Blackwater1

Blackwater, Jeremy Scahill’s meticulously researched best-seller, chronicles the rise of the world’s most powerful mercenary army. Headquartered in North Carolina, Blackwater operates the largest private military facility on the planet. It presently has over 2,300 private soldiers deployed in nine countries, including the US, and maintains a base of 21,000 former Special Forces troops, soldiers, and retired law enforcement agents2. It has a private fleet of more than twenty aircraft, including helicopter gunships, and a surveillance blimp division, and operates its own intelligence division.

Besides its 7,000-acre facility in North Carolina, Blackwater has training facilities in Illinois, known as Blackwater North, and is attempting to build a training camp in California, known as Blackwater West. The company has a training center in the Philippines and operates a training camp in a remote mountain area of Honduras, where it prepares mercenaries for deployment in Iraq. Blackwater holds hundreds of millions of dollars in US government contracts, including “black contracts” kept from public oversight.

Besides US Navy Seals and Special Forces, Blackwater mercenaries include ex-soldiers from South African apartheid forces, including some from the notorious Koevoet. The company actively hires Chilean commandos, some of whom were trained under the brutal regime of Augusto Pinochet. Blackwater hires mercenaries from countries with histories of brutal dictatorships, human rights abuses, and government-controlled death squads, and markets its services to countries which wage war against Islam and Muslims.

Founded and controlled by Erik Prince, Blackwater is the private army of a radical right-wing Christian millionaire. A major bankroller of President Bush’s campaign, Prince is an active supporter of the broader Christian-right agenda. The Prince family has been deeply involved in the secretive Council for National Policy, which brings together the most powerful conservatives in the country to strategize on how to turn the country further to the right.

Erik Prince sits on the board of Christian Freedom, a group which uses “humanitarian aid” as a cover for missionary activities. Despite operating in largely Muslim countries, the group professes that the Bible is the only inspired, infallible, and authoritative Word of God. Prince is a close friend and benefactor of some of the country’s most militant Christian extremists, such as Gary Bauer and Charles Colson. In one of his most outrageous comments, Colson claimed that Muhammad’s Qur’an was the product of spiritual diarrhea: “I think he’d had too many tamales the night before.”

As an indication of the ideological basis of Blackwater, some of its executives boast membership in the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, a Christian militia formed in the eleventh century with the mission of defending “territories that the Crusaders had conquered from the Moslems.” The outsourcing of US military operations in Muslim countries and in secular societies to such neo-crusaders reinforces the greatest fears of many in the Islamic world.

As Scahill expertly unveils, the rise of Blackwater was encouraged by the Republican administration. When George W. Bush was appointed to power, he brought a team of ideologues and former corporate executives, many from large weapons manufacturers. These right-wing Republicans had two plans when they came to office: regime change in strategic nations, and the enactment of the most sweeping privatization and outsourcing operation in US military history.

As the foundational document of the Program for a New American Century states, such a revolutionary change could not be accomplished without a catalyst like a new Pearl Harbor. On September 11th, 2001, Rumsfeld and his theo-conservatives were conveniently provided with a pretext to put their plans in motion: outsourcing the military, not to save money, but to make money, to fill the coffers of the war profiteers, and to embark on a mission to re-map the Muslim world by means of mercenaries.

With mad money to be made, and the possibility to rape and murder with impunity, thousands of mercenaries rushed off to Iraq to make it rich. By the end of Rumsfeld’s tenure, there were an estimated 100,000 private contractors on the ground in Iraq, an almost one to one ratio to active-duty US soldiers.

Scahill relates several stories in which Blackwater militiamen were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. In one incident, the Islamic Army of Iraq downed a Blackwater aircraft, resulting in six deaths. Although the murdered men were all mercenaries, media reports overwhelmingly referred to the aircraft as civilian or commercial.

