Soldati di ventura / Soldiers of Good Fortune
Sono mercenari del terzo millennio - e' vero - ma mercenari ed
assassini restano: checche' ne dica qualche ministro della Repubblica,
checche' ne dica qualche documentario para-scientifico presentato da
Piero Angela (vedi in fondo, il seguito di una polemica iniziata da
alcune settimane nei confronti di SuperQuark). Stiamo parlando di
personaggi utilizzati per operazioni militari delicate, scabrose, da
effettuare al di fuori di ogni controllo ed all'oscuro dei media e
delle opinioni pubbliche. Come la pulizia etnica delle zone della
Croazia a maggioranza serba.
Ne parla ampiamente anche questo articolo di Barry Yeoman, apparso
sulla rivista progressista statunitense "Mother Jones" un anno fa -
segnalato da Paolo Teobaldelli, che ringraziamo. (IS)
---
http://www.barryyeoman.com/articles/soldiersfortune.html
Soldiers of Good Fortune
They fly helicopters, guard military bases, and provide reconnaissance.
They're private military companies—and they're replacing U.S. soldiers
in the war on terrorism.
By Barry Yeoman
Originally published in Mother Jones, May/June 2003
AT A REMOTE TACTICAL training camp, in a swamp 25 miles from the
world's largest naval base, six U.S. sailors are gearing up for their
part in President Bush's war on terrorism. Dressed in camouflage on a
January afternoon, they wear protective masks and carry nine-millimeter
Berettas that fire non-lethal bullets filled with colored soap. Their
mission: recapture a ship—actually a three-story-high model constructed
of gray steel cargo containers—from armed hijackers.
The men approach the front of the vessel in formation, weapons drawn,
then silently walk the length of the ship. Suddenly, as they turn the
comer, two "terrorists" spring out from behind a plywood barricade and
storm the sailors, guns blazing. The trainees, who have instinctively
crowded together, prove easy pickings: Though they outnumber their
enemy 3-to-1, every one of them gets hit. They return from the ambush
with heads hung, covered in pink dye.
"You had people hiding behind their teammates!" barks their instructor,
Tony Torres, a compact man with freckles and salt-and-pepper hair.
"That's as shameful a thing as I can think of. That's fucked up. That's
just fucked up." When approaching a "bad guy," Torres reminds them, a
unit must move aggressively, fanning out to divert the terrorists'
attention. "You guys need to get your shit together," he scolds.
"There's not a lot of cover in this structure. The only thing to do is
move toward your threat."
The men listen attentively. They know that Torres, a Navy vet, honed
his skills during nine years in the service, performing
search-and-rescue operations and providing nuclear-weapons security.
But Torres no longer works for the military. These days he is an
employee of Blackwater USA, a private company that contracts with the
U.S. armed forces to train soldiers and guard government buildings
around the world. Every day, the Navy sends chartered buses full of
trainees from Naval Station Norfolk to the company's 5,200-acre
facility in Moyock, North Carolina. Last fall, Blackwater signed a
$35.7 million contract with the Pentagon to train more than 10,000
sailors from Virginia, Texas, and California each year in "force
protection." Other contracts are so secret, says Blackwater president
Gary Jackson, that he can't tell one federal agency about the business
he's doing with another.
When Blackwater opened in 1998, the business of war didn't look like
such a sure bet. "This was a roulette, a crapshoot," recalls Jackson, a
former Navy SEAL. During the Gulf War, the Pentagon had begun replacing
soldiers with private contractors, relying on civilian businesses to
provide logistical support to troops on the front lines. Blackwater's
founders were banking on predictions that the military was eager to
speed up the process, privatizing many jobs traditionally reserved for
uniformed troops. Their investment paid off: Since the attacks of
September 11, the company has seen its business boom—enough to warrant
a major expansion of its training facility this year. "To contemplate
outsourcing tactical, strategic, firearms-type training—high-risk
training—is thinking outside the box," Jackson says. "Is this
happening? Yes, this is happening."
As the U.S. military wages the war on terrorism, it is increasingly
relying on for-profit companies like Blackwater to do work normally
performed by soldiers. Defense contractors now do more than simply
build airplanes-they maintain those planes on the battlefield and even
fly them in some of the world's most troubled conflict zones. Private
military companies supply bodyguards for the president of Afghanistan,
construct detention camps to hold suspected terrorists at Guantanamo
Bay, and pilot armed reconnaissance planes and helicopter gunships to
eradicate coca crops in Colombia. They operate the intelligence and
communications systems at the U.S. Northern Command in Colorado, which
is responsible for coordinating a response to any attack on the United
States. And licensed by the State Department, they are contracting with
foreign governments, training soldiers and reorganizing militaries in
Nigeria, Bulgaria, Taiwan, and Equatorial Guinea.
In recent months, private military companies have also played a key
role in preparing for a war with Iraq. They supply essential support to
military bases throughout the Persian Gulf, from operating mess halls
to furnishing security. They provide armed guards at a U.S. Army base
in Qatar, and they use live ammunition to train soldiers at Camp Doha
in Kuwait, where a contractor, whose company ran a computer system that
tracks soldiers in the field, was killed by terrorists last January.
They also maintain an array of weapons systems vital to an invasion of
Iraq, including the B-2 bomber, F-117 stealth fighter, Apache
helicopter, KC-10 refueling tanker, U-2 reconnaissance plane, and the
unmanned Global Hawk reconnaissance unit. In an all-out war against
Saddam Hussein, the military was expected to use as many as 20,000
private contractors in the Persian Gulf That would be 1 civilian for
every 10 soldiers—a 10-fold increase over the first Gulf War.
Indeed, the Bush administration's push to privatize war is swiftly
turning the military-industrial complex of old into something even
more far-reaching: a complex of military industries that do everything
but fire weapons. For-profit military companies now enjoy an estimated
$100 billion in business worldwide each year, with much of the money
going to Fortune 500 firms like Halliburton, DynCorp, Lockheed Martin,
and Raytheon. Secretary of the Army Thomas White, a former vice
chairman of Enron, "has really put a mark on the wall for getting
government employees out of certain functions in the military," says
retired Colonel Tom Sweeney, professor of strategic logistics at the
U.S. Army War College. "It allows you to focus your manpower on the
battlefield kinds of missions."
Private military companies, for their part, are focusing much of their
manpower on Capitol Hill. Many are staffed with retired military
officers who are well connected at the Pentagon—putting them in a prime
position to influence government policy and drive more business to
their firms. In one instance, private contractors successfully
pressured the government to lift a ban on American companies providing
military assistance to Equatorial Guinea, a West African nation accused
of brutal human-rights violations. Because they operate with little
oversight, using contractors also enables the military to skirt troop
limits imposed by Congress and to carry out clandestine operations
without committing U.S. troops or attracting public attention. "Private
military corporations become a way to distance themselves and create
what we used to call 'plausible deniability," says Daniel Nelson, a
former professor of civil-military relations at the Defense
Department's Marshall European Center for Security Studies. "It's
disastrous for democracy."
THE PUSH TO PRIVATIZE WAR got its start during the administration of
the elder President Bush. After the Gulf War ended, the Pentagon, then
headed by Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, paid a Halliburton subsidiary
called Brown & Root Services nearly $9 million to study how private
military companies could provide support for American soldiers in
combat zones. Cheney went on to serve as CEO of Halliburton—and Brown &
Root, now known as Halliburton KBR, has since been awarded at least
$2.5 billion to construct and run military bases, some in secret
locations, as part of the Army's Logistics Civil Augmentation Program.
In March, the Pentagon hired Cheney's former firm to fight fires in
Iraq if Saddam Hussein sabotages oil wells during a U.S. attack.
