Censored by Google Alerts - Crossed Crocodiles on AFRICOM

Starting in late February or in March, Crossed Crocodiles disappeared from Google Alerts on AFRICOM. From February 2007 through sometime in February or March 2008 the Google Alerts on AFRICOM included ALL Crossed Crocodiles articles on AFRICOM. Since some time in late February or in March 2008 NONE of Crossed Crocodiles stories on AFRICOM have been included in the Google Alerts. It was an abrupt change. First they were there, now they are not. That looks like censorship to me.

For awhile I thought they were just overlooking some posts, that Google was not as efficient as it would have us believe. But the stark contrast of all posts being included suddenly switching to none being included tells me the change is deliberate. This blog is not a large blog, but it has reported on AFRICOM longer and more consistantly than any other blog I know of. I use a number of Google Alerts to get news. Mostly I set the alerts for comprehensive, so I get notices of blog posts, as well as news articles.

Crossed Crocodiles began publishing posts on AFRICOM in February 2007, when the command was announced, and has been following its progress since then. For the first year of this coverage, February 2007 into February 2008, every blog post I wrote on AFRICOM was included in the comprehensive Google Alerts, News Alerts, on AFRICOM. Sometime in February this year, 2008, there was a flurry of attention to Crossed Crocodiles blog from .mil sites. I get fairly regular hits from the US military and the contractors. They are more than welcome and I hope they learn something positive for the citizens of the US and the citizens of African countries when they visit. So I didn't think too much about it. Then this blog got a visit from Google itself, google.com in Mountain View California, the first such visit to this blog to my knowledge. But I didn't think about it much or record the details. Soon after that, in late February or early March, Crossed Crocodiles posts on AFRICOM disappeared from the Google Alerts on AFRICOM.

It is not as if there are so many blog and news stories on AFRICOM that it would be difficult for Google comprehensive Alerts to be comprehensive on the subject. The AFRICOM Alerts do not even come every day, and mostly there are very few stories listed when they do arrive, sometimes only one.

More recently I set up a comprehensive Google Alert on the International Peace Operations Association, the IPOA, the trade association of the PMCs, private military corporations. I have recently written two posts, dealing with the IPOA. Neither post was picked up by the Google Alert on the International Peace Operations Association, although a couple of posts on other blogs that linked back to the two posts on Crossed Crocodiles did get listed in the Google Alerts on the IPOA. That made me wonder if Crossed Crocodiles is being censored from the Google Alerts on the IPOA as well.

And who knows what other subjects covered here, or on other blogs, may be censored from Google Alerts? If you subscribe to Google Alerts you may not be getting the most relevant results and information you need on your topic, especially if someone regards it as a politically sensitive topic. I will still subscribe, but I'm not relying on them to keep me informed.

So far, Crossed Crocodiles posts do turn up in Google Searches. Although if you want to be sure of getting the most relevant hits, I'd use more than one search engine. Ask.com has a Blog Search, and you can try Bloglines. There are a number of possibilities.

As I said in a previous post, I write about AFRICOM because I am old enough that I observed the post independence western interference, and the rivalries and proxy wars of the cold war in Africa, when the US and Russia poured "military assistance" onto the continent, and the death and devastation that created. Friends and I used to joke about applying to Reagan and Bush 1 for military assistance to help us in our petty arguments with each other. It appeared all you needed to get military assistance was to call your enemy a Communist (now call them a Terrorist.) AFRICOM seems designed to make it all happen again, only this time it could cause infinitely more suffering. This time it is driven far more by greed for oil than ideology. I decided this time I would record what I see, what I learn, and what I think, hence the focus on AFRICOM in this blog.


Here are a couple of posts that have received a lot of attention from .mil sites and the contractors:

AFRICOM, US military bases, and Ghana

US State Department recruiting mercenaries to work in Africa


You can read my article on mercenaries in Africa over at the African Loft: The Rising Mercenary Industry and AFRICOM.

Checkbook imperialism - AFRICOM bringing the mercenaries

In Dogs of War: Back to Africa, David Isenberg asks and answers:

Where does the future lie for the private military industry? (When) Iraq, the mother of all private military contracting opportunities ... draw(s) to a close
...
Most likely they will return to their point of origin, Africa. In fact, some are already there.

US contracts for PMCs in Africa are being set up and renewed now.

AFRICAP contracts have a ceiling of approximately $500 million, or $1 billion total. In February the State Department sent out a notice that it was looking to re-complete the contracts.

In Iraq the Bush administration is trying to extend the conflict by extending multi year contracts with the PMCs, as reported by Walter Pincus in the Washington Post:

The depth of U.S. involvement in Iraq and the difficulty the next president will face in pulling personnel out of the country are illustrated by a handful of new contract proposals made public in May. ... The proposals reflect multiyear commitments.

And in Africa Dyncorp is already training the Liberian Army under US contracts, and as Isenberg points out:

A more serious concern was noted by the U.S. Army's Strategic Studies Institute. In a study released in March, the institute concluded that "the image of DynCorp creating an armed elite is disconcerting to many Liberians."

The existence of an armed elite is alarming to many people in Africa across a variety of countries. Armed elites already exist. To make them better armed, better trained, and more elite, is a huge threat to security and safety. The money invested by the US in African militaries makes them elites. There is no similar financial investment in any other sector of African societies or economies. Money spent on capacity building for civilian government would be a positive investment, instead we have this destructive investment in militarization.

AFRICOM plays a major role in this privatized militarization:

The establishment of the U.S. military's latest regional command, the new Africa Command, has also played a role in opening up the market. Private contractors have been seen as an integral part of AFRICOM since its inception. This is not surprising, considering that in October 2003 James Jay Carafano and Nile Gardiner, both from the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, proposed to the Bush administration the creation of a centralized Africa command for the U.S. military. Their proposal made clear that the objective was to preserve U.S. access to African oil and other natural resources on the continent. The Heritage report also points to the strategic importance of Africa in the global "war on terror."

A study published in spring 2007 by the Industrial College of the Armed Forces noted that "Africa may do for the (private military) industry in the next 20 years what Iraq has done in the past four, provide a significant growth engine."

Sarah Meyer has cataloged the activities and the histories of PMC involvement in Iraq:

Iraq: Security Companies and Training Camps

and updated at:

Security Company Death Squads Timeline

She quotes:

Dirk Adriaensens has been involved with Iraq for 17 years. He is on the executive committee of the BRussels Tribunal and is the coordinator of SOS Iraq. He writes:"

Security guys and gals don't have to abide by the Geneva Conventions. They do as they wish. No rules, no regulations. They can operate with impunity.

As such these "security companies" can be called "death squads". Not "Angels of Death" but "Devils of Death". For this, they make a lot of money. Privatization of war is big, big business."

This makes security companies uniquely unqualified to help build stability and provide peacekeeping. There are problems enough with legitimate peacekeepers with reports of child abuse by UN peacekeepers. But with PMCs, there is no accountability.

