A wave of public concern swept through Pakistan over the news of clandestine activities of the US contractor DynCorp International that has been reportedly engaged by the Pentagon to provide security for US diplomatic personnel.

Until some ugly episodes occurred in Islamabad and Peshawar where DynCorp operatives, displaying their weapons in violation of Pakistani laws, publicly roughed up Pakistani citizens and were allowed to get away by the Ministry of Interior, their presence had remained unnoticed. The uproar led to uncovering the record of DynCorp and Blackwater, US military contractors, which are suspected to be linked. Blackwater’s activities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan turned out to be very disturbing.

Blackwater faces legal proceedings in the US for a variety of crimes such as murder, manslaughter, weapons smuggling, use of unnecessary, excessive and unjustified deadly force against civilians, etc. Five Blackwater employees are awaiting trial on manslaughter charges and a sixth has already pleaded guilty to manslaughter and attempting to commit manslaughter in the aftermath of the September 16, 2007 Nisour Square shootings in Baghdad, which left seventeen Iraqis dead. 

Blackwater is accused of using weapons in Iraq not authorized by the US contracting authorities, such as hand grenades and hand grenade launchers for unnecessarily killing scores of innocent Iraqis. Ammunition illegally obtained from LeMas, an American company, designed to explode after penetrating the human body was frequently used to inflict maximum human damage. The present Iraqi government outlawed Blackwater.

Founder of Blackwater, Erik Prince, was being investigated in connection with the murder of an ex-employee, as reported by the New York weekly ‘The Nation’. According to the publication, two former Blackwater employees have disclosed in a federal court in August that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that his companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life." The employees also alleged that Blackwater was involved in smuggling of unlawful weapons in Iraq in Prince’s private planes. These allegations, and a series of other charges, were filed as part of a motion by lawyers for Iraqi civilians suing Blackwater for alleged war crimes and other misconduct. On March 2nd, Erik Prince resigned as Blackwater’s CEO.

In an interview on December 5 with Vanity Fair Magazine, he lashed back, revealing among other things that  he “helped to train a CIA assassination team that hunted an alleged senior al-Qaeda financier in Germany, and included A. Q. Khan, a Pakistani nuclear scientist, on its list of targets.” (Times on Line)

Blackwater’s role and activities recently became the subject of debate in Washington amid disclosures that CIA used Blackwater to locate and assassinate leaders of Al Qaeda in Pakistan. Lawmakers expressed outrage on such a task being outsourced to a private contractor.

Congressman Dennis Kucinich, member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform who has been investigating Prince and Blackwater since 2004, is reported to have said, "If these allegations are true, Blackwater has been a criminal enterprise defrauding taxpayers and murdering innocent civilians." He said,

"Blackwater is a law unto itself, both internationally and domestically. The question is why they operated with impunity. In addition to Blackwater, we should be questioning their patrons in the previous administration who funded and employed this organization. Blackwater wouldn't exist without federal patronage; these allegations should be thoroughly investigated."

To salvage its damaged reputation, Blackwater went through an intricate rebranding process in the twelve years it has been in business, changing its name and logo several times. Prince has created more than a dozen affiliate companies, some of which are registered offshore and whose operations are shrouded in secrecy to obscure wrongdoing, fraud and other crimes. It now operates under the banner of Xe Services LLC.

DynCorp’s activities in Pakistan also raised alarm when it reportedly bribed officials for licenses to import prohibited weapons and secretly recruited and trained ex-SSG (army) personnel at facilities in Sihala, dangerously close to Pakistan’s nuclear installations, and at another location outside Islamabad. This fuels suspicion that the Pentagon has outsourced to this military contractor the task of raising a private militia for multiple roles, including a rapid intervention team, with an eye on Pakistan’s nuclear assets. Earlier reports about a US team having flown into Dubai on its way to Islamabad for urgent intervention after receiving a false alarm about the loss of some nuclear material, lends credibility to fears that the US intends to place a rapid deployment team in Pakistan. Higher courts are now hearing public petitions seeking a ban on the activities of DynCorp and Blackwater.

Quoting current and former employees of Blackwater, the New York Times (Dec. 10, 2009) reports that in Pakistan Blackwater covertly plays a role in the operation of American drones.

“The operations are carried out at hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where Blackwater contractors assemble and load Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs on remotely piloted Predator aircraft, work previously performed by C.I.A. employees. They also provide security at the covert bases”.   

