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Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Iraq's coalition of hired guns
Of the armed forces supporting the U.S.-led coalition efforts to pacify and rebuild Iraq, about 20,000 of them are hired guns. This army of what The New York Times called "shadow soldiers" raises troubling questions about security, legality and morality.
While almost all of these "security forces" are taxpayer-funded, through the coalition, private corporate contractors or various subcontractors, almost all of them also operate free of any uniform U.S. control.
Only now is the Coalition Provisional Authority beginning to draw up such rules for private security companies. (The authority is one of the private companies' clients.)
"Security in a hostile fire area is a classic military mission," says Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., a member of the Armed Services Committee. "Delegating this mission to private contractors raises serious questions."
Indeed. Consider the scope of the privateers: They number about 20,000, nearly twice as many soldiers as from the United Kingdom (the second-largest country in the coalition) and nearly as many as the 26,500 troops from 34 countries.
Under what international authority may a U.S. civilian employed by a security firm in Iraq shoot and kill a civilian Iraq citizen? What liability is there for the employee, his employer, the U.S. government? How are these employees vetted -- if at all -- for such things as criminal backgrounds? (Four security guards killed in January were former members of South Africa's apartheid-era security forces.) What are the risks -- and liabilities -- of "friendly fire" incidents with coalition troops and security personnel?
Perhaps the most important question is whether this is any way to fight a war.
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