AFRICOM was dreamed up by the same people who promoted "Constructive Engagement" with South Africa to shore up and continue apartheid. In a brilliant article on the battle of Cuito Cuanavale, Horace Campbell writes:

In the second term of Ronald Reagan (1984-1988), and with help from the Thatcher government in Britain, [US] support was stepped up for the SADF, UNITA, Mobutu and the anti-communist forces in Southern Africa. It should be stated here that at this time all African freedom fighters had been deemed terrorists. Both Osama Bin Laden and Jonas Savimbi were at this time allies of the USA in the fight against communism. While Savimbi was called a freedom fighter, Nelson Mandela had been branded a terrorist by the USA and the South Africans. ... This period is most important in so far as the very same forces in Washington that supported Jonas Savimbi and Osama Bin Laden are the same political forces seeking to mobilize the world against today’s so called war on terror.

The Heritage Foundation, which initially proposed AFRICOM to Donald Rumsfeld, were the same people who supported and promoted Renamo in Mozambique, promoted funding them through apartheid South Africa, and and promoted funding and support for Savimbi in Angola. Both Renamo, and Savimbi's UNITA maintained long and brutal campaigns of terror. Considering the violence against civilians that characterizes the current involvement of the US and US contractors in Somalia and in the Great Lakes Region, there is no reason to think AFRICOM will be any improvement. A larger investment just means more harm.

Mercenaries, PMCs - oversight and accountability

Mercenaries in New Orleans - "nation building" at home

David Isenberg at Dogs of War writes:

When it comes to issues of accountability, oversight and transparency in the private military and security industry . . . there is actually a fair degree of consensus that, yes, there should actually be such a thing: not just in words, but deeds as well.

The companies themselves, industry trade associations, and even various governments, are working together to try and hammer out standards that would apply to the industry globally.
. . .
But there is one government that should be in the lead on this issue, considering it is both the largest user of such firms and the country where the majority of them are based. Guess who it is. That's right, the United States.
. . .
The dollar value of Army contracts quadrupled from $23.3 billion in 1992 to $100.6 billion in 2006, according to a recent report by a Pentagon panel. But the number of Army contract supervisors was cut from 10,000 in 1990 to 5,500 currently.

And one can bet that the contract supervisors who are left vividly remember the case of Bunnatine H. "Bunny" Greenhouse. (story here) She was the senior contracting officer for the Army Corps of Engineers who objected -- first, internally, and then publicly -- to a multibillion-dollar, no-bid contract with Halliburton for work in Iraq. She was then removed from the senior executive service, the top rank of civilian government employees, allegedly because of poor performance reviews.
. . .
Not having provided the oversight that any half-wit would know is necessary when dealing with tens of billions of dollars in contracts is bad enough.

But turning a blind eye to possible criminal behavior is far worse. And yet that is what the Bush administration is doing.
. . .
Finally, as recently reported in the National Journal there was this head-scratching revelation. When President Bush signed the 2008 National Defense Authorization in January his approval support came with a catch: a signing statement in which he wrote that various provisions of the act, including language that would create a commission to examine "waste, fraud, and abuse" in wartime contracting in Iraq and elsewhere, "impose requirements that could inhibit" his "ability to carry out his constitutional obligations to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, to protect national security, to supervise the executive branch, and execute his authority as Commander in Chief."

Only in Bush-World can protecting the American taxpayer against graft and fraud be seen as endangering national security.

I doubt the IPOA is as interested in accountability as it claims. I suspect it may be more analagous to the steps the baseball players union took to prevent drug abuse, minimal, insincere, and ineffective. Although PMC, mercenary, accountability is becoming an issue around the world.

The definition of mercenaries is key. As of now, the definition excludes most of the people employed as PMCs. Step one needs to be an inclusive definition.

Bush cuts UN peacekeeping money for Africa, still plans to increase the use of mercenaries

UN/AU soldiers in Darfur

Just before Bush left to play at being benevolent uncle in Africa, his administration cut funding for UN peacekeeping in African countries.

From ABC news:

On the eve of President Bush's trip to Africa, his administration has decided to drastically cut money for United Nations peacekeeping missions in war-torn countries there.
. . .
In war-torn Liberia, which President Bush will visit on his trip, the White House has proposed spending $56 million less on the U.N. peacekeeping mission there than it did last year. Bush . . . visit(ed) Rwanda, which is still struggling to right itself after a devastating, years-long civil war took the lives of millions. His administration's budget proposes cutting $5 million (from the UN tribunal in Rwanda.) . . .

The administration's 2009 budget also cuts millions for U.N. peacekeeping efforts in Sudan; Democratic Republic of Congo, where a decade-long war still claims thousands of lives a month; Chad, where rebels attempted a violent overthrow of the government Feb. 2; and Cote d'Ivoire, whose stability the Bush administration says "is a critical element in restoring peace to the entire West African region."

Obviously peace is way too important to pay to restore it.

Why did Bush cut funding for UN peacekeeping? The Bush administration is still planning on spending rivers of money on "nation building", "stability operations", and "peacekeeping", just not with the UN. The Department of State just issued AFRICAP Program Recompete, looking for contractors to:

. . . undertake a wide range of diverse projects, including setting up operational bases to support peacekeeping operations in hostile environments, military training and to providing a range of technical assistance and equipment for African militaries and peace support operations.

And the mercenaries are salivating at the Bush administration plans to hire more and more mercenaries, private military and security contractors, to accomplish Bush aims in Africa.

In October (2007), leaders in the private military security industry -- ArmorGroup, DynCorp, MPRI, and several others -- gathered at the Phoenix Park Hotel near the Capitol for the annual three-day summit of their trade group, the International Peace Operations Association. Panel speakers and members of the audience debated the future of nation-building efforts in failed states.
. . .
. . . handing out his business card that day, Army Lt. Col. James Boozell, a branch chief of the Stability Operations/Irregular Warfare Division at the Pentagon, said that the U.S. military was in fact experiencing a "watershed" moment in its 200-plus-year history -- nation building was now a core military mission to be led by the Army.

Boozell adds, however, that the Army can't possibly raise up failed states without . . . of course, private security contractors . . . -- boom times for nation building are here to stay.

They may need a lot more states to "fail" in order to keep the PMCs busy with new contracts.

Vijay Prashad and Mahmood Mamdani tell us how the US and the EU previously cut funding for African Union peacekeeping efforts in Sudan and Darfur. The AU was actually having some success in reducing violence. Bush does not want that success. By cutting UN peacekeeping funds now, Bush is trying to prevent an indigenous African force, or an international agency, from succeeding in peacekeeping.
In Darfur:

For a time the African Union was able to stabilize the situation, although it did not succeed in crafting a political solution to the problem. The African Union, created in 1999, has neither the financial ability to pay its troops nor the logistical capacity to do its job. The European Union, who paid the troop salaries, began to withhold funds on grounds of accountability, and it gradually killed off the peacekeeping operations. Columbia University Professor Mahmood Mamdani (who is one of the world's leading experts on contemporary Africa) says of this, "There is a concerted attempt being made to shift the political control of any intervention force inside Darfur from inside Africa to outside Africa." In other words, the U.S. and Europe are eager to control the dynamic of what happens in Africa and not allow an indigenous, inter-state agency to gain either the experience this would provide or the respect it would gain if it succeeds. The African Union has been undermined so that only the U.S. can appear as the savior of the beleaguered people of Darfur, and elsewhere.

