An interesting topic that I came to by way of my African Studies professor. In a meeting of the Michigan Action Network on Africa (MANA), he was listing off a number of woes for Africa and among that list was a quick comment about many South Africans working in the controversial security firm Blackwater USA. I could hardly believe it. Could the US security firms really be recruiting from South Africa? I then caught an article in glancing and noticed that foreign diplomats believed that the best security personnel were the South Africans. I had to look into it further. While I could not find the article again I have found a few others that were just as helpful in my knowledge search.
Being involved in the private military or security business is not something to let everyone know. When Mrs. Durant's husband was kidnapped in an ambush in Iraq she had no support group of weeping war wives to turn to. All she had was her silence. What the Chicago Times called South Africa's silent war in Iraq has been a very vocal war in the US especially with the controversy over Blackwater's killing of Iraqi civilians. However, former military and police in South Africa are not new to harsh conflict. In the 1990s thousands of white military personnel left with the apartheid transition. Many of those unemployed officers and soldiers join private security firms and became involved in wars all across Africa, including Sierra Leone and Angola. So it is not surprising that working in a private security firm is something that is not talked about in South Africa. I am sure it holds a very sore spot in the country's history.
It seems that Blackwater will search every inch of the earth to find good mecenaries. From Chile to Brazil and now South Africa. The UN recently reported that South Africa is one of the
top three suppliers for security personnel in Iraq. One South African security company received a multi-million dollar contract to train military recruits in Iraq. There are almost 43,000 South African private security personnel working in Iraq. The Institute for Security Studies wrote and article and in it mentioned the story of a doctoral student heading to Iraq to do research and a friend told him to make sure he was placed with the South African security because they were the best.
This may not mean much for South Africa because this is a practice that is not publicized. If you are involved in private security then it is best not to let that be known. You will not be welcomed home as a hero. Many note that after the 'troop' surge (or private security surge?) that South Africans will be again be out of security jobs, but maybe the Iraqi government will sign them on after to continue helping at oil stations. At any rate this becomes a larger issue for the US. How can the US government, using private security firms, allow security and war to be outsourced even more? How can there be any more accountability if they are signing on former, white army officers who supported apartheid? It can't be long before people get fed up with outsourcing in the war-industry, especially the lesser paid and trained soldiers on the ground. It is a very worrisome topic for both the US and South Africa. South Africa seems to have an influx of military personnel, who gained no further skills after apartheid. The US looks to have an issue of controlling said security firms in their actions.
From the When not in Africa blog.
Previously posted on the Young People For Blog.
Showing posts with label blackwater usa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blackwater usa. Show all posts
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Blackwater and privatization
The impact of the privatization of U.S. military forces bubbled to the surface, again, when the Iraqi government announced it was revoking Blackwater USA’s operating license following an incident where eight Iraqi citizens were killed. Of course, Iraq is under heavy pressure from the U.S. occupiers to back off.
On the heels of those headlines, allegations have surfaced that Blackwater smuggled weapons into Iraq.
Congressional investigations into corruption and other outlaw activity by Blackwater and other private contractors are under way.
The question is not who are these guys, although Blackwater’s mercenary profile is the poster child for all the private security corporations that sprang up in the wake of 9/11. The question is how did they get to Iraq and Afghanistan? And should the U.S. military be privatized?
Privatization is not cheap. Blackwater’s contract with the State Department is reported to be $800 million for its “services” in Iraq. Its contract to ferry U.S. troops to Afghanistan is $38.4 million for one year.
When the federal government privatizes any agency — from the post office to the military — it is selling control. It is dispensing with accountability and oversight. Privatization does not just give opportunities for corruption — in fact, it’s embedded in its DNA. Perhaps a better description is giving a license to steal. “Performance” is not the driving force in privatization. It’s not even in the back seat. The driver is corporate cronyism and profits.
Private corporations feeding at the taxpayer-supported Pentagon trough is not new (remember those $100 hammers under Reagan? And can you say “military-industrial complex”?). But this administration has raised it to a new level with no-bid contracts and private contractors doing a host of things that troops used to do. According to the Brookings Institution, half the current Defense Department budget is going to no-bid contractors. “They are taking the taxpayers for many billions of dollars,” one of the institution’s scholars told the World.
Congress needs to not only challenge the privatization of public functions, including defense, but also closely scrutinize the military budget and cut the corporate-profit fat!
The truth about Blackwater
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From PWW: http://www.pww.org/article/view/11814/
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Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army
By Jeremy Scahill
Nation Books, 2007
Hardcover, 452 pp., $26.95
On the surface, Jeremy Scahill’s “Blackwater” is a reflection of the visage of military privatization and its grounding in the Bush administration. Below the surface is the well-documented panoply of mechanisms and methods used to maintain class rule through disaster capitalism and government by surprise.
Hatched in a nest built by billionaire industrialists and nurtured by conservative religion, U.S. finance capital has raised the “world’s most powerful mercenary army.” By so doing, big business has sold out its commitment to community is pursuing its passion for military, political and religious domination.
The massive military privatization by then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney opened the door to large, privately held stockpiles of weapons. Reaction to Bill Clinton’s tax policies stoked a fire among the ultra-right. Contacts from the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush allowed the Blackwater company to develop a rational framework for its rise to power and avoid the pitfalls of “militias” in that period.
As if having learned from Jules Acher’s 1973 book “The Plot to Seize the White House,” the dictatorship of capital’s military arm lay in the weeds until the White House was seized by the scion of none other than Prescott Bush, a notorious fascist sympathizer.
The subtext to this first book by Scahill, an investigative journalist, is about power and wealth being consolidated in the hands of the capitalist class. Government privatization and outsourcing, no-bid, cost-plus contracts and voluntary standards are portrayed as being corrosive to the notion of public accountability for private enterprise.
The author goes deep in revealing the character and personages behind the business practices, cronyism, theft and violence of the current Bush regime. In doing so, he illuminates the bottom feeders in our so-called war on terror.
With Blackwater having been deployed in Iraq (where its “shoot first, ask questions later” policy is coming under heightened scrutiny) and in post-Katrina New Orleans, and with the company suggesting a “humanitarian” mission to Darfur and proposing a facility along the Mexican border, this book will send a chill up the spine of those who thinks about the future of democratic peoples and their movements.
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