Pentagon officials say they rely on firms like Halliburton because the
private sector works faster and cheaper than the military. When U.S.
Marines distributed relief supplies in Somalia in 1992, for example,
the military contracted with Brown & Root for logistical support. "They
had laborers and vehicles at the Port of Mogadishu within 11 hours
after we had given them notice," recalls Don Trautner, who runs the
Army logistics program.
The use of private military companies, which gained considerable
momentum under President Clinton, has escalated under the Bush
administration. "There has been a dramatic increase in the military's
reliance on contractor personnel to provide a wide range of support
services for overseas operations," one Washington law firm advises its
defense-company clients in a recent briefing paper. "In addition, the
terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, resulted in a rapid expansion
of U.S. military activity in many areas of the globe, and President
Bush's ongoing war on terrorism will likely require even greater
contractor support for military operations in the future."
Because the Geneva Convention expressly bans the use of
mercenaries—individual soldiers of fortune who fight solely for
personal gain—private military companies are careful to distance
themselves from any associations with such hired guns. To emphasize
their experience and professionalism, many firms maintain websites
brimming with colorful PR material; the industry even funds an advocacy
group, the International Peace Operations Association, which portrays
military firms as more capable and accountable than the Pentagon.
"These companies want to run a professional operation," says the
group's director, Doug Brooks. "Their incentive is to make money. How
do you make money? You make sure you don't screw up."
When the companies do screw up, however, their status as private
entities often shields them—and the government—from public scrutiny. In
2001, an Alabama-based firm called Aviation Development Corp. that
provided reconnaissance for the CIA in South America misidentified an
errant plane as possibly belonging to cocaine traffickers. Based on the
company's information, the Peruvian air force shot down the aircraft,
killing a U.S. missionary and her seven-month-old daughter. Afterward,
when members of Congress tried to investigate, the State Department and
the CIA refused to provide any information, citing privacy concerns.
"We can't talk about it," administration officials told Congress,
according to a source familiar with the incident. "It's a private
entity. Call the company."
The lack of oversight alarms some members of Congress. "Under a shroud
of secrecy, the United States is carrying out military missions with
people who don't have the same level of accountability," says Rep. Jan
Schakowsky (D-Ill.), a leading congressional critic of privatized war.
"We have individuals who are not obligated to follow orders or follow
the Military Code of Conduct. Their main obligation is to their
employer, not to their country."
Private military companies emphasize their patriotism and expertise,
positioning themselves as a sort of corporate battalion staffed by
ex-soldiers who remain eager to serve their country. Military
Professional Resources Inc., one of the largest and most prestigious
firms, boasts that it can call on 12,500 veterans with expertise in
everything from nuclear operations to submarine attacks. MPRI deploys
its private troops to run Army recruitment centers across the country,
train soldiers to serve as key staff officers in the field, beef up
security at U.S. military bases in Korea, and train foreign armies from
Kuwait to South Africa. At the highest echelons, the Virginia-based
firm is led by retired General Carl Vuono, who served as Army chief of
staff during the Gulf War and the U.S. invasion of Panama. Assisting
him are General Crosbie Saint, former commander of the U.S. Army in
Europe; Lt. General Harry Soyster, former head of the Defense
Intelligence Agency; and General Ron Griffith, former Army vice chief
of staff.
It is precisely this concentration of experience that makes military
firms so politically formidable. Their executives have worked with—and
sometimes commanded—officials in the U.S. military, diplomatic, and
intelligence communities. (Secretary of State Colin Powell describes
General Vuono, his one-time boss, as "one of my dearest friends.")
"Someone at MPRI opens the Defense Department phone book and says, 'Oh,
so-and-so, I served with him,'" explains Nelson, the former Marshall
Center professor. "He picks up the phone: 'Joe, remember me? I'm
working with MPRI now. Hey, listen, bud, we have a real opportunity to
go to Equatorial Guinea.' Nothing more complex than that. It is a
relationship based on years of camaraderie." (MPRI—along with
Halliburton and DynCorp—declined requests for interviews from Mother
Jones.)
The companies don't rely on informal networking alone, though. They
also pour plenty of money into the political system—especially into the
re-election war chests of lawmakers who oversee their business. An
analysis by Mother Jones shows that 17 of the nation's leading private
military firms have invested more than $12.4 million in congressional
and presidential campaigns since 1999. DynCorp, a Virginia-based
military and technology company that receives more than 96 percent of
its $2 billion in annual revenues from the federal government, wrote
more than a dozen checks to the Republican National Committee over the
past three years and made dozens of other contributions to key Capitol
Hill lawmakers on committees that deal with defense issues.
The firms also maintain platoons of Washington lobbyists to help keep
government contracts headed their way. In 2001, according to the most
recent federal disclosure forms, 10 private military companies spent
more than $32 million on lobbying. DynCorp retained two lobbying firms
that year to successfully block a bill that would have forced federal
agencies to justify private contracts on cost-saving grounds. MPRI'S
parent company, L-3 Communications, had more than a dozen lobbyists
working on its behalf, including Linda Daschle, wife of Senate Minority
Leader Tom Daschle. Last year L-3 won $1.7 billion in Defense
Department contracts.
THE CAMPAIGN CASH and personal connections give private military
companies an unusual degree of influence, even by Washington standards.
In at least one case, a company has successfully shifted U.S. foreign
policy to bolster its bottom line. In 1998, the government of
Equatorial Guinea asked MPRI to evaluate its defense systems,
particularly its need for a coast guard to protect its oil reserves. To
do so, MPRI needed a license from the U.S. State Department. But the
Clinton administration flatly rejected the company's request, citing
the West African nation's egregious record of torturing and murdering
political dissidents.
MPRI launched a full-scale blitz to overturn the decision, quietly
dispatching company officials to work the hallways of the Pentagon,
State Department, and Capitol. "This is the kind of lobbying that's
surgically executed," says Rep. Schakowsky. "This is not something they
want a wide discussion on in Congress." MPRI's executives argued that
the United States should be engaging Equatorial Guinea, both to improve
its record on human rights and to ensure access to its oil reserves. It
didn't hurt that the company could effectively pull rank, citing its
extensive military experience. "Remember, these are high-level
four-star generals, who can really make an argument that this is
consistent with foreign policy," says Deborah Avant, an
international-affairs expert at George Washington University.
In 2000, the State Department did an about-face and issued a license to
MPRI. Bennett Freeman, a high-ranking State Department official who
initially opposed the deal, says he changed his mind after meeting with
Lt. General Harry Soyster of MPRI, who convinced him that the company
would include human-rights training in its work. "These private
military companies, if properly directed by U.S. government officials,
can in fact play positive roles," Freeman says. MPRI refuses to reveal
the terms of its contract with Equatorial Guinea.
The United States has a history of dispatching private military
companies to handle the dirtiest foreign assignments. The Pentagon
quietly hired for-profit firms to train Vietnamese troops before
America officially entered the war, and the CIA secretly used private
companies to transport weapons to the Nicaraguan contras during the
1980s after Congress had cut off aid. But as the Bush administration
replaces record numbers of soldiers with contractors, it creates more
opportunities for private firms to carry out clandestine operations
banned by Congress or unpopular with the public. "We can see some merit
in using an outside contractor," Charles Snyder, deputy assistant
secretary of state for African affairs, recently told reporters,
"because then we're not using U.S. uniforms and bodies."
Like the Clinton administration, the Bush administration is relying
heavily on private military companies to wage the war on drugs in South
America. Federal law bans U.S. soldiers from participating in
Colombia's war against left-wing rebels and from training army units
with ties to right-wing paramilitaries infamous for torture and
political killings. There are no such restrictions on for-profit
companies, though, and since the late 1990s, the United States has paid
private military companies an estimated $1.2 billion, both to eradicate
coca crops and to help the Colombian army put down rebels who use the
drug trade to finance their insurgency.