Undermining the UN, and paying mercenaries instead of the UN, does not save money. This is not frugality. Private military contractors, PMCs, are in business to make money, and they are still very much on the Bush agenda.
cost + profit = increased cost

Of course the costs for PMCs can be reduced by using conscripts and child soldiers. And PMC profits can be increased by dealing in contraband. There are plenty of precedents.

I see these possible reasons why the Bush administration has cut UN peacekeeping funding.

• Prevent African or international solutions to African problems.
• Maintain the US as the only ones capable of solving violent unrest in African countries by preventing indigenous or alternative solutions.
• Provide more jobs and contracts for corporate cronies, the private military contractors.
• Prevent oversight, avoid US law and international law that might apply to US activities in African countries.
• Continue an intentionally destructive policy of undermining the UN.
• Incompetence (does not preclude any of the above.)

USAID & mercenaries, destabilizing by "nation building"

MAS peasants arrive in La Paz after 190km march in 2005
Picture: Indymedia Bolivia

When the proponents of AFRICOM talk about stability operations, one can look at Bolivia and Venezuela to see examples of how these operations work. With AFRICOM, USAID will be subsumed under the Department of Defense. In Bolivia USAID is using taxpayer money to destabilize the Bolivian government. AFRICOM intends increased use of mercenaries by US and corporate employers. In Venezuela US and Columbian mercenaries are contracted by large landowners, business owners, and other elites to control local populations and destabilize the central government. Much of the funding for the mercenaries comes from drug dealing. Many of the mercenaries come from AUC, a right wing terrorist organization from Columbia.

Undermining Bolivia by Benjamin Dangl:

Declassified documents and interviews on the ground in Bolivia prove that the Bush Administration is using U.S. taxpayers’ money to undermine the Morales government and coopt the country’s dynamic social movements—just as it has tried to do recently in Venezuela and traditionally throughout Latin America.

Much of that money is going through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
. . .

Morales won the presidency in December 2005 with 54 percent of the vote, but five regional governments went to rightwing politicians. After Morales’s victory, USAID, through its Office of Transition Initiatives, decided “to provide support to fledgling regional governments,” USAID documents reveal.

Throughout 2006, four of these five resource-rich lowland departments pushed for greater autonomy from the Morales-led central government, often threatening to secede from the nation. U.S. funds have emboldened them, with the Office of Transition Initiatives funneling “116 grants for $4,451,249 to help departmental governments operate more strategically,” the documents state.
. . .
“The U.S. Embassy is helping this opposition,” agrees Raul Prada, who works for Morales’s party. __ . . . “USAID is in Santa Cruz and other departments to help fund and strengthen the infrastructure of the rightwing governors.”

USAID has funded the regional right wing governors, allowing them to oppose democratic distribution of resources, giving them more political strength and clout to defy the central government. It has undermined youth movements, and other local political activities.

“USAID always took advantage of the poverty of the people,” Mamani says. “They even put up USAID flags in areas alongside the Bolivian flag and the wiphala.”

In the one demonstration project USAID invited Mr. Dangl to view, workers would not give their names, and said they would be beaten if they told the truth. And Fulbright scholars are being asked to report political information to the US embassy, in violation of Fulbright guidelines.

And this week from the Washington Post:

President Evo Morales declared a U.S. Embassy security officer to be an "undesirable person" on Monday after reports that the officer asked an American scholar and 30 Peace Corps volunteers to pass along information about Cubans and Venezuelans working in Bolivia
. . .
Fulbright scholar Alex van Schaick told The Associated Press that Cooper, the embassy's assistant regional security officer, asked him to pass along the names and addresses of any Venezuelan and Cuban workers he might encounter in the country. "We know they're out there, we just want to keep tabs on them," Schaick quoted Cooper as telling him on Nov. 5.
ABC News reported that Cooper made a similar request to 30 newly arrived Peace Corps volunteers on July 29

The US embassy came out with the usual, why we would never consider doing such a thing, we only do good. They also made the following laughable statement:

Peace Corps volunteers had been mistakenly given a security briefing meant only for embassy staff, asking them to report "suspicious activities."

In Venezuela:

James Suggett - Venezuelanalysis.com:

Azzellini (Caracas-based German Political Scientist Darío Azzellini, author of a study of Columbian paramilitary activity titled The Business of War) reported that paramilitary operations are carried out by mercenaries from the U.S. and Latin America who are recruited by private military companies but pose as civilian employees. Beyond government oversight, they are contracted by large landowners, business owners, and other elites to control local populations.

A principal source of paramilitary income is their control of 100% of Colombian heroine exports and 70% of Colombian cocaine exports, Azzellini claimed. In Colombia, giant drug cartels manage large quantities of the drugs, but in Venezuela paramilitaries deal smaller amounts in local communities to increase their leverage within the populations they are contracted to control. Chavez and Azzellini publicized this “open secret” at a time of heated opposition accusations that Chávez does not sufficiently cooperate in combating drug trafficking through Venezuelan territory.

Azzellini explained that the groups now in Venezuela are descendents of the United Self-defense of Colombia (AUC), a brutal paramilitary force formed in the 1980s by Colombian elites to assume the dirty work of the government, which was seeking to improve its dismal international human rights reputation. While the AUC tactic of “total terror” has been used in Colombian cities such as Medellín, paramilitaries now in Venezuela leverage local economic and political power more than sheer violence, according to Azzellini.

Nonetheless, paramilitaries in Venezuela are known for “social cleansing,” or the hired killing of local community members, says the Ezequiel Zamora National Farmers’ Front (FNCEZ), an organization that defends the rights of rural communities. Since an agrarian reform law favorable to rural workers was passed by the Chávez administration in 2001, paramilitaries have murdered 190 rural community members who dared to stand up to the owners of plantations, milk factories, and mines.

The most recent killings were last month, when Municipal Legislator Freddy Ascaño and Community Council Federation President Alfredo Montiel were executed by paramilitaries in their municipality of Tucaní, south of Lake Maracaibo in western Venezuela, the local population reported

I don't generally write about issues in Latin America. But the way the US deals with Latin America, historically, and especially under the Bush administration, has many parallels and lessons for African countries.

AFRICOM brags about engaging in stability operations and nation building.
Nation building and stability operations mean:

1. Destabilize the current government (unless it is already a compliant or puppet government, in which case, undermine the opposition).
   
2. Call opponents terrorists.
3. Stabilize, engage in "nation building", by supporting or installing a government that will follow US corporate bidding, rather than democratic principles.

This is imperialism.
"Stability" and "nation building" follow a Bush pattern of naming things the opposite of what they are and what they do.

Africa has already experienced some of these "stability operations", in Somalia, destroying the only functioning government in 15 years, and creating an overwhelming humanitarian crisis, and in the Kenya election fiasco, being the most recent and dramatic. There are ongoing "stability operations" in other places in Africa and around the world.