In an environment charged with strong anti-American sentiment and suspicions about US designs against Pakistan being rife, this is a public relations disaster for the US Embassy and has only added to the trust deficit with the US.   

Until some time ago, the military-industrial complex played a major role in prodding the American civil leadership to create enemies and launch military conflicts around the world. This unholy alliance was recently joined by another player - the ‘Contractors’.
 
Now all US military campaigns and occupations have come to heavily rely on thousands and thousands of contractors, subcontractors and sub-subcontractors. Sara Flounders in her article “Obama's War: Why is the Largest Military Machine on the Planet Unable to Defeat the Resistance in Afghanistan”  says,

“Their [Contractors’] only immediate aim is to turn a hefty superprofit as quickly as possible, with as much skim and double billing as possible. For a fee these corporate middlemen will provide everything from hired guns, such as Blackwater mercenaries, to food service workers, mechanics, maintenance workers and long-distance truck drivers”.

Flounders states that all reconstruction and infrastructure projects are also handed out to these contractors, with their completion or quality being of no interest to any one. Billing is all that counts.

Earlier on, these functions were performed by the US Army. The Associated Press put the number in Iraq at 180,000 in 2007. On August 18, 2008 Christian Science Monitor put the number at 190,000.

Some corporations which have recently gained notoriety for war profiteering in Iraq and Afghanistan include Halliburton, Bechtel, Blackwater, Louis Berger Group, BearingPoint and DynCorp International.
 
So vast has the contractors’ empire grown in the US that Michael Thibault, co-chair of the Congressional Commission on Wartime Contracting noted that

“there is no single source for a clear, complete and accurate picture of contractor numbers, locations, contracts and cost. ….. The lack of an accurate count “invites waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer money and undermines the achievement of U.S. mission objectives.”  

Thomas Friedman, a noted columnist, warns of the dangers of a “contractor-industrial-complex in Washington that has an economic interest in foreign expeditions.” He says the pattern of outsourcing key tasks, mostly with scarcely audited money and instructions changing multiple hands, invites abuse and corruption.

Allison Stanger, in her book One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy, says the Pentagon outsources many key functions because it does not have enough soldiers, collabortors or allies to fight its wars. She says, “Contractors provide security for key personnel and sites, including our embassies; feed, clothe and house our troops; train army and police units; and even oversee other contractors.” So influential are some of these contractors that they are often called America’s shadow government. 

The implementation of US foreign policy responsibility overseas through sub-contracting is also assuming dangerous proportions. Eighty percent of the State Department budget is spent through contractors and grants.

In this new arrangement of outsourcing, sometimes called the new form of public private partnership, the government transfers its sovereign functions to American enterprises abroad for implementation of its functions or programs in countries under occupation or at war, to fill the capability gap. But this creates a serious problem. These entreprises are neither aware of the intricacies and compulsions of diplomatic norms that is the domain of foreign service nor are they subject to clear and unambiguous lines of authority compared to those for their military colleagues. As a result, private contractors apply varying interpretations to policies and instructions handed down to them by the Departments of State and Defense, at times even flouting them outright, thereby creating frictions and conflicts between governments and with the populations. This generates more ill will than goodwill. 

When contractors for the Pentagon or other agencies are not properly managed - as when civilian interrogators committed abuses at Abu Ghuraib in Iraq or members of Blackwater shot and killed 17 Iraqi citizens in Baghdad – it created an uproar of such enormous proportions that it severely undermined the American position and effort.

The Pentagon has another motive for outsourcing its wars. It manages to hide the actual size of its occupation force and its casualties. For instance, according to U.S. News & World Report, Oct. 30, there are no records of thousands of Iraqis, Afghans and other migrant workers who were recruited to do dangerous jobs and were killed while working for US contractors. These deaths raised no eyebrows. If the US troops were killed instead, the Pentagon would have had great trouble justifying such high casualties.

For Pakistan the presence of contractors like DynCorp and Blackwater is an ominous sign. If lessons are to be learnt from Iraq and Afghanistan, Pakistan would do well to withdraw the blank cheque given to the US Embassy to set up an empire of its own in the name of its security, or else it would be putting at risk its internal law and order and the safety of its nuclear assets.

Read his bio and more analyses and essays by
Axis of Logic Columnist, Shahid R. Siddiqi

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For more details about Blackwater go to The Nation Magazine

Also read up-to-date news and analyses by Axis of Logic Columnist Talha Mujaddidi, reporting from Pakistan