The largest beneficiary of this privatized war has been DynCorp, which
is helping Colombia's national police destroy coca crops with aerial
defoliants. But according to experts familiar with the war, the
company's role goes well beyond spraying fields. DynCorp employees "are
engaged in combatant roles, fighting in counterinsurgency operations
against the Colombian rebel groups," says Peter Singer, a
foreign-policy fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of
Corporate Warriors. "Indeed, the DynCorp personnel have a local
reputation for being both arrogant and far too willing to get 'wet,'
going out on frequent combat missions and engaging in firefights."
DynCorp has not responded to the allegation.
Relying on DynCorp and other private military companies has enabled
Washington to circumvent Congress and avoid attention. "If the
narcotraffickers shot American soldiers down, you could see the
headlines: 'U.S. Troops Killed in Colombia,'" says Myles Frechette, the
U.S. ambassador to Colombia during the Clinton administration. By
contrast, the 1992 assassination of three DynCorp employees, whose
helicopter was shot down during an anti-drug mission in Peru, merited
exactly 113 words in the New York Times. (In February, when another
aircraft crashed during a drug operation in Colombia, three employees
of Northrop Grumman were taken hostage.)
Private military companies also played an unheralded role in the
Balkans. After the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, the United Nations
placed an embargo on providing military assistance to either Serbia or
Croatia. Some in the State Department, however, wanted to counter the
dominance of Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic by strengthening
Croatian president Franjo Tudjman, a self-proclaimed Aryan supremacist.
Private military companies once again provided the answer. In 1994, the
State Department issued a license to MPRI to provide military training
to the Croatian army. "It allowed the United States to exert a good
deal of political heft while reserving its official stance of not being
involved," says Avant, the international-affairs expert at George
Washington University.
MPRI insists that it provided no combat training to Croatian troops,
saying it merely instructed the country's military in how to operate in
a Western-style democracy under civilian control. But according to
independent reports, the company taught basic infantry tactics to
Croatian soldiers and explained how to coordinate assaults. In August
1995, after the training ended, the Croatian army launched Operation
Storm, a U.S.-style military operation designed to take back the
disputed Krajina region from the Serbs. The four-day assault was a
bloody episode of ethnic cleansing. Croatian graduates of MPRI's
training carried out summary executions and indiscriminately shelled
civilians, leaving hundreds dead and more than 150,000 homeless.
Afterward, the Croatians expressed their gratitude for MPRI's help.
"They lecture us on tactics and big war operations," one officer told
The Observer of London, "which is why we needed them for Operation
Storm."
SUCH INCIDENTS POINT TO the greatest danger underlying the increasing
push to privatize war. Soldiers who disobey orders or violate standards
of conduct can be court-martialed and incarcerated; their supervisors
can be reassigned or forced to retire. Private companies, by contrast,
are able to operate in almost complete secrecy, with little
accountability to civilian or military authorities. Consider the case
of two DynCorp employees who exposed a sex-trafficking scandal in
Bosnia, where the company was assisting the American military with
peacekeeping operations during the late 1990s. According to court
documents, DynCorp employees bought and sold local Bosnian girls, some
as young as 13, for use as sex slaves, often confiscating the passports
of victims so they couldn't escape. The men were not subjected to local
or U.S. criminal charges; DynCorp simply whisked them home—and fired
the two whistleblowers.
The lack of accountability could have grave consequences in battle. The
Pentagon has become so dependent on private military companies that it
literally cannot wage war without them. Troops already rely on
for-profit contractors to maintain 28 percent of all weapons systems,
and the Bush administration wants to increase that figure to 50
percent. In most cases, private military companies can legally withdraw
their employees if faced with danger in a combat zone—an escape clause
that worries many military officials. If contractors flee when the
shooting starts, it could sever supply lines, ground aircraft, and
leave soldiers to run complex weapons systems they no longer have the
skill or know-how to keep in working order. "There are some weapons
systems that the U.S. military forces do not have the capability to do
their own maintenance on," concedes David Young, a deputy commander at
the Defense Contract Management Agency. "When you take these weapons
systems into a combat zone, is contract support still reliable,
especially if you are facing weapons of mass destruction? It's a source
of worry when you're talking about chemical or biological weapons."
Military insiders, from the Defense Department's inspector general to
the Army War College, echo that concern. "Will using contractors place
our service personnel at greater risk of losing their lives in combat?"
one Air Force military journal has asked. "Are we ultimately trading
their blood to save a relatively insignificant amount in the national
budget?"
Blackwater USA's Gary Jackson, whose company operates in hostile parts
of Africa and southwestern Asia, insists that his employees would
never bolt from a war zone. "They're paying us good money to go to
places that are already ugly," he says. "If it gets real ugly, that's
why they hired us in the first place." Pentagon
officials also insist that private firms have proved reliable so far.
"I've never seen any deficiencies, even under fire," says the Army's
Don Trautner. "I challenge anyone to come up with a situation where a
contractor would run under harsh or hostile conditions."
Brian Boquist doesn't have to come up with a hypothetical scenario.
Boquist is the founder of International Charter Inc., a small private
military company based in Salem, Oregon, that has provided air
transportation for peacekeeping operations in Africa and Haiti. In
1996, Boquist subcontracted with DynCorp to fly helicopters for
international peacekeepers in Liberia. Four months into the contract,
rebels from the countryside spilled into the capital city of Monrovia,
shooting people and burning homes. While black smoke hung over the
city, refugees trying to escape the violence poured into the U.S.
Embassy compound. All around them, corpses lay in the street.
Boquist and his colleagues fled to the embassy from their downtown
hotel—but when they got there, their superiors from DynCorp were
nowhere to be found. "They had left the day before," Boquist says.
"Just disappeared." Boquist tried to contact the company for several
days and finally reached DynCorp's U.S. offices by telephone. "Do the
best you can to get your personnel out," he recalls being told. By
then, though, the airport in Monrovia was closed. Stranded in the
burning city, Boquist and his colleagues armed themselves—buying
weapons on the black market and picking up abandoned guns from the
street—and defended the embassy and the refugees inside until U.S.
military reinforcements arrived. "It's easy to be patriotic when you
don't have anyplace to go," he says.
Boquist hasn't forgiven DynCorp ("it was hell on earth"), but notes
that it's only natural for businesses to be concerned with their bottom
line. "They're worried about liability and being sued, and that takes
precedence," Boquist says. "That's the same problem you're going to
face in any major conflict."
Despite such experiences in the field, the Bush administration is
rapidly deploying private military companies in the Persian Gulf and
other conflict zones. By March, DynCorp alone had 1,000 employees in
the Middle East to assist in a war with Iraq. "The trend is growth,"
says Daniel Nelson, the former professor at the Pentagon's Marshall
Center. "This current president and administration have—in part because
of September 11, but also because of their fundamental ideology—taken
off constraints that somewhat limited the prior administration."
According to some estimates, private military companies will double
their business by the end of the decade, to $200 billion a year.
President Bush only has to look to his father's war to see what the
consequences of this trend could be in a second conflict with Iraq. In
the Gulf War's single deadliest incident, an Iraqi missile hit a
barracks far from the front, killing 28 Army reservists who were
responsible for purifying drinking water. Other troops quickly jumped
in to take their place. "Today, the military relies heavily on
contractors for this support," Colonel Steven Zamparelli, a career
contracting officer, notes in the Air Force Journal of Logistics. "If
death becomes a real threat, there is no doubt that some contractors
will exercise their legal rights to get out of the theater. Not so many
years ago, that may have simply meant no hot food or reduced morale and
welfare activity. Today, it could mean the only people a field
commander has to accomplish a critical 'core competency' task such as
weapons-system maintenance...have left and gone home."