US mercenaries in Iraq rape their colleagues with impunity

Mercenaries, military contractors in Iraq rape their colleagues, as reported in the New York Times, and by ABC News. If the women who are raped complain, they get fired. The perpetrators of the assaults and rapes face no penalties. No law applies to them, and the employment contracts force employees who have been raped into secret arbitration, with an arbitrator picked by the company, no law, no justice.

If mercenaries are doing this to colleagues who share the same citizenship, and can get away with it, how do you suppose they will treat the citizens of African countries when they operate in Africa? Under AFRICOM, both the Department of Defense and the Department of State employ military contractors in Africa, and both have indicated they plan to employ more. Mercenary corporations in Africa have already been implicated in physical abuse, sexual slavery, paedophilia, and human traffiking.


You can read my article: The Rising Mercenary Industry and AFRICOM over at the African Loft.

US State Department recruiting mercenaries to work in Africa

The US State Department has issued AFRICAP Program Recompete:

The Department of State, Bureau of African Affairs now seeks sources for the recompete of the AFRICAP program contract. The program encompasses logistics support, construction, military training and advising, maritime security capacity building, equipment procurement, operational deployment for peacekeeping troops, aerial surveillance and conference facilitation. Potential contractors must possess a broad range of functional regional expertise and logistics support capabilities. The intent is to have contractors on call to undertake a wide range of diverse projects, including setting up operational bases to support peacekeeping operations in hostile environments, military training and to providing a range of technical assistance and equipment for African militaries and peace support operations. These tasks will be implemented in countries throughout the African continent, as designated by the DOS, and in conjunction with specific DOS programs and policies.

The part in bold means military confrontations, fighting. The budget estimate is a billion dollars over 5 years. This is another example of the State Department becoming an arm of the Department of Defense. If DoS is subsumed under DoD, where can genuine diplomacy come from? This is very bad news for African countries. The big danger on the ground from AFRICOM is more likely to come from the military and security contractors, rather than US soldiers and sailors. Over at Moon of Alabama, Bernhard has a good writeup and followup discussion about the import of this.

I just came across a harvest of information, the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, Tracking the positive and negative impacts of over 4000 companies worldwide. If you put a search query in the search box on the left, for example 'angola diamonds', you can discover a lot of documentation. Many of the linked articles will be in MicroSoft Word. h/t to Sokari for the link.

And Human Security Gateway links a Database of Researchers on International Private Security.

Not much time to write this week, I hope to be back with more soon, and to look at some of these in a bit more depth.

Studying mercenaries

Blackwater mercenary in New Orleans

Chatham House held a discussion of private military and security companies in January. You can read the report in pdf form here: Chatham House International Law Discussion Group: Private Military and Security Companies - PDF.

And the Miskolc Journal of International Law, from Miskolc University in Hungary, just published this article:

Károly VÉGH: ‘Warriors for Hire?’ – Private military contractors and the international law of armed conflicts _
__ the article in pdf format

These articles discuss the legal definition of mercenaries, the inadequacies of the definition, and related legal issues.

You can read my article on mercenaries in Africa over at the African Loft: The Rising Mercenary Industry and AFRICOM.

*

Mercenarism 2.0 - private security, international law, and human rights

Courtesy of Human Security Gateway, we learn that the Harvard International Law Review has published a report on mercenaries in international law and human rights:

Mercenarism 2.0? The Rise of the Modern Private Security Industry and Its Implications for International Humanitarian Law Enforcement-(PDF)

Abstract :
In response to reports of frequent criminal misconduct, aggressive behavior, and human rights abuses committed with impunity by private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, some have argued that private military and security companies (“PMSCs”) are no more than modern mercenaries, and that they should therefore be banned under the standing international prohibition on mercenarism. However, the existing instruments prohibiting mercenarism would be difficult to apply to most PMSCs, making it easy for states that want to continue to use these companies to evade such a ban. In contrast, given market forces pushing PMSCs to be more compliant and emerging state practices that favor regulation, coordinated international regulation of PMSCs might feasibly be enforced. This article proposes that many of the issues with private military and security companies could be addressed by creating an international humanitarian law (“IHL”) principle that recognizes state use of PMSCs as a means of warfare. The availability of advanced, independent security and military capabilities-for-hire enables states or nonstate actors to get around political or resource constraints that otherwise might limit the use of force, and may undermine IHL enforcement. These threats might be addressed if IHL established a stronger state responsibility link between states and the PMSCs they hire. International humanitarian law should provide that states who outsource government security or military functions in support of any combat or humanitarian operations that would otherwise trigger IHL must establish internal oversight, accountability, and liability mechanisms to ensure that these actors comply with international and domestic legal norms and regulations.

It is an interesting report as far as it goes. It begins to describe the issues and dangers posed by PMSCs employed by sovereign states, which is critical. It only briefly mentions the existence of private or corporate employers of PMSCs, it does not specify any of the dangers they pose, or suggest how privately employed PMSCs might be regulated or held accountable for their actions. Nevertheless, it is a good idea to start some study and discussion of the PMSCs, their roles, what kind of regulation is needed, and how to enforce it.

Check my article on the private security industry in Africa over at the African Loft: The Rising Mercenary Industry and AFRICOM.

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ISS to study the private security industry

The Institute For Security Studies in South Africa is organizing a study of the private security industry, particularly as it operates in the Congo DRC, Uganda, and South Africa.

From the ISS:

The past decade has seen rapid growth in the private security industry, both in Africa and globally. Private security companies have diversified their activities to include military advice and training, arms procurement, intelligence gathering, logistical and medical support and in limited instances, combat and operational support.
. . .
Understandably, the presence of these organisations in Africa has raised questions related to the accountability and democratic oversight of this industry, the extent to which governments, the UN and relief agencies are outsourcing key ‘state’ functions and the influence that these companies gain in the process.
. . .
Mercenarism, the darker side of the private military sector, continues to be a threat to stability on the African continent as was illustrated recently.__. . . The connections of certain individuals to more ‘legitimate’ private security activities in Africa have blurred the lines between this and the blatantly illegal activities associated with the private security sector.
. . .
The rapid growth of private security in Africa has outpaced the regulation of the industry. With this in mind the ISS through the Defence Sector Programme (DSP) has initiated a project on “The Regulation of the Private Security Sector in Africa”.__ . . . the project seeks to further support the effective regulation of the growing private security sector in Africa towards the establishment of a consistent and logical regulatory framework for national, sub-regional and regional legislation and protocols.

There are also a number of relevant documents linked and listed at the end of the announcement.

As to the industry itself, there was a recent conference in Nairobi, reported by IRIN Africa:

During a three-day conference in Nairobi that brought together UN agencies, NGOs, officials of numerous governments and several private sector companies, PMCs said they had much to offer in terms of logistics, personnel and expertise.
. . .
However, they have recently suffered a barrage of bad publicity and criticism from human rights organisations.
. . .
According to a report prepared for (US Secretary of State) Rice by a US diplomat, PMCs in Iraq currently “operate in an overall environment that is chaotic, unsupervised, deficient in oversight and accountability, and poorly coordinated”.
. . .
That the private [security] sector is here to stay is beyond question and because it poses a major concern to Africa, it must be controlled and regulated," a senior researcher with the South African-based Institute for Security Studies (ISS) and human rights lawyer, Sabelo Gumedz, said.