The most famous instance of all, however, occurred in Fallujah shortly after the toppling of the Baathist regime. Readers will recall the headlines of the day: “Iraqi Mob Mutilates 4 American Civilians” said the Chicago Tribune, “US Civilians Mutilated in Iraq Attack” screamed the Washington Post, and “American Desecrated” denounced the Miami Herald.

Besides critical thinkers who read independent media, the majority of Americans believed that innocent American civilians were butchered by barbaric Arabs. The men who were murdered, however, were mercenaries, killers for hire, who died indignantly attempting to retrieve some catering equipment.

Although it has more mercenaries in Iraq than total British troops, Blackwater is merely one of many mercenary firms operating in Iraq. Others include DynCorp, whose mercenaries trafficked sex slaves in Bosnia, Military Professional Resources Incorporated, Control Risks Group, Erinys, Aegis, ArmorGroup, Hart, Kroll, Steele Foundation, among many others.

In order to create a buffer to ensure their immunity, the US military hired mercenaries from the US-based Titan Corporation and CACI to conduct interrogations at Abu Ghraib. According to an investigation conducted by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, an interrogator at CACI and a translator for Titan “were either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib” The Center for Constitutional Rights charged that Titan and CACI conspired with US officials to “humiliate, torture, and abuse persons” to win more contracts for their “interrogation services.”

Although depicted as a Mahdi Army assault against American forces, the battle which occurred on April 4, 2004 in Najaf, took place between Moqtada Sadr’s militia and Blackwater mercenaries. The battle, which was captured on video, shows Blackwater mercenaries indiscriminately firing hundreds of rounds into Iraqis crowds and slaughtering scores of clerics in one of the holiest sites of Shi‘ism. The video’s audio reveals the mind-set of the murderers: “Fuckin’ niggers!” spews a Blackwater mercenary as masses of unarmed Muslims are massacred.

While Blackwater mercenaries are known to operate as security forces in Iraq, their role in “black contracts” have the subject of much speculation. As a real investigative journalist, Scahill has carefully put the pieces together. Unable to uproot the resistance using conventional military techniques, US policymakers turned to a strategy as American as apple pie: the death squad.

As early as January 2004, journalist Robert Dreyfuss reported on the existence of a covert US program in Iraq that resembled the CIA’s Phoenix assassination program in Vietnam, Latin America’s death squads or Israel’s official policy of targeted murders of Palestinian activists. According to Allan Nairn, who exposed US backed death squads in Central America in the 1980s, “These programs, which backed the killing of foreign civilians, it’s a regular part of US policy. It’s ingrained in US policy in dozens upon dozens of countries.”

According to Dreyfuss, the US established a three billion dollar “black fund” hidden within Iraq appropriation fund approved by Congress in November 2003. The money would be used to create a paramilitary unit manned by militiamen from former Iraqi exile groups. Experts immediately warned that pro-American paramilitaries would engage in extra-judicial killings, not only of armed insurgents, but of nationalists, civilians Baathists, and other opponents of occupation. Approved and funded, the plan was put into place by Jim Steele, John Negroponte, and William Boykin.

Jim Steele, who acted as Paul Bremer’s deputy, served as a colonel in the Marines in the mid 1980s, coordinating US military advisor to Salvadoran Army death squads in their battle against FMLN guerrillas. According to Scahill, Army Lt. Gen. William Boykin, famous for his anti-Muslim rants, was charged by Rumsfeld to hunt down “high value targets.” Rumsfeld also placed Boykin in charge of the Abu Ghraib prison, sending him to Camp X Ray in Guantanamo to learn new methods to be applied in Iraq.