Copyright © 2004 Barry Yeoman
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Sulla polemica con SUPERQUARK vedi anche:
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/3633
Da: andreamartocchia
Data: Lun 26 Lug 2004 19:34:17 Europe/Rome
A: Pinna Lorenzo, superquark
Oggetto: Sulla risposta della redazione di SuperQuark -- Re: I:
servizio Eserciti Privati
Gentile redazione di SuperQuark,
la vostra risposta alla nostra Lettera ci lascia ulteriormente
sconcertati ed amareggiati.
Il coinvolgimento della MPRI nelle operazioni "Lampo" e "Tempesta" ha
avuto come principale risultato la cacciata di almeno
centocinquantamila persone, ed ha comportato centinaia di morti ed
altrettanti scomparsi. Non si e' dunque affatto trattato di operazioni
mirate a "ristabilire la pace", a meno che per "pace" non si intenda
semplicemente l'annientamento dell'avversario. Questo, di fatto, ha
motivato la nostra lettera di protesta; eppure tutto cio' non viene
nemmeno menzionato nella vostra risposta, la quale contiene invece
valutazioni e commenti di carattere essenzialmente politico, e
nondimeno fortemente superficiali, in merito a quelli che definite
"vecchi stereotipi".
Dove sia l'informazione scientifica, in tutto questo, resta per noi un
mistero! Chi ha diffuso "stereotipi" sulla guerra di squartamento della
Jugoslavia, in tutti questi anni, sono stati innanzitutto i mass-media
occidentali: voi compresi, purtroppo, almeno a partire dalla
trasmissione dello scorso 6 luglio. Questi stereotipi non vengono
diffusi "per caso", bensi' proprio allo scopo di nascondere la verita'
sulle responsabilita' e sulle conseguenze del conflitto. In questo caso
specifico, voi avete scelto di nascondere la pulizia etnica dei Serbi
della Croazia, e di tessere le lodi dei suoi maggiori responsabili,
cioe' certi settori militari degli Stati Uniti d'America. Il vostro
documentario e' stato costruito sulla base di UNA SOLA FONTE, quella da
voi citata nella vostra risposta, e nondimeno con ampio spreco di
denaro pubblico, laddove una semplice ricerchina in internet avrebbe
consentito di trovare informazioni ben piu' accurate, e comunque non
cosi' unilaterali, sullo stesso argomento (vedi ad es. l'articolo "La
privatizzazione della guerra" di Ken Silverstein, pubblicato da "The
Nation" il 28 luglio 1997, e tradotto nel n. 47, marzo 1998 di
"Guerre&Pace").
Questo modo di nascondere i fatti per spostare tendenziosamente le
responsabilita', come sanno tutti gli esperti di strategia militare,
viene definito "disinformazione strategica". Forse il vostro prossimo
documentario potreste dedicarlo proprio a questa ed alle altre tecniche
di guerra psicologica (sulla disinformazione strategica nel caso
jugoslavo e nelle altre guerre contemporanee suggeriamo di partire ad
es. da qualche ricerca Google su: "Ruder&Finn Public Global Affairs",
"Hill&Knowlton", "Office of Strategic Influence", "Fourth Psychological
Operations Group, Fort Bragg, North Carolina", "PsyOps", ...), visto
che pare abbiate scelto di "aprire" SuperQuark alle questioni militari
- in questo purtroppo assecondando la tristissima tendenza che
caratterizza la fase storica in cui viviamo.
Con l'occasione segnaliamo che si sono uniti alla nostra protesta
l'ing. Giacomo Alessandroni, Giancarlo Chieregato, il prof. Mauro
Cristaldi, e, dalla Francia, il generale Pierre-Marie Gallois,
notissimo esperto di geopolitica - che conosce bene la lingua italiana
- e Bogdan Manojlovic, ricercatore all'Université Paris12.
Seguono tutte le adesioni aggiornate:
Giacomo Alessandroni, ingegnere, Associazione PeaceLink
Angelo Baracca, docente di Fisica all'Universita' di Firenze
Vincenzo Brandi, ricercatore presso l'ENEA Casaccia, Roma
Giuseppe Catapano, operatore nel settore delle telecomunicazioni, Roma
Andrea Catone, storico del movimento operaio, Bari
Giancarlo Chieregato, artigiano, Crandola Valsassina (Lecco)
Franco Consalvi, funzionario pubblico, Roma
Mauro Cristaldi, prof.associato, Dip. Biologia Animale e dell'Uomo,
Univ. Roma "La Sapienza"
Olga Daric, traduttrice, Parigi
Pasquale De Sole, Laboratorio di Chimica Clinica del Policlinico
Gemelli (Università Cattolica S.Cuore), Roma
Spartaco Ferri, già partigiano nella Lotta di Liberazione contro il
nazifascismo, Roma
Miriam Pellegrini Ferri, scrittrice e Presidente del Gruppo Atei
Materialisti Dialettici (G.A.MA.DI.), Roma
Maria Fierro, funzionario pubblico, Roma
Pierre-Marie Gallois, géneral de l'air (CR), théoricien de la force de
frappe nucléaire française
Babsi Jones, www.babsijones.org, Milano
Ivana Kerecki, sociologa e collaboratrice editoriale, Milano
Anita Krstic, operatore turistico, Milano
Bogdan Manojlovic, chercher université Paris12, cofondatore della
rivista Balkans Infos e membro della redazione
Serena Marchionni, bibliotecaria, Strasburgo (Francia)
Andrea Martocchia, Osservatorio Astronomico di Strasburgo
Edoardo Nucci, Ass. Internazionale per l'Amicizia e la Solidarieta' tra
i Popoli (AIASP), Roma
Ivan Pavicevac, conduttore della trasmissione radiofonica "Voce
jugoslava" , Roma
Cristiano Roman, lavoratore autonomo, Milano
Fabrizio Rossi, ingegnere industriale, Roma
Libero Vitiello, Dipartimento di Biologia, Universita' di Padova
Gilberto Vlaic, Dipartimento di Scienze Chimiche, Universita' di Trieste
Milica Vukelic, Milano
> Da: Pinna Lorenzo
> Inviato: giovedì 15 luglio 2004 11.18
> Oggetto: servizio Eserciti Privati
>
>
> Roma,15 .7.2004
>
> Gentilissimi,
> Il servizio sulle Imprese Militari Private tentava di spiegare una
> trasformazione in corso nell' organizzazione militare
> dell'Occidente,di cui il caso "Croazia" e' solo uno degli esempi
> citati. Una trasformazione di cui non ci si rendera' conto e che
> quindi non si riuscira' a regolare o a limitare finche' si
> continueranno a dare giudizi morali o a usare vecchi stereotipi come:
> merceneri, avventurieri, manovre oscure, avidi interessi, imperialismo
> americano, etc.
> La base del nostro " disinformato" servizio era il libro di J. Singer
> "Corporate Warriors" Cornell University 2002 e un lungo colloquio di
> circa tre ore con lo stesso autore del libro nel suo ufficio della
> Brookings Institution di Washington.
> Non era nostra intenzione entrare nella storia specifica del complesso
> conflitto jugoslavo, cosa d'altronde impossibile visto il tempo che ci
> era concesso ( circa 7 minuti) per trattare
> questo argomento.
> Grazie per l'attenzione con la quale ci avetre seguiti. I nostri piu'
> cordiali saluti.