The ISS is researching the role of PMCs in South Africa, Uganda and DRC with a view to establishing a continent-wide regulatory framework.

You can see my article on the private security industry in Africa over at the African Loft: The Rising Mercenary Industry and AFRICOM.

Mercenaries - a growth industry

Mercenaries in New Orleans - "nation building" at home

In Private military industry continues to grow, Rafael Enrique Valero describes the growth industry of people who fight and spy for private gain, mercenaries.

The mercenary corporations have a trade association and lobbying arm, with the Orwellian name of International Peace Operations Association. They held their annual convention in October 2007, attended by among others, Army Lt. Col. James Boozell.

. . . Army Lt. Col. James Boozell, a branch chief of the Stability Operations/Irregular Warfare Division at the Pentagon, said that the U.S. military was in fact experiencing a "watershed" moment in its 200-plus-year history -- nation building was now a core military mission to be led by the Army.

. . . his presence at the association's trade meeting sent a clear message -- boom times for nation building are here to stay . . .

The Army understands this. Globalization has weakened borders and ratcheted up commerce even as it breaks down a country's physical and psychological security. Transnational actors such as Al Qaeda are seeking bases in failed and feeble states worldwide. Africa is particularly vulnerable.

Of course there are a variety of transnational actors, including the oil companies. In Africa these actors are trying to co-opt African resources. That is why Africa is particularly vulnerable.

"Peace operations" and "nation building" are what the military and the mercenaries call their activities. But just like Bush's "healthy forests" and "clear skies" initiatives, the names mean the opposite of what they do.

While African states are trying to put the culture of military rule behind them, the United States appears determined to demonstrate that most civilian activities in Africa should be undertaken by armed forces. - Samuel Makinda

Right now, the debate is about private security contractors -- in particular, Blackwater's shooting of civilians in Iraq -- and how to control these corporate warriors in a theater of conflict. Maybe that's the least of our worries.

. . . as stability operations become the norm worldwide, it is certainly possible that civilian and military interests could blur into a self-perpetuating, symbiotic relationship. Experts wonder if it could lead the United States into a period of "liberal imperialism" that oddly mirrors the British, French, and Dutch East India companies of the 1600s and 1700s -- private entities sanctioned by governments to do their bidding.
. . .
MPRI advertises that it works only on international projects endorsed by the U.S. government, and that claim is true as far as it goes. But the company's well-connected executives, most of them former military brass, know how to lobby Congress to get the contracts they want. Indeed, DynCorp, MPRI, and other private security contractors are heavily staffed and run by former officers who maintain close ties to the men they once led.

. . . after MPRI requested a license to evaluate Equatorial Guinea's defense department in 1998, the State Department denied the permit because of the West African country's poor human-rights record. MPRI ex-generals then lobbied Congress and the State Department, arguing that engaging the country "rather than punishing it" would, Avant writes, "foster better behavior in the future and enhance U.S. oil interests." The application was then approved but was quickly flagged by the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. MPRI executives again pressed their case to the right people; in 2000, although Equatorial Guinea's human-rights record had not changed, State approved the contract.

"I think that the thing you're pointing out with MPRI's contract is the degree to which a company with a commercial interest can have influence on policy," Avant said in an interview. "Now, of course, that happens all the time. But I think it nonetheless opens the question of whether U.S. foreign policy is in the pursuit of 'U.S. interests' by some objective definition, or whether it's in pursuit of interests of a smaller number of people.
. . .
President Bush, . . . has directed the Pentagon to create the U.S. Africa Command by late 2008 to "help coordinate the work of other U.S. government agencies, particularly the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development" to assist African governments and their young rapid-reaction African Standby Force, meant "to provide security and respond in times of need" to troubled nations.

-- private relief and development groups and other organizations might not want to work with the U.S. military. Relief groups are steadfast about their neutrality when they are working in war zones in unstable countries; they don't want one side accusing them of helping the other. In an essay, Carolyn Bryan of USAID writes that contractors and NGOs may not want to compromise their neutrality, because "it increases their risk of being targeted by insurgents." This separation between the military and the NGOs is called "humanitarian space," Bryan says, "and is not always understood by the military, who would prefer to join forces with the NGOs and their activities."
. . .
The private contractors "contradict the military culture's foundation of sacrifice for the collective good,"
. . .
. . . in the blurry asymmetrical wars of the future, how long will it be before a president decides to "go off the books" and hire a small private army to fight a war. It wouldn't be hard to do.

"The big risk is not what the companies are going to do in and of themselves," Avant said. "The big risks are what the consumers are going to ask them to do."

Of course presidents have already gone "off the books" to fight their wars. That is what Reagan's Iran Contra was about. A lot of Bush's Iraq war is off the books, look for the missing billions. It looks like this pattern could become a lot worse.

That is one reason why:

AFRICOM is not about large forces, or large military bases. “It’s not about troops. Its really about headquarter staff, military and civilians; people who oversee programs, they do planning and coordinate security assistance programs.”

AFRICOM can be the pass through vehicle for covert actions and "off the books" operations, "security assistance programs". That is the reason Bush/Cheney want a huge and thriving mercenary industry. And when they are gone, the industry will still be thriving.


2/2008 - You can read my article on mercenaries in Africa over at the African Loft: The Rising Mercenary Industry and AFRICOM.

Mercenaries and AFRICOM

AFL, Armed Forces of Liberia, first graduation parade for troops trained by DynCorp. This article from Liberia's Anaylst newspaper is quite enthusiastic about the training.

DynCorp, an American security contractor, was recently awarded US$ 40 million in contracts from the US State Department to train and transform the former rebel group, the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), into a professional military force. The disclosure of the company's latest operations in Sudan raises questions regarding the appropriate role of security contractors in conflict zones as well as the aims of the US government in mediating the situation in Sudan. (11/07)

One thing the creators of AFRICOM have not discussed publicly since its creation is the role of mercenaries, military contractors, in the military engagement with Africa. And no one should make any mistake, a military command is military engagement, no matter how much they talk about aid and diplomacy. This blog has discussed some of the potential uses and issues surrounding mercenaries and mercenary corporations, and how they might be used in Africa in the future, both by governments and corporations.

There is no doubt that the Bush administration intends extensive use of military contractors in Africa. They have said so. In November 2003 Theresa Whelan, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs, and frequent spokesperson for AFRICOM, addressed a dinner of the Orwellianly named IPOA, International Peace Operations Association, the association of military contractors. (The contractors are also described more accurately as PMCs or PMFs, private military contractors or private military firms). Much of Whelan's speech (full text here) was about use of PMCs in Africa, and about how their role is on the rise. "Contractors are here to stay in supporting US national security objectives overseas."

