Private military companies are capitalising on the war on terror, writes matthew carr |
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The current congressional inquiry into last month's shootings of 11 Iraqi civilians by employees of Blackwater USA has cast a rare official spotlight on the activities of private military companies (PMCs) in Iraq.
The inquiry has generally focused on the dubious legal status of PMCs in Iraq. But their activities also raise wider questions about the transformation of warfare in the early 21st century, at a time when not only governments but corporations are increasingly dependent on privatised military forces.
The use of military force to promote the interests of big business is hardly a historical novelty in itself. National armies have often been deployed in the service of private enterprise, either directly or indirectly. In his 1935 book War Is A Racket, the decorated US Marine Corps General Smedley Butler once
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In Colombia, BP hired the private contractor Defence Systems Limited (DSL) to protect its oil rigs from left-wing guerrillas
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defined his military role as "a high-class muscleman for big business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism".
But the proliferation of PMCs since the Cold War is part of a new trend, in which private military contractors provide an attractive alternative to international corporations for a range of quasi-military services, from bodyguard and facilities protection, to the provision of military training and weapons to foreign armies.
Such services have often been required by multinationals such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, and De Beers in conflict zones that overlap with the extraction of oil, gas, diamonds and other raw materials.
In Colombia, British Petroleum hired the British private contractor Defence Systems Limited (DSL) to protect its oil rigs from left-wing guerrillas - a task that DSL fulfilled with the help of Colombian military officers linked to right-wing paramilitary groups.
In Equatorial Guinea, the US company MPRI has helped the thuggish dictator Teodoro  |
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