Amnesty Magazine
Summer 2004
Outsourcing Warfare
The Abu Ghraib prison scandal has cast light on a long-festering problem: the escalating use of mercenaries and private military contractors.
BY JULIAN BORGER
U p to 20,000 employees of private military companies may be in Iraq, guarding oil pipelines, protecting dignitaries including Paul Bremer, and interrogating prisoners at Abu Ghraib and other facilities. Recruited by businesses driven principally by profit, they operate largely outside military and civilian law. Many are armed -- in at least one case with illegal ammunition -- and are increasingly drawn into firefights with Iraqi insurgents.
Private contractors began supplying interrogators to the U.S. government in the mid-1990s, but the practice increased exponentially after 9/11. At Abu Ghraib in late 2003, private contractors, about 30 in all, made up half the interrogation teams, according to Torin Nelson, who was a military intelligence officer at Guantánamo Bay before joining CACI International, a market leader in interrogation.
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 Private military contractors protect top U.S. administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer as he greets Provincial COuncil Governor Abdul Kareem Barjas in Bagdhad this May. (© AFP/Pool/Jim MacMillian) |
After the scandal broke, Nelson, who had been an interrogator at Abu Ghraib, came forward to charge that military intelligence was blaming a handful of soldiers to divert attention away from ingrained problems in the military detention and interrogation system.
Nelson denied involvement in the abuses at the notorious prison, and is listed as a witness, not a suspect, in Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba’s investigation into the scandal. Nelson has since resigned from CACI, and he has deep misgivings about the use of hired hands to question military detainees. “The problem with outsourcing intelligence work,” he says, “is the limit of oversight and control by the military administrators over the independent contractors.”
Unlike soldiers, who are bound (at least in theory) by the Universal Code of Military Justice and are trained in the Geneva Conventions, contractors operate in a gray area and, if CACI's recruitment ad is accurate, “under minimal supervision.” And although contractors are barred from wearing uniforms and taking part in combat, “certain companies are getting involved in combat-type operations,” said an ex-U.S. Special Forces officer familiar with the industry.
Last November, the Army Times detailed the use by a private military contractor of powerful ammunition that is outlawed by the U.S. military. If the former U.S. Navy Seal firing the controversial bullets had been on active duty, “he would have been court?martialed for using it," the paper wrote.
Another potential problem is the caliber of the contractors themselves. Some are in it for the lucrative pay, and some, said the former Special Forces officer “really want to kill somebody and they can do it easier there. I don't say everybody is like that, but a dangerously high element.”
After a South African contractor died in a gun battle against insurgents in the Iraqi town of Kut, it was found that the dead man, Gray Branfield, had been a hitman for the apartheid regime. Two other South African mercenaries who served in apartheid era death squads, Frans Strydom and Deon Gouws, were hired by Erinys International, a British-based company that has an $80 million U.S. contract to protect Iraqi oil installations, according to the Vancouver Sun. AIt is just a horrible thought that such people are working for the Americans," commented Richard Goldstone, former chief prosecutor of the U.N. International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
The very attributes that render them a liability in human rights terms -- questionable motivation, training, supervision, and accountability -- make private military companies attractive for the darkest side of the “global war on terrorism.” A government can deny responsibility for their actions if necessary, and they can avoid prosecution. “The executive will purposefully hire PMCs [private military companies] when they want to circumvent congressional oversight,” said the former Special Forces officer.
Workers supplied by two private contractors, CACI and Titan Corporation (which supplies interpreters to the army) are admonished in the Taguba Report as being “directly or indirectly responsible” for abuses at Abu Ghraib. Adel Nakhla, a Titan translator, is named as a suspect. However, at the time of writing, they have not been charged. They neither fall under the Military Code of Justice, nor are they answerable to Iraqi law, having been specifically excluded under a decree issued by Paul Bremer, the head of the U.S.?run administration in Iraq.
A four-year-old law, the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, could theoretically be used to prosecute contractors, but it is untested. According to the Legal Times, it is “narrowly crafted and...may not cover some of the abuses -- and abusers -- involved in the torture of Iraqi detainees at U.S.-run prisons.” Nor does it cover contractors working for the CIA. “For the roles we do choose as appropriate to outsource, we must close the gap in the law,” argues Peter Singer, the author of a book on the issue, Corporate Warriors.
Julian Borger is Washington bureau chief for The Guardian newspaper.
This article appeared in Amnesty Magazine,the quarterly magazine of Amnesty International USA. For copies of the original article, the full magazine, subscriptions ($12/yr), or membership to AIUSA including subscription ($25/yr) please: email now@aiusa.org; write to Amnesty Magazine, 322 8th Ave. New York, NY 10001; or call 212.633.4246. Text and photographs are copyright protected.