In situations where government and social institutions have collapsed, as in civil wars, it is critical that there is accountability and oversight in the rebuilding process. PMCs simply do not have sufficient accountability and oversight built into their operations. In fact one of the reasons to employ them is precisely to avoid accountability and oversight. And Whelan points this out in her speech: "some times we may not want to be very visible." She is quoted in an article in The Guardian that ties her to an attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea. If that is the case, it is another situation where the US has supported both sides of a conflict.

And she seems to want to move the PMCs away from accountability, from her speech:

Also, the current International Criminal Court situation leaves the civilians out in the open with regard to potential criminal sanctions. Again, this is an area that needs to be explored more. The military are automatically covered by SOFAs, but the contractors are hanging out there. It gets back to my earlier comments that we have to try to work the contractors into the SOFAs in order to provide protection. (SOFA: Status of forces agreement - An agreement that defines the legal position of a visiting military force deployed in the territory of a friendly state. The Bush administration is known for bullying countries into signing SOFAs that exempt US soldiers from much accountability.)

Whelan says using the PMCs is cheaper than using the US military. However, corporations are in business to make a profit. Adding profit to the cost means a higher cost, cost+profit = bigger cost. Alternatively, or even additionally, PMCs, or their employees, can increase profits by trading in contraband and human traffiking, and have been repeatedly implicated in these activities in Africa, raising profits for the PMCs, employees and employers, and raising costs, often paid in blood, by the people in whose lands they operate.

PMCs at work in Africa:

The Analyst's article on training the Liberian army seems quite pleased with the training that DynCorp is providing. Although it does ask some questions about the process for how the officer candidates are chosen, which seems to be minus any transparency. The author expresses some confidence because "the Americans are also monitoring the process against any abuse." Given the record of abuse and corruption racked up by the Bush administration and its contractors in Iraq and in the US, I would not count on US oversight being very helpful at present.

Contractors have conducted training in Ghana, from Whelan's speech:

For example, today, Ghana’s ACOTA (African Contingencies Operations Training and Assistance Program) training program, both field and classroom, has been conducted entirely by civilian contractors. Now actually some of these contractors were reservists but nonetheless it was all contractor training, we did not have any active duty military participating in the training.

Regarding the picture from Sudan above, if the US government hopes to be seen as acting in good faith by the government of Sudan, it should not be using PMCs to arm and train rebel groups. That is a fairly explicit indication the US is working against the Sudanese government for another "regime change". It is unlikely to help the people in Darfur or southern Sudan, and it limits what the US is able to do in any diplomatic direction. And, it means more people will be hurt and die.

When the eastern Congo is mentioned at all in the US media, the terrible violence there, and in the Great Lakes region, is presented as some inexplicable African dysfunction. Both Europe and the United States have actively contributed to successive waves of weapons, warfare and invasion, brutalizing and terrorizing the local people, and leaving millions dead. Even here the problems go back to post World War II and the Cold War, including the role the US played in the origins of state sponsored terrorism in Africa.(link corrected) PMCs have been leading participants throughout all of this. Keith Harmon Snow and David Barouski provide a lot of background, and write in their carefully documented article:

Private Military Contractors (PMCs) are also big business in Africa. Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, helped build a military base near Cyangugu, Rwanda just next to the Congo-Rwandan border. ”Officially,” Brown and Root was there to clear land mines, but instead housed mercenaries from Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI) who trained the RPF and Laurent Kabila’s ADFL for invasion of the Congo in 1996, and the Rwandan army’s re-invasion in 1998, after Laurent Kabila threw out the Rwandans, Ugandans, Bechtel and the IMF. The French intelligence service reported that U.S. Special Forces and mercenaries from MPRI participated in the murder of Rwandan Hutu refugees on the Oso River near Goma in 1996 and even claims to have turned over the bodies of two American soldiers killed in combat near Goma. The circumstances surrounding the unofficial recovery of these two U.S. soldiers remain very mysterious.

MPRI is based in Arlington, Virginia and is staffed and run by 36 retired U.S. generals. It is contracted by the Pentagon to fulfill the African Crisis Responsive Initiative (ACRI). This program includes the Ugandan military, and it supplied military training in guerrilla warfare to Ugandan officers at Fort Bragg, North Carolina in July 1996. During the invasion of the Congo in 1998, Ugandan soldiers were found with ACRI equipment while Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have implicated Ugandan battalions trained by ACRI in rapes, murders, extortion, and beatings of Ugandan civilians.

And another article by Jules-Cesar Malula, writing from Kinshasa, comments on the company Executive Outcomes' activities in the Great Lakes region:

Another mercenary firm, Executive Outcomes, has established other private military companies that operate around Africa. Cofounder Tony Buckingham’s Heritage Oil and Gas company works closely with PMC Sandline International to manipulate the petroleum options around Lake Albert.

It is believed to have signed concession deals with warring armies and governments on both sides of the Uganda-DRC border.

The expansion of conflicts, who profits and how, and who pays the cost and how, and the expansion of mercenary armies, is a looming danger of AFRICOM. It is something the African Union, the regional organizations, and citizens of African countries, need to watch.

2/2008 - You can read my article on mercenaries in Africa over at the African Loft: The Rising Mercenary Industry and AFRICOM.

Why does the US NEED to have an enhanced military presence in Africa?

US, France, Cameroon, exercise in the Gulf of Guinea, March 2007

I happened to be flipping through channels before I went to sleep last night and came across a Charlie Rose interview with General Kip Ward, head of AFRICOM. I'd like to find the transcript to get the words right, but could not find it on the Charlie Rose website, though they should post the video eventually. In the course of the interview Rose asked General Ward to imagine Rose was the head of an African country, saying he had heard a lot about what AFRICOM was not, could the General tell him what it is? (something that a lot of inquiring minds would like to know.) General Ward had his answer ready. I can't remember his exact words, which is why I was looking for the transcript, but it was a completely meaningless answer, pure bureaucratese, meaning anything you want it to mean, the kind of answer that is a wall rather than a window.


Sokari asks questions about AFRICOM that need to be asked, and need to be answered:

• Why does the US feels it needs a military presence in Africa?


• What will the US military presence consist of in terms of military hardware and numbers of personnel?


• How does the US intend to operate and in what circumstances will it’s forces be mobilized?


• In what way will the US military presence dictate or determine the price of Africa’s natural resources and who gets access to them?


• In what way will the US military presence infringe on the internal affairs of independent African countries and determine their foreign policy towards other AU members?


• How will the US military presence influence the foreign policy of independent African states towards non AU countries such as China?


• How will the US enhanced military presence infringe of the rights of African citizens?


• How will Africom impact on continental migration and the rights of the millions of Africans without citizenship and the rights of refugees?

This blog has discussed the role of the Heritage Foundation in the creation of AFRICOM. One fear they are trying to stir is fear of the influence of China in Africa. As Sokari points out:

The US has always been at the forefront of Free Trade Agreements. Now it finds itself in $billions of dollars trade deficit with China it is crying, forgetting that China’s industrial growth and huge export market is part of the same globalisation that the US is itself the main proponent. The difference is simply that China is in the driving seat and not the US.