>
>
> La Redazione di SuperQuark
Sono mercenari del terzo millennio - e' vero - ma mercenari ed
assassini restano: checche' ne dica qualche ministro della Repubblica,
checche' ne dica qualche documentario para-scientifico presentato da
Piero Angela (vedi in fondo, il seguito di una polemica iniziata da
alcune settimane nei confronti di SuperQuark). Stiamo parlando di
personaggi utilizzati per operazioni militari delicate, scabrose, da
effettuare al di fuori di ogni controllo ed all'oscuro dei media e
delle opinioni pubbliche. Come la pulizia etnica delle zone della
Croazia a maggioranza serba.
Ne parla ampiamente anche questo articolo di Barry Yeoman, apparso
sulla rivista progressista statunitense "Mother Jones" un anno fa -
segnalato da Paolo Teobaldelli, che ringraziamo. (IS)
---
http://www.barryyeoman.com/articles/soldiersfortune.html
Soldiers of Good Fortune
They fly helicopters, guard military bases, and provide reconnaissance.
They're private military companies—and they're replacing U.S. soldiers
in the war on terrorism.
By Barry Yeoman
Originally published in Mother Jones, May/June 2003
AT A REMOTE TACTICAL training camp, in a swamp 25 miles from the
world's largest naval base, six U.S. sailors are gearing up for their
part in President Bush's war on terrorism. Dressed in camouflage on a
January afternoon, they wear protective masks and carry nine-millimeter
Berettas that fire non-lethal bullets filled with colored soap. Their
mission: recapture a ship—actually a three-story-high model constructed
of gray steel cargo containers—from armed hijackers.
The men approach the front of the vessel in formation, weapons drawn,
then silently walk the length of the ship. Suddenly, as they turn the
comer, two "terrorists" spring out from behind a plywood barricade and
storm the sailors, guns blazing. The trainees, who have instinctively
crowded together, prove easy pickings: Though they outnumber their
enemy 3-to-1, every one of them gets hit. They return from the ambush
with heads hung, covered in pink dye.
"You had people hiding behind their teammates!" barks their instructor,
Tony Torres, a compact man with freckles and salt-and-pepper hair.
"That's as shameful a thing as I can think of. That's fucked up. That's
just fucked up." When approaching a "bad guy," Torres reminds them, a
unit must move aggressively, fanning out to divert the terrorists'
attention. "You guys need to get your shit together," he scolds.
"There's not a lot of cover in this structure. The only thing to do is
move toward your threat."
The men listen attentively. They know that Torres, a Navy vet, honed
his skills during nine years in the service, performing
search-and-rescue operations and providing nuclear-weapons security.
But Torres no longer works for the military. These days he is an
employee of Blackwater USA, a private company that contracts with the
U.S. armed forces to train soldiers and guard government buildings
around the world. Every day, the Navy sends chartered buses full of
trainees from Naval Station Norfolk to the company's 5,200-acre
facility in Moyock, North Carolina. Last fall, Blackwater signed a
$35.7 million contract with the Pentagon to train more than 10,000
sailors from Virginia, Texas, and California each year in "force
protection." Other contracts are so secret, says Blackwater president
Gary Jackson, that he can't tell one federal agency about the business
he's doing with another.
When Blackwater opened in 1998, the business of war didn't look like
such a sure bet. "This was a roulette, a crapshoot," recalls Jackson, a
former Navy SEAL. During the Gulf War, the Pentagon had begun replacing
soldiers with private contractors, relying on civilian businesses to
provide logistical support to troops on the front lines. Blackwater's
founders were banking on predictions that the military was eager to
speed up the process, privatizing many jobs traditionally reserved for
uniformed troops. Their investment paid off: Since the attacks of
September 11, the company has seen its business boom—enough to warrant
a major expansion of its training facility this year. "To contemplate
outsourcing tactical, strategic, firearms-type training—high-risk
training—is thinking outside the box," Jackson says. "Is this
happening? Yes, this is happening."
As the U.S. military wages the war on terrorism, it is increasingly
relying on for-profit companies like Blackwater to do work normally
performed by soldiers. Defense contractors now do more than simply
build airplanes-they maintain those planes on the battlefield and even
fly them in some of the world's most troubled conflict zones. Private
military companies supply bodyguards for the president of Afghanistan,
construct detention camps to hold suspected terrorists at Guantanamo
Bay, and pilot armed reconnaissance planes and helicopter gunships to
eradicate coca crops in Colombia. They operate the intelligence and
communications systems at the U.S. Northern Command in Colorado, which
is responsible for coordinating a response to any attack on the United
States. And licensed by the State Department, they are contracting with
foreign governments, training soldiers and reorganizing militaries in
Nigeria, Bulgaria, Taiwan, and Equatorial Guinea.
In recent months, private military companies have also played a key
role in preparing for a war with Iraq. They supply essential support to
military bases throughout the Persian Gulf, from operating mess halls
to furnishing security. They provide armed guards at a U.S. Army base
in Qatar, and they use live ammunition to train soldiers at Camp Doha
in Kuwait, where a contractor, whose company ran a computer system that
tracks soldiers in the field, was killed by terrorists last January.
They also maintain an array of weapons systems vital to an invasion of
Iraq, including the B-2 bomber, F-117 stealth fighter, Apache
helicopter, KC-10 refueling tanker, U-2 reconnaissance plane, and the
unmanned Global Hawk reconnaissance unit. In an all-out war against
Saddam Hussein, the military was expected to use as many as 20,000
private contractors in the Persian Gulf That would be 1 civilian for
every 10 soldiers—a 10-fold increase over the first Gulf War.
Indeed, the Bush administration's push to privatize war is swiftly
turning the military-industrial complex of old into something even
more far-reaching: a complex of military industries that do everything
but fire weapons. For-profit military companies now enjoy an estimated
$100 billion in business worldwide each year, with much of the money
going to Fortune 500 firms like Halliburton, DynCorp, Lockheed Martin,
and Raytheon. Secretary of the Army Thomas White, a former vice
chairman of Enron, "has really put a mark on the wall for getting
government employees out of certain functions in the military," says
retired Colonel Tom Sweeney, professor of strategic logistics at the
U.S. Army War College. "It allows you to focus your manpower on the
battlefield kinds of missions."
Private military companies, for their part, are focusing much of their
manpower on Capitol Hill. Many are staffed with retired military
officers who are well connected at the Pentagon—putting them in a prime
position to influence government policy and drive more business to
their firms. In one instance, private contractors successfully
pressured the government to lift a ban on American companies providing
military assistance to Equatorial Guinea, a West African nation accused
of brutal human-rights violations. Because they operate with little
oversight, using contractors also enables the military to skirt troop
limits imposed by Congress and to carry out clandestine operations
without committing U.S. troops or attracting public attention. "Private
military corporations become a way to distance themselves and create
what we used to call 'plausible deniability," says Daniel Nelson, a
former professor of civil-military relations at the Defense
Department's Marshall European Center for Security Studies. "It's
disastrous for democracy."
THE PUSH TO PRIVATIZE WAR got its start during the administration of
the elder President Bush. After the Gulf War ended, the Pentagon, then
headed by Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, paid a Halliburton subsidiary
called Brown & Root Services nearly $9 million to study how private
military companies could provide support for American soldiers in
combat zones. Cheney went on to serve as CEO of Halliburton—and Brown &
Root, now known as Halliburton KBR, has since been awarded at least
$2.5 billion to construct and run military bases, some in secret
locations, as part of the Army's Logistics Civil Augmentation Program.
In March, the Pentagon hired Cheney's former firm to fight fires in
Iraq if Saddam Hussein sabotages oil wells during a U.S. attack.
