De Oorlogsstaat 80

Jose L. Gomez del Prado is a member of the United Nations Working Group on Mercenaries.

Hij schrijft: 'The 25 000 private security contractors presently working in Iraq constitute, after the United States Army, the largest force of occupation well before the British Army. These private security companies with over 420 deaths and some 4 000 injured, according to the USA Department of Labor, also yield the highest number of casualties with the exception of the US Army which has already reached over 2 500 deaths and more than 18 000 injuries.According to a report emanating from the USA Government Accountability Office, contracts for over $ 766 million have been awarded to private security companies in Iraq. Criticisms have been raised pointing out that, on the basis of such contracts, unethical mercenaries are being recruited complicating the reconstruction undertaken by the Coalition and receiving sometimes salaries up to several thousand dollars daily. In addition, these companies are accused of fraud and of overt confrontations with the US Army under which they should operate.With the globalisation of the economy, the use of force has become another business to be privatized. The privatized military and security industry which was estimated, in 1990, at $ 33 billion, reached in 2006 some $ 100 billion and will reach probably over $ 200 billion in 2010. During the first Gulf War, in the 1990’s, one out of every 100 soldiers was a private contractor. A few years later, during the former Yugoslavia’s wars the rate was one of every 50 and presently it is one out of every ten. The armed conflicts in former Yugoslavia, Angola, Colombia and Sierra Leone, among others, have favoured the expansion of such private companies. But it has been the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the instability that followed in the post war period in those two countries which has been the driving force in the extension and multiplication of the private military and security industry. It is also in those two countries where the limits of the grey zone, where these companies operate, which very easily becomes blurred: security activities and human rights violations are often inextricably linked.The thousands of armed contractors operating in Iraq represent one of the major problems in the reconstruction of the country for they carry out their activities without any control or accountability. Their behaviour is often similar to those of the employees of CACI and Titan working in the prison of Abu Ghraib. These two USA private security companies have been allegedly implicated in the 2004 human rights violations. The report of USA General Antonio Taguba indicates that two CACI employees were directly or indirectly implicated in the use of dogs on prisoners, forced sexual abuses and other types of violations perpetrated on prisoners. Another report suggests that one of the 27 employees of CACI working for the USA Army in Iraq knew pertinently that the instructions he was giving to the soldiers interrogating the prisoners was a form of torture. CACI sources argue that their personnel were at all times performing under military instructions. According to Titan their employees are translators and interpreters working for the USA Army and they were not implicated in the tortures committed on prisoners. The inquiries carried out to establish the implication of both of these two companies in the crimes committed in Abu Ghraib has not prevented the USA Government from renewing their contracts: one of some $ 15 million to CACI under which it will provide interrogating services with a view to obtaining information in Iraq and the other of $ 400 million to Titan to recruit more translators.At the time of the incidents in Abu Ghraib, the United States Government as Occupying Power had jurisdiction in Iraq. The fact that the human rights violations were allegedly perpetrated by employees of private security companies, such as CACI and Titan, does not exempt the USA Government of its obligations according to international human rights and international humanitarian law. However, contrary to the comments made by the US authorities to United Nations affirming that “contract personnel of the US are under the direction of the Coalition and are subject to criminal jurisdiction in US Federal Courts”, not one single civil employee allegedly implicated in the abuses perpetrated in Abu Ghraib has been investigated impartially by a US Federal Court or has been legally sanctioned.In the presentation of the 2006 Amnesty International report in Washington, the USA Director emphasized that United States were creating the equivalent of Guantanamo “- a virtual rule free zone in which perpetrators are not likely to be held accountable for breaking the law”. He said that “business outsourcing may increase efficiency, but war outsourcing may facilitate impunity”. He added that “illegal behavior of contractors and of those who designed and carried out U.S. torture policies and the reluctance of the government to bring perpetrators to justice are tarnishing the reputation of the United States, hurting the image of American troops and contributing to anti-American sentiment”.' Lees verder: http://www.alainet.org/active/12003〈=en