And as to China I think she is absolutely on target:

China is doing to Africa what Europe and the US have been doing for 100s of years. Instead of joining in Western economic paranoia we should recognise this is merely an extension of colonialism / neo-colonialism and economic exploitation and deal with it as such. The US and the West have their own issues with China and to some extent this is played out on our soil. We should be seizing the time and using this as a weapon to ensure we get the best deal for our resources and citizens.

Unfortunately, one of the questions she asks, excellent as far as it goes, is not complete - What will the US military presence consist of in terms of military hardware and numbers of personnel? We also need to ask: what kind of military personnel? How and how much does the US plan to employ private military and intelligence corporations.

I don't think the greatest immediate danger posed by AFRICOM is from US soldiers and sailors. One of the things that worries me is that I suspect the mercenaries and mercenary corporations are what the US plans to use in Africa, in addition to training African military as US surrogates. These mercenaries may be employees of the US State Department, or some other US government department, as they are in Iraq. Or they may be the employees of giant corporations, such as oil companies. Whatever US objectives, arms and mercenaries can only destabilize. The presence of actual US military personnel may just be window dressing. The dirty work will be done by private armies and private CIAs. Already in the US these are taking over the functions of the military and intelligence. I am hoping a change in US administration may change the direction of this trend, but there are no guarantees.

African Loft asked the question in an open forum: Does Africa need AFRICOM? This is the question that Sokari answered by asking her questions.

Kunle comments:

I feel sad that Africa is still some “distant treasure island” to be fought over and protected for selfish interests by foreign powers. It was Britain and France some decades ago (colonial era 1) now its the USA and China (colonial era 2?).

Ginger comments:

As already stated, almost everything the US does is based on self-interest. Nothing wrong with that, but that fact is worth keeping in mind by the so-called ‘beneficiaries’ of the current ‘magnanimity’ by the US.
. . .
Now I will not be surprised if they get their way, because in the final analysis, all they have to convince is just one man in each country. In Pakistan, they convinced Musharaf who become an ally in America’s War, even against the wishes of some of his own people. It is no surprise that Liberia is offering itself as a base: no better way to ensure the country does not return to its previous chaos. Now Nigeria… Nigeria is the big prize!

And that is where the ordinary enlightened person comes in. To ensure that no one man at the top mortgages his country for ‘personal’ gains.

What’s the conclusion of this rambling of mine? No to AFRICOM.

Another reason given for AFRICOM is combating terrorism. Ginger also makes an excellent point in regard to terrorism, particularly as that word is being used in context with Nigeria. His summary analysis is as clear and concise a description as I have seen of the problem:

And nobody should dismiss contrary opinions by simply labeling them as “America-bashers”, no sir! There are facts that stare us in the face.

AFRICOM or whatever does not make America bad, OK, so I am not making any judgment on their intentions. My take is simply as an African who thinks that my sovereignty should be respected by all. If you wanna visit my country, by all means you’re welcome, but first, apply for a visa, but I remain in command!

Islamic radicals? Thank you sir! As far as labels go, America applies them as it suits their purpose. Here in Nigeria, the government calls the ‘militants’ “Restless Youths”, when they want to be magnanimous but otherwise, “Terrorists”. Little does the public know that these youths were armed by politicians who used them to fight their political battles, but failed to mop up the weapons after the operation: nor pay for ’services’ rendered. The targets have simply been changed.

Same thing happened with America. The renegade and heartless Osama Bin Laden was an ally of America during the Russian incursion into Afghanistan. The Taliban and their likes used weapons that America provided through the CIA station agents in times past. When allies were changed, labels were changed. Terrorists yes, but it sure makes my hair stand to see people use labels for their convenience.

The militant youth of the Niger Delta are employed as armed gangs by the politicians when it suits political expediency. They are discarded and treated as criminals or "terrorists" when they are no longer needed, or when they represent the opposition. And all the while huge and dangerous stockpiles of arms are accumulating all around.

3 bits of news relevant to AFRICOM

1. -- South Africa has been most vocal in its opposition, and its skepticism about US motives in creating AFRICOM. Peter Pham, who has been actively promoting Bush administration rhetoric on AFRICOM, has played the opening notes of a typical Bush administration smear attack on the South African government. His primary theme: because the ANC used to be called terrorists, they don't mind, and even harbour terrorists. And his secondary theme is that South Africa is encouraging Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. Pham appears to regret that South Africa is a democracy, and his sympathies seem to be with the security people left over from the good old days of apartheid. So once again US voices are attacking a democratically elected government, because that government questions US motives:

. . . it needs to be borne in mind today's South Africa is a democracy and thus policy direction comes not from the security professionals, but the political echelons of the ANC among whom the "anti-Western" and "revolutionary" rhetoric of the bin Ladens and Ahmadinejads of the world still resonates.

Pham treats this as an extremist statement:

"the global anti-terror industry, chaired by the U.S.A., has led to many unfortunate assumptions made by governments and the public alike."

Pham concludes his article by hyping terror threats against the World Cup.


2. -- Then from Nigeria comes this rather noteworthy bit of doublespeak:

Chief of Defence Staff, Lt. General Andrew Owoye Azazi yesterday allayed the fears of Nigerians on the continued presence of United States military in the Gulf of Guinea.
. . .

"US wants relative peace to be able to undertake their business" he said pointing out that there is no other motive behind their troops presence to worry anybody.

On the Niger Delta situation, the Defence chief said that military have lost sizeable number of personnel in the troubled region but refused to give the exact figure of casualties. He said that Nigerians should not expect a military solution to Niger Delta problem but assured that the military will try to stabilize the place for the much-needed political solution.

On the intelligence capability of Nigeria military to cope with the Niger Delta situation, General Azazi said the military have it but noted that successful intelligence work depends largely on the people and their willingness to give information.

General Azazi also spoke on the role of the military in the last general election and said that they were only asked to ensure stable environment for the poll to take place.

The Chief said that a guideline was drawn out for those military personnel who participated in ensuring stability during the elections.He noted that most of the allegations of military involvement cannot be substantiated but assured that any obvious case will be dealt with in a military way.

"We will deal with the identified ones" but wondered how it can be substantiated.

Nothing to see here, just move along.
Trust us to take care of any problems, we have your best interests and the best interests of the country and the continent at heart. You don't need to know anything, we'll take care of it. Trust us.

Nigeria has voiced opposition to AFRICOM. But the US government has been working on them. This looks like Nigeria may be yielding.


3. -- Meanwhile, in Iraq, the Iraqi government may be evicting Blackwater. And the Iraqi government has officially rescinded the ruling that gave security contractors immunity from prosecution. So the mercenary corporations may feel the need to leave Iraq. This is not good news for Africa. Theresa Whelan, Defense undersecretary, has encouraged the use of military contractors in African countries. The contractors have been acting with violent impunity in Iraq. The pattern of behavior of the developed countries in military engagement with Africa has always been to assume they are entitled to act with violent impunity (it is civilizing, or now, globalizing). If military contractors leave, or are evicted from Iraq because they can no longer act with violent impunity, they'll be looking for more jobs, where they can continue their violent behavior unrestrained. African oil and resources seem likely to draw their attention, which is very bad news for people living in African countries.