The main man, of course, was John Negroponte, who was appointed US Ambassador to Iraq. A former US Ambassador to Honduras, Negroponte coordinated covert support to Nicaraguan Contra and Honduran death squads in the 1980s. While in Baghdad in the summer of 2004, Negroponte was visited by Duane Clarridge, an old colleague who ran the CIA’s covert war against communism in Central America. While Negroponte only spent a short period of time in Iraq, analysts believe that he was sent to Iraq to establish death squads. As Andres Contreris, the Latin American program director of Non-Violence International, said:

It’s no coincidence that Negroponte, having been the Ambassador in Honduras, where he was very much engaged in the kind of support for death squads, was the Ambassador in Iraq, and this is the kind of policy that was starting to be implemented there, which is not just going after the resistance itself but targeting for repression, torture and assassination, the underlying support base: the family members, and those in the communities where the resistance is. These kinds of policies are war crimes.

Shortly after Negroponte’s departure, death squad activity started to surge in Iraq. Newsweek described the new strategy as the “Salvador Option.” Instead of fighting the insurgents directly, US Special Forces were focusing on advising, supporting, and training Iraqi death squads. Hand-picked from Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shi‘ite militiamen, the death squads would target, not only Sunni insurgents, but their support base. According to Scahill’s sources, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a former CIA asset, was the most forthright proponent of the Salvador Option.

The shift from conventional warfare to a Central American style “dirty war” soon found support among some Shi‘ites in the new Iraqi military. Army Major Swadi Ghilan openly expressed his desire to exterminate most of the Sunnis in Iraq: “The army should execute the Sunnis in their neighborhoods so that all of them can see what happens, so that all of them learn their lesson.” Another Shi‘ite, Sgt. Ahmed Sabri, said: “Just let us have our constitution and elections…and then we will do what Saddam did - start with five people from each neighborhood and kill them in the streets and then go from there.”

By 2005, death squad activity started to spread throughout Iraq in a pattern uncannily similar to Central America during the 1980s. John Pace, a forty-year UN diplomat who served as the Human Rights Chief for the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq during Negroponte’s time in office, described the rise of death squadrons in Iraq: “They first started as a kind of militia…which was the military wing of various factions.” Eventually, “many of them [were] acting as official police agents as a part of the Ministry of Interior…You have these militias now with police gear and under police insignia…They have roadblocks in Baghdad and other areas, they would kidnap other people. They have been very closely linked with numerous mass executions.”

While “Safavid Shi‘ites” have swelled the ranks of US supported death squads, Scahill fails to mention US support for “Sunni” death squads as well. As many analysts have observed, the US views “Sunni” death squads as an insurance policy against the present government. Just like the US supported both the Contras and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and both the Taliban and the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, the US is playing with a full hand in Iraq, turning Sunnis and Shi‘ites to justify its occupation, ensure its control over oil reserves, preserve its strategic military presence, destabilize the region, and debilitate the country, ensuring it will not pose a threat against its Israeli ally.

As former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter foretold several years ago: “the Salvador Option will serve as the impetus for all-out civil war.” By Nov. 2006, 1,000 Iraqis were being killed each week. From the beginning of the US occupation to the present, some 750,000 Iraqis have lost their lives.

While the fiasco in Iraq was in full flames, New Orleans was struck by Hurricane Katrina, a disaster viewed by Blackwater as an opportunity to “diversify” their business. With no soldiers or National Guards to respond to the disaster, “private contractors” were the first to reach the region. Mercenaries from Blackwater, DynCorp, American Security Group, Wackenhut, Krioll, and Instinctive Shooting International beat the federal government and most aid organizations. Authorized to use deadly force, one hundred and fifty heavily armed Blackwater mercenaries, spread into the chaos of New Orleans. Rather than help with search and rescue, they were sent to stop looting and confront “black gang-bangers.”

While Blackwater claims that it was there to help the relief effort, it profited from the disaster, raking in 73 million dollars from its Katrina work by June 2006. New Orleans residents, along with journalists, aid agencies, local police and firefighters, were shocked to see US and foreign mercenaries occupying their city.