Pentagon officials say they rely on firms like Halliburton because the
private sector works faster and cheaper than the military. When U.S.
Marines distributed relief supplies in Somalia in 1992, for example,
the military contracted with Brown & Root for logistical support. "They
had laborers and vehicles at the Port of Mogadishu within 11 hours
after we had given them notice," recalls Don Trautner, who runs the
Army logistics program.
The use of private military companies, which gained considerable
momentum under President Clinton, has escalated under the Bush
administration. "There has been a dramatic increase in the military's
reliance on contractor personnel to provide a wide range of support
services for overseas operations," one Washington law firm advises its
defense-company clients in a recent briefing paper. "In addition, the
terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, resulted in a rapid expansion
of U.S. military activity in many areas of the globe, and President
Bush's ongoing war on terrorism will likely require even greater
contractor support for military operations in the future."
Because the Geneva Convention expressly bans the use of
mercenaries—individual soldiers of fortune who fight solely for
personal gain—private military companies are careful to distance
themselves from any associations with such hired guns. To emphasize
their experience and professionalism, many firms maintain websites
brimming with colorful PR material; the industry even funds an advocacy
group, the International Peace Operations Association, which portrays
military firms as more capable and accountable than the Pentagon.
"These companies want to run a professional operation," says the
group's director, Doug Brooks. "Their incentive is to make money. How
do you make money? You make sure you don't screw up."
When the companies do screw up, however, their status as private
entities often shields them—and the government—from public scrutiny. In
2001, an Alabama-based firm called Aviation Development Corp. that
provided reconnaissance for the CIA in South America misidentified an
errant plane as possibly belonging to cocaine traffickers. Based on the
company's information, the Peruvian air force shot down the aircraft,
killing a U.S. missionary and her seven-month-old daughter. Afterward,
when members of Congress tried to investigate, the State Department and
the CIA refused to provide any information, citing privacy concerns.
"We can't talk about it," administration officials told Congress,
according to a source familiar with the incident. "It's a private
entity. Call the company."
The lack of oversight alarms some members of Congress. "Under a shroud
of secrecy, the United States is carrying out military missions with
people who don't have the same level of accountability," says Rep. Jan
Schakowsky (D-Ill.), a leading congressional critic of privatized war.
"We have individuals who are not obligated to follow orders or follow
the Military Code of Conduct. Their main obligation is to their
employer, not to their country."
Private military companies emphasize their patriotism and expertise,
positioning themselves as a sort of corporate battalion staffed by
ex-soldiers who remain eager to serve their country. Military
Professional Resources Inc., one of the largest and most prestigious
firms, boasts that it can call on 12,500 veterans with expertise in
everything from nuclear operations to submarine attacks. MPRI deploys
its private troops to run Army recruitment centers across the country,
train soldiers to serve as key staff officers in the field, beef up
security at U.S. military bases in Korea, and train foreign armies from
Kuwait to South Africa. At the highest echelons, the Virginia-based
firm is led by retired General Carl Vuono, who served as Army chief of
staff during the Gulf War and the U.S. invasion of Panama. Assisting
him are General Crosbie Saint, former commander of the U.S. Army in
Europe; Lt. General Harry Soyster, former head of the Defense
Intelligence Agency; and General Ron Griffith, former Army vice chief
of staff.
It is precisely this concentration of experience that makes military
firms so politically formidable. Their executives have worked with—and
sometimes commanded—officials in the U.S. military, diplomatic, and
intelligence communities. (Secretary of State Colin Powell describes
General Vuono, his one-time boss, as "one of my dearest friends.")
"Someone at MPRI opens the Defense Department phone book and says, 'Oh,
so-and-so, I served with him,'" explains Nelson, the former Marshall
Center professor. "He picks up the phone: 'Joe, remember me? I'm
working with MPRI now. Hey, listen, bud, we have a real opportunity to
go to Equatorial Guinea.' Nothing more complex than that. It is a
relationship based on years of camaraderie." (MPRI—along with
Halliburton and DynCorp—declined requests for interviews from Mother
Jones.)
The companies don't rely on informal networking alone, though. They
also pour plenty of money into the political system—especially into the
re-election war chests of lawmakers who oversee their business. An
analysis by Mother Jones shows that 17 of the nation's leading private
military firms have invested more than $12.4 million in congressional
and presidential campaigns since 1999. DynCorp, a Virginia-based
military and technology company that receives more than 96 percent of
its $2 billion in annual revenues from the federal government, wrote
more than a dozen checks to the Republican National Committee over the
past three years and made dozens of other contributions to key Capitol
Hill lawmakers on committees that deal with defense issues.
The firms also maintain platoons of Washington lobbyists to help keep
government contracts headed their way. In 2001, according to the most
recent federal disclosure forms, 10 private military companies spent
more than $32 million on lobbying. DynCorp retained two lobbying firms
that year to successfully block a bill that would have forced federal
agencies to justify private contracts on cost-saving grounds. MPRI'S
parent company, L-3 Communications, had more than a dozen lobbyists
working on its behalf, including Linda Daschle, wife of Senate Minority
Leader Tom Daschle. Last year L-3 won $1.7 billion in Defense
Department contracts.
THE CAMPAIGN CASH and personal connections give private military
companies an unusual degree of influence, even by Washington standards.
In at least one case, a company has successfully shifted U.S. foreign
policy to bolster its bottom line. In 1998, the government of
Equatorial Guinea asked MPRI to evaluate its defense systems,
particularly its need for a coast guard to protect its oil reserves. To
do so, MPRI needed a license from the U.S. State Department. But the
Clinton administration flatly rejected the company's request, citing
the West African nation's egregious record of torturing and murdering
political dissidents.
MPRI launched a full-scale blitz to overturn the decision, quietly
dispatching company officials to work the hallways of the Pentagon,
State Department, and Capitol. "This is the kind of lobbying that's
surgically executed," says Rep. Schakowsky. "This is not something they
want a wide discussion on in Congress." MPRI's executives argued that
the United States should be engaging Equatorial Guinea, both to improve
its record on human rights and to ensure access to its oil reserves. It
didn't hurt that the company could effectively pull rank, citing its
extensive military experience. "Remember, these are high-level
four-star generals, who can really make an argument that this is
consistent with foreign policy," says Deborah Avant, an
international-affairs expert at George Washington University.
In 2000, the State Department did an about-face and issued a license to
MPRI. Bennett Freeman, a high-ranking State Department official who
initially opposed the deal, says he changed his mind after meeting with
Lt. General Harry Soyster of MPRI, who convinced him that the company
would include human-rights training in its work. "These private
military companies, if properly directed by U.S. government officials,
can in fact play positive roles," Freeman says. MPRI refuses to reveal
the terms of its contract with Equatorial Guinea.
The United States has a history of dispatching private military
companies to handle the dirtiest foreign assignments. The Pentagon
quietly hired for-profit firms to train Vietnamese troops before
America officially entered the war, and the CIA secretly used private
companies to transport weapons to the Nicaraguan contras during the
1980s after Congress had cut off aid. But as the Bush administration
replaces record numbers of soldiers with contractors, it creates more
opportunities for private firms to carry out clandestine operations
banned by Congress or unpopular with the public. "We can see some merit
in using an outside contractor," Charles Snyder, deputy assistant
secretary of state for African affairs, recently told reporters,
"because then we're not using U.S. uniforms and bodies."
Like the Clinton administration, the Bush administration is relying
heavily on private military companies to wage the war on drugs in South
America. Federal law bans U.S. soldiers from participating in
Colombia's war against left-wing rebels and from training army units
with ties to right-wing paramilitaries infamous for torture and
political killings. There are no such restrictions on for-profit
companies, though, and since the late 1990s, the United States has paid
private military companies an estimated $1.2 billion, both to eradicate
coca crops and to help the Colombian army put down rebels who use the
drug trade to finance their insurgency.