Outsourcing, spying, what you practice and what you preach

Your World - AT&T
Image courtesy of Outside the Silver Lining, see also Verizzzzzon

Glenn Greenwald quotes:

. . . from that 1998 Foreign Affairs essay by Thomas Carothers helpfully outlining the steps required to install the "rule of law" in third-world, pre-democracy countries:

Type three reforms aim at the deeper goal of increasing government's compliance with law. A key step is achieving genuine judicial independence. . . . But the most crucial changes lie elsewhere. Above all, government officials must refrain from interfering with judicial decision-making and accept the judiciary as an independent authority.

(Meanwhile, in the US Congress)

Let's just describe very factually and dispassionately what has happened here. Congress -- led by Senators, such as Jay Rockefeller, who have received huge payments from the telecom industry, and by privatized intelligence pioneer Mike McConnell, former Chairman of the secretive intelligence industry association that has been demanding telecom amnesty -- is going to intervene directly in the pending lawsuits against AT&T and other telecoms and declare them the winners on the ground that they did nothing wrong. Because of their vast ties to the telecoms, neither Rockefeller nor McConnell could ever appropriately serve as an actual judge in those lawsuits.
. . .
The question of whether the telecoms acted in "good faith" in allowing warrantless government spying on their customers is already pending before a court of law. In fact, that is one of the central issues in the current lawsuits -- one that AT&T has already lost in a federal court.

Yet that is the issue that Jay Rockefeller and Mike McConnell -- operating in secret -- are taking away from the courts by passing a law declaring the telecoms to have won . . . They are directly interfering in these lawsuits and issuing a "ruling" in favor of AT&T and other telecoms that is exactly the opposite of the one an actual court of law has already issued.

Mostly we have thought of the US as a democracy, and not a pre-democracy. But Administration and Congressional support for this bill makes us highly sceptical, and even more worried that the US is becoming a post-democracy. In many parts of the world, if you say something the government doesn't like, jeeps arrive at your door at 4am. One of the beautiful things about the United States was that this did not happen, at least not legally. Now the US government has private spies and private armies, dangerous steps in a dangerous direction.

R.J. Hillhouse tells us in the Washington Post:

Red alert: Our national security is being outsourced.

The most intriguing secrets of the "war on terror" have nothing to do with al-Qaeda and its fellow travelers. They're about the mammoth private spying industry that all but runs U.S. intelligence operations today

Surprised? No wonder. In April, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell was poised to publicize a year-long examination of outsourcing by U.S. intelligence agencies. But the report was inexplicably delayed -- and suddenly classified a national secret. What McConnell doesn't want you to know is that the private spy industry has succeeded where no foreign government has: It has penetrated the CIA and is running the show.
. . .
Private companies now perform key intelligence-agency functions, to the tune, I'm told, of more than $42 billion a year. Intelligence professionals tell me that more than 50 percent of the National Clandestine Service (NCS) -- the heart, brains and soul of the CIA -- has been outsourced to private firms.

This is why the big telecoms, and their friends in Congress want immunity. They are among the companies who have been spying illegally on the American people.

The law giving the telecoms immunity has been stopped, at least for now, by Sen. Chris Dodd. He deserves high praise for his patriotism, and his defense of the US Constitution.

Privatization - turning the US into a third world state

New Orleans left to drown by the Bush administration after hurricane Katrina

In reading Poisoned Wells: The Dirty Politics of African Oil, I came across this description of the government of Congo Brazzaville.

. . . it is not just inefficient public companies that are being privatized - but the very functions of the state. State shipping taxes on oil and timber are paid to private interests, and not recorded in the budget. The national airline collapsed down to little more than a vehicle for collecting air transit fees from foreign airlines; private firms have armlocks on port and shipping facilities, telecommunications, and banks, breaking laws freely or having parliament rubber-stamp new ones in their favor.

As state institutions give way to private interests, Congo's government stands increasingly on just three remaining pillars: first, the internationally recognized sovereignty that legitimizes the oil and banking contracts; second, the state oil company and the oil and finance ministries that manage the financial engineering; and, finally the armed forces that protect the system. Even ongoing low-level conflict is tolerated, as long as it does not threaten the sovereign extractive core. "Not only do these state institutions survive, but the state begins to hang off these institutions as if nothing else existed . . . They deal with the intricacies of oil-backed loans and the oil industries. They become the state. It is not a collapsed state but a privatized state. With a collapsed state, the rulers lose control; with a privatized state, they can even increase the possibility of accumulation."

"The people are utterly disenfranchised . . In the city everything is expensive" . . . an attractive world of international airports, satellite dishes, oil rigs, French cafes, and air-conditioned hairdressers . . . "in the rural areas there is nothing. Rape and gang-rape are taken to violent extremes; there is a total lack of structure in society, and generalized impunity . . . Congo is two nations."
(Poisoned Wells by Nicholas Shaxson, p.116-117, ISBN 978-1403971944)

What struck me is that this is the final reduction when government is privatized. This looks like the ultimate outcome of the kind of government to which Bush/Cheney are leading the US.

The treatment of New Orleans following hurricane Katrina is one example, as illustrated above. But there are others. Sometime earlier this year I read about the Bush administration trying to privatize functions of the IRS, including tax collection, which sounds a great deal like Congo Brazzaville.

Bush vetoing the SCHIP childrens health insurance is another. The Republican argument reduces to: if your parents can't afford private health insurance, you can't have health insurance.

And the privatizing of spying, the outsourcing of intelligence is another example. The people who have been doing the spying on the American people are for the most part not government workers. The people spying on US citizens are private companies, the telecommunications giants, working at the behest of the Bush administration. In the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) contract employees occupy 51% of DIA office space. And The Spy Who Billed Me asks a number of questions about this, including:

• Can the DIA afford $1 billion of staff who are paid a "private business salary" when it's own government staff receive "taxpayer funded salaries"?
• Can the DIA really afford $1 billion of staff who do not have a fiduciary duty to the DIA, but to another entity?

John Holt, in a recent article in the London Review of Books speculates that the current situation in Iraq is exactly what Bush and Cheney had in mind when they invaded Iraq.

On the assumption that the Bush-Cheney strategy is oil-centred, the tactics – dissolving the army, de-Baathification, a final ‘surge’ that has hastened internal migration – could scarcely have been more effective. The costs – a few billion dollars a month plus a few dozen American fatalities (a figure which will probably diminish, and which is in any case comparable to the number of US motorcyclists killed because of repealed helmet laws) – are negligible compared to $30 trillion in oil wealth, assured American geopolitical supremacy and cheap gas for voters. In terms of realpolitik, the invasion of Iraq is not a fiasco; it is a resounding success.

And, of course, the costs do not include any consideration of the cost to the Iraqis, once again looking like the Congo Brazzaville model. And Bush and Cheney increase their possibilities for accumulation.