameras, some sort of action had to be taken.

The Marines moved into the city in force and a major battle broke out. It proved a disaster for the effort to win hearts and minds.

With international press reporting more than 1, civilians killed an exaggeration and his Iraqi and British allies pressuring him, President Bush ordered a halt to operations. The town was handed over to a makeshift Iraqi brigade led by a former Republican Guard officer. Today, the North Carolina training center operates as United States Training Center, or USTC, and carries out tactics and weapons training for military, government, and law enforcement. They also offer courses in tactical driving, hand to hand combat, and precision rifle marksmanship.

Academi also offers a lot of other services, like maritime training , canine training for explosive and drug detection. After the departure of Erik Prince from his former company, Prince stayed active in private military interests around the world.

He was hired by the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and moved to Abu Dhabi in On a separate front, he oversaw recruitment for private military companies, such as Executive Outcomes which is a former South African private military firm that gained fame when they were hired by several African governments during the s to defeat violent rebellions in addition to protecting oil and diamond reserves. This program was funded by several Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates and was backed by the United States.

He commissioned the company to modify Thrush G crop-dusters with surveillance equipment, machine guns, armor, and other weapons, including custom pylons that were capable of mounting either NATO or Russian ballistics. Frontier Services Group owns two of the modified Thrush Gs, but since executives learned the craft had been weaponized by Prince, the company has declined to sell or use the aircraft to avoid violating U.

Erik Prince was brought back into the limelight in when he wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal and suggested that the Trump administration privatize the war in Afghanistan.

I had worked with a U. I speak Arabic Iraqi Dialect and English. You must be logged in to post a comment. Government Contracts During the war in Iraq, Blackwater was one of several private security companies use to guard officials, security guards, and military installations, train the Iraqi army and police forces, and provide other support for armed forces.