The largest beneficiary of this privatized war has been DynCorp, which
is helping Colombia's national police destroy coca crops with aerial
defoliants. But according to experts familiar with the war, the
company's role goes well beyond spraying fields. DynCorp employees "are
engaged in combatant roles, fighting in counterinsurgency operations
against the Colombian rebel groups," says Peter Singer, a
foreign-policy fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of
Corporate Warriors. "Indeed, the DynCorp personnel have a local
reputation for being both arrogant and far too willing to get 'wet,'
going out on frequent combat missions and engaging in firefights."
DynCorp has not responded to the allegation.
Relying on DynCorp and other private military companies has enabled
Washington to circumvent Congress and avoid attention. "If the
narcotraffickers shot American soldiers down, you could see the
headlines: 'U.S. Troops Killed in Colombia,'" says Myles Frechette, the
U.S. ambassador to Colombia during the Clinton administration. By
contrast, the 1992 assassination of three DynCorp employees, whose
helicopter was shot down during an anti-drug mission in Peru, merited
exactly 113 words in the New York Times. (In February, when another
aircraft crashed during a drug operation in Colombia, three employees
of Northrop Grumman were taken hostage.)
Private military companies also played an unheralded role in the
Balkans. After the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, the United Nations
placed an embargo on providing military assistance to either Serbia or
Croatia. Some in the State Department, however, wanted to counter the
dominance of Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic by strengthening
Croatian president Franjo Tudjman, a self-proclaimed Aryan supremacist.
Private military companies once again provided the answer. In 1994, the
State Department issued a license to MPRI to provide military training
to the Croatian army. "It allowed the United States to exert a good
deal of political heft while reserving its official stance of not being
involved," says Avant, the international-affairs expert at George
Washington University.
MPRI insists that it provided no combat training to Croatian troops,
saying it merely instructed the country's military in how to operate in
a Western-style democracy under civilian control. But according to
independent reports, the company taught basic infantry tactics to
Croatian soldiers and explained how to coordinate assaults. In August
1995, after the training ended, the Croatian army launched Operation
Storm, a U.S.-style military operation designed to take back the
disputed Krajina region from the Serbs. The four-day assault was a
bloody episode of ethnic cleansing. Croatian graduates of MPRI's
training carried out summary executions and indiscriminately shelled
civilians, leaving hundreds dead and more than 150,000 homeless.
Afterward, the Croatians expressed their gratitude for MPRI's help.
"They lecture us on tactics and big war operations," one officer told
The Observer of London, "which is why we needed them for Operation
Storm."
SUCH INCIDENTS POINT TO the greatest danger underlying the increasing
push to privatize war. Soldiers who disobey orders or violate standards
of conduct can be court-martialed and incarcerated; their supervisors
can be reassigned or forced to retire. Private companies, by contrast,
are able to operate in almost complete secrecy, with little
accountability to civilian or military authorities. Consider the case
of two DynCorp employees who exposed a sex-trafficking scandal in
Bosnia, where the company was assisting the American military with
peacekeeping operations during the late 1990s. According to court
documents, DynCorp employees bought and sold local Bosnian girls, some
as young as 13, for use as sex slaves, often confiscating the passports
of victims so they couldn't escape. The men were not subjected to local
or U.S. criminal charges; DynCorp simply whisked them home—and fired
the two whistleblowers.
The lack of accountability could have grave consequences in battle. The
Pentagon has become so dependent on private military companies that it
literally cannot wage war without them. Troops already rely on
for-profit contractors to maintain 28 percent of all weapons systems,
and the Bush administration wants to increase that figure to 50
percent. In most cases, private military companies can legally withdraw
their employees if faced with danger in a combat zone—an escape clause
that worries many military officials. If contractors flee when the
shooting starts, it could sever supply lines, ground aircraft, and
leave soldiers to run complex weapons systems they no longer have the
skill or know-how to keep in working order. "There are some weapons
systems that the U.S. military forces do not have the capability to do
their own maintenance on," concedes David Young, a deputy commander at
the Defense Contract Management Agency. "When you take these weapons
systems into a combat zone, is contract support still reliable,
especially if you are facing weapons of mass destruction? It's a source
of worry when you're talking about chemical or biological weapons."
Military insiders, from the Defense Department's inspector general to
the Army War College, echo that concern. "Will using contractors place
our service personnel at greater risk of losing their lives in combat?"
one Air Force military journal has asked. "Are we ultimately trading
their blood to save a relatively insignificant amount in the national
budget?"
Blackwater USA's Gary Jackson, whose company operates in hostile parts
of Africa and southwestern Asia, insists that his employees would
never bolt from a war zone. "They're paying us good money to go to
places that are already ugly," he says. "If it gets real ugly, that's
why they hired us in the first place." Pentagon
officials also insist that private firms have proved reliable so far.
"I've never seen any deficiencies, even under fire," says the Army's
Don Trautner. "I challenge anyone to come up with a situation where a
contractor would run under harsh or hostile conditions."
Brian Boquist doesn't have to come up with a hypothetical scenario.
Boquist is the founder of International Charter Inc., a small private
military company based in Salem, Oregon, that has provided air
transportation for peacekeeping operations in Africa and Haiti. In
1996, Boquist subcontracted with DynCorp to fly helicopters for
international peacekeepers in Liberia. Four months into the contract,
rebels from the countryside spilled into the capital city of Monrovia,
shooting people and burning homes. While black smoke hung over the
city, refugees trying to escape the violence poured into the U.S.
Embassy compound. All around them, corpses lay in the street.
Boquist and his colleagues fled to the embassy from their downtown
hotel—but when they got there, their superiors from DynCorp were
nowhere to be found. "They had left the day before," Boquist says.
"Just disappeared." Boquist tried to contact the company for several
days and finally reached DynCorp's U.S. offices by telephone. "Do the
best you can to get your personnel out," he recalls being told. By
then, though, the airport in Monrovia was closed. Stranded in the
burning city, Boquist and his colleagues armed themselves—buying
weapons on the black market and picking up abandoned guns from the
street—and defended the embassy and the refugees inside until U.S.
military reinforcements arrived. "It's easy to be patriotic when you
don't have anyplace to go," he says.
Boquist hasn't forgiven DynCorp ("it was hell on earth"), but notes
that it's only natural for businesses to be concerned with their bottom
line. "They're worried about liability and being sued, and that takes
precedence," Boquist says. "That's the same problem you're going to
face in any major conflict."
Despite such experiences in the field, the Bush administration is
rapidly deploying private military companies in the Persian Gulf and
other conflict zones. By March, DynCorp alone had 1,000 employees in
the Middle East to assist in a war with Iraq. "The trend is growth,"
says Daniel Nelson, the former professor at the Pentagon's Marshall
Center. "This current president and administration have—in part because
of September 11, but also because of their fundamental ideology—taken
off constraints that somewhat limited the prior administration."
According to some estimates, private military companies will double
their business by the end of the decade, to $200 billion a year.
President Bush only has to look to his father's war to see what the
consequences of this trend could be in a second conflict with Iraq. In
the Gulf War's single deadliest incident, an Iraqi missile hit a
barracks far from the front, killing 28 Army reservists who were
responsible for purifying drinking water. Other troops quickly jumped
in to take their place. "Today, the military relies heavily on
contractors for this support," Colonel Steven Zamparelli, a career
contracting officer, notes in the Air Force Journal of Logistics. "If
death becomes a real threat, there is no doubt that some contractors
will exercise their legal rights to get out of the theater. Not so many
years ago, that may have simply meant no hot food or reduced morale and
welfare activity. Today, it could mean the only people a field
commander has to accomplish a critical 'core competency' task such as
weapons-system maintenance...have left and gone home."