Among the most unsavory characters occupying New Orleans were Israeli mercenaries. Working for Instinctive Shooting International, they were billed as “veterans of Israel Defense Force, Israel National Police Counter Terrorism units, Instructors of Israel National Police Counter Terrorism units, Genera Security Service, and other restricted intelligence agencies.” As proof of his professionalism, one Zionist mercenary proudly stated: “We have been fighting the Palestinians all day, every day, our whole lives.”

With its own intelligence apparatus, Blackwater is years ahead of politicians in projecting future profit potential, strategically positioning itself in problem spots around the planet. To avoid drawing attention, the US deployed private Blackwater paramilitaries to Azerbaijan, just north of the Iranian border, in July 2004. In return for 2.5 million dollars, the company created a virtual base where it trained an elite group of Azeri forces known as the Caspian Guard. Blackwater is also aggressively marketing itself for deployment in Darfur.

Despite claiming loyalty to the US, Blackwater claims that its forces above the law. The company claims that its mercenaries are “civilian contractors” who are not subject to the Pentagon’s Uniform Code of Military Conduct while simultaneously claiming immunity from civilian litigation because its private soldiers are part of the US Total Force. Since the Dept. of Defense refuses to prosecute mercenaries who kill civilians and since Congress grants military contractors’ immunity from state-court litigation, private contractors can get away with murder.

According to Scahill, Blackwater is a Praetorian Guard in the “war on terror.” For those unfamiliar with history, the Praetorian Guard provided security services to Roman emperors. The group was disbanded after its influence had increased to the point where it could make and unmake emperors. As Michael Ratner, the President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, warns: “These paramilitary groups bring to mind Nazi Party brown-shirts, functioning as an extrajudicial mechanism that can and does operate outside the law. The use of these paramilitary groups is an extremely dangerous threat to our own rights.”

Mercenaries, it must be remembered, are war-whores, guns-for-hire, and slut-soldiers who can be bought and sold. Motivated by money, they bend over to the highest bidder. Interested in profit, they have no interest in peace, since stability is bad for business. While they presently act as the imperial arms of US foreign policy, mercenaries do not serve the people nor are accountable to the people. As the rabid rottweilers of the right-wing, private paramilitaries have historically been used by fascists to create and control totalitarian states.

At a time when Muslim teens can’t even go camping, play paint-ball, and practice martial arts without being prosecuted for plotting terrorist attacks, it is utterly hypocritical for the US administration to allow Christian fundamentalists to form mercenary armies with tens of thousands of Timothy McVeighs. Thanks to George W. Bush and his bigoted buddies, the American people now face a private parallel army, a fascist military force capable of supporting a Christian fundamentalist coup.

Scahill’s book is a slap in the face to the silent majority. As a result of the complacency of the American public, US democracy is degenerating into a dictatorship. Following the fascist policy of “perpetual war,” the extreme right portrays Muslims as the fiends of freedom and destroyers of democracy. Deceived by Dajjalian diatribe, the American people have overlooked the enemy within: the rise of right-wing militias. Owned and operated by neo-crusaders, private paramilitaries presently pose the single greatest threat to the United States of America.

• 1. This review of Jeremy Scahill’s Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army (New York: Nation Books, 2007) was published anonymously in the October 2007 issue of Crescent International as “Detailed Account of the Role of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army in Iraq and Elsewhere” (27-30).
• 2. According to recently released Pentagon statistics, there are 242,657 private military contractors working for the US Department of Defense: 132,610 in Iraq and 68,197 in Afghanistan. Despite his promises of peace, President Barack Obama (b. 1961) increased the use of mercenaries by 23% in Iraq and 29% in Afghanistan in the second quarter of 2009. Military contractors, both armed and unarmed, now represent approximately 50% of the total US forces in both countries. See: Scahill, Jeremy. “Obama Has 250,000 “Contractors” in Iraq and Afghan Wars, Increases Number of Mercenaries.” Rebel Reports (June 1st, 2010). Internet: http://rebelreports.com/post/116277092/obama-has-250-000-contractors-in-...