Copyright © 2004 Barry Yeoman
---
Sulla polemica con SUPERQUARK vedi anche:
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/3633
Da: andreamartocchia
Data: Lun 26 Lug 2004 19:34:17 Europe/Rome
A: Pinna Lorenzo, superquark
Oggetto: Sulla risposta della redazione di SuperQuark -- Re: I:
servizio Eserciti Privati
Gentile redazione di SuperQuark,
la vostra risposta alla nostra Lettera ci lascia ulteriormente
sconcertati ed amareggiati.
Il coinvolgimento della MPRI nelle operazioni "Lampo" e "Tempesta" ha
avuto come principale risultato la cacciata di almeno
centocinquantamila persone, ed ha comportato centinaia di morti ed
altrettanti scomparsi. Non si e' dunque affatto trattato di operazioni
mirate a "ristabilire la pace", a meno che per "pace" non si intenda
semplicemente l'annientamento dell'avversario. Questo, di fatto, ha
motivato la nostra lettera di protesta; eppure tutto cio' non viene
nemmeno menzionato nella vostra risposta, la quale contiene invece
valutazioni e commenti di carattere essenzialmente politico, e
nondimeno fortemente superficiali, in merito a quelli che definite
"vecchi stereotipi".
Dove sia l'informazione scientifica, in tutto questo, resta per noi un
mistero! Chi ha diffuso "stereotipi" sulla guerra di squartamento della
Jugoslavia, in tutti questi anni, sono stati innanzitutto i mass-media
occidentali: voi compresi, purtroppo, almeno a partire dalla
trasmissione dello scorso 6 luglio. Questi stereotipi non vengono
diffusi "per caso", bensi' proprio allo scopo di nascondere la verita'
sulle responsabilita' e sulle conseguenze del conflitto. In questo caso
specifico, voi avete scelto di nascondere la pulizia etnica dei Serbi
della Croazia, e di tessere le lodi dei suoi maggiori responsabili,
cioe' certi settori militari degli Stati Uniti d'America. Il vostro
documentario e' stato costruito sulla base di UNA SOLA FONTE, quella da
voi citata nella vostra risposta, e nondimeno con ampio spreco di
denaro pubblico, laddove una semplice ricerchina in internet avrebbe
consentito di trovare informazioni ben piu' accurate, e comunque non
cosi' unilaterali, sullo stesso argomento (vedi ad es. l'articolo "La
privatizzazione della guerra" di Ken Silverstein, pubblicato da "The
Nation" il 28 luglio 1997, e tradotto nel n. 47, marzo 1998 di
"Guerre&Pace").
Questo modo di nascondere i fatti per spostare tendenziosamente le
responsabilita', come sanno tutti gli esperti di strategia militare,
viene definito "disinformazione strategica". Forse il vostro prossimo
documentario potreste dedicarlo proprio a questa ed alle altre tecniche
di guerra psicologica (sulla disinformazione strategica nel caso
jugoslavo e nelle altre guerre contemporanee suggeriamo di partire ad
es. da qualche ricerca Google su: "Ruder&Finn Public Global Affairs",
"Hill&Knowlton", "Office of Strategic Influence", "Fourth Psychological
Operations Group, Fort Bragg, North Carolina", "PsyOps", ...), visto
che pare abbiate scelto di "aprire" SuperQuark alle questioni militari
- in questo purtroppo assecondando la tristissima tendenza che
caratterizza la fase storica in cui viviamo.
Con l'occasione segnaliamo che si sono uniti alla nostra protesta
l'ing. Giacomo Alessandroni, Giancarlo Chieregato, il prof. Mauro
Cristaldi, e, dalla Francia, il generale Pierre-Marie Gallois,
notissimo esperto di geopolitica - che conosce bene la lingua italiana
- e Bogdan Manojlovic, ricercatore all'Université Paris12.
Seguono tutte le adesioni aggiornate:
Giacomo Alessandroni, ingegnere, Associazione PeaceLink
Angelo Baracca, docente di Fisica all'Universita' di Firenze
Vincenzo Brandi, ricercatore presso l'ENEA Casaccia, Roma
Giuseppe Catapano, operatore nel settore delle telecomunicazioni, Roma
Andrea Catone, storico del movimento operaio, Bari
Giancarlo Chieregato, artigiano, Crandola Valsassina (Lecco)
Franco Consalvi, funzionario pubblico, Roma
Mauro Cristaldi, prof.associato, Dip. Biologia Animale e dell'Uomo,
Univ. Roma "La Sapienza"
Olga Daric, traduttrice, Parigi
Pasquale De Sole, Laboratorio di Chimica Clinica del Policlinico
Gemelli (Università Cattolica S.Cuore), Roma
Spartaco Ferri, già partigiano nella Lotta di Liberazione contro il
nazifascismo, Roma
Miriam Pellegrini Ferri, scrittrice e Presidente del Gruppo Atei
Materialisti Dialettici (G.A.MA.DI.), Roma
Maria Fierro, funzionario pubblico, Roma
Pierre-Marie Gallois, géneral de l'air (CR), théoricien de la force de
frappe nucléaire française
Babsi Jones, www.babsijones.org, Milano
Ivana Kerecki, sociologa e collaboratrice editoriale, Milano
Anita Krstic, operatore turistico, Milano
Bogdan Manojlovic, chercher université Paris12, cofondatore della
rivista Balkans Infos e membro della redazione
Serena Marchionni, bibliotecaria, Strasburgo (Francia)
Andrea Martocchia, Osservatorio Astronomico di Strasburgo
Edoardo Nucci, Ass. Internazionale per l'Amicizia e la Solidarieta' tra
i Popoli (AIASP), Roma
Ivan Pavicevac, conduttore della trasmissione radiofonica "Voce
jugoslava" , Roma
Cristiano Roman, lavoratore autonomo, Milano
Fabrizio Rossi, ingegnere industriale, Roma
Libero Vitiello, Dipartimento di Biologia, Universita' di Padova
Gilberto Vlaic, Dipartimento di Scienze Chimiche, Universita' di Trieste
Milica Vukelic, Milano
> Da: Pinna Lorenzo
> Inviato: giovedì 15 luglio 2004 11.18
> Oggetto: servizio Eserciti Privati
>
>
> Roma,15 .7.2004
>
> Gentilissimi,
> Il servizio sulle Imprese Militari Private tentava di spiegare una
> trasformazione in corso nell' organizzazione militare
> dell'Occidente,di cui il caso "Croazia" e' solo uno degli esempi
> citati. Una trasformazione di cui non ci si rendera' conto e che
> quindi non si riuscira' a regolare o a limitare finche' si
> continueranno a dare giudizi morali o a usare vecchi stereotipi come:
> merceneri, avventurieri, manovre oscure, avidi interessi, imperialismo
> americano, etc.
> La base del nostro " disinformato" servizio era il libro di J. Singer
> "Corporate Warriors" Cornell University 2002 e un lungo colloquio di
> circa tre ore con lo stesso autore del libro nel suo ufficio della
> Brookings Institution di Washington.
> Non era nostra intenzione entrare nella storia specifica del complesso
> conflitto jugoslavo, cosa d'altronde impossibile visto il tempo che ci
> era concesso ( circa 7 minuti) per trattare
> questo argomento.
> Grazie per l'attenzione con la quale ci avetre seguiti. I nostri piu'
> cordiali saluti.
>
>
> La Redazione di SuperQuark