Outsourcing the Iraq War: Mercenary Recruiters Turn to Latin America
Stoner, Eric
JULY/AUGUST 2008 update Outsourcing the Iraq War: Mercenary Recruiters Turn to Latin America a former Blackwater contractor who fought in Iraq shows his gun, which...
...One of those mercenaries was Mario Urquía, a 30-year veteran of the special forces in Honduras...
...war machine will inevitably continue to rely on private forces...
...And since paramilitary activity is also banned in Chile, the limited training that recruits received often took place either in Amman, Jordan, or in Iraq, once the Chileans arrived, as the UN Working Group found...
...In 2005, a local subsidiary of Chicago-based Your Solutions began recruiting for the company in Honduras...
...Not only did that prove false, but he also says that he was never paid...
...While private security outfits have run into trouble in some countries, many others continue with business as usual...
...isolation, and lack of basic the UN Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries has warned that these so-called “security guards” are “in fact private soldiers militarily armed,” and that the companies that employ them in Iraq constitute “new expressions of mercenarism in the twenty-first century...
...The company trained its recruits— including a group of Chileans who enteredthecountrywithtouristvisas— at theformermilitarybaseinLepaterique...
...The stories of exploitation that they bring home, however, vary little from those of Hondurans and others...
...In order to skirt Chilean law, which prohibits “the act of providing orofferingtheservicesofprivatearmed guards, in any form or designation, by anynaturalorartificialperson,”Pizarro hired Chileans for Blackwater through Neskowin,afirmhesetupinUruguay, while using a different company called Global Guards, registered in Panama, for his business with Triple Canopy...
...Meanwhile, Triple Canopy, which according to State JULY/AUGUST 2008 update a protest against the u.s...
...manufacturers...
...After receiving death threats for sharing his story with the Honduran press and necessities such as medical treatment and sanitation...
...The money may have been good for Pizarro, but controversy was never far behind...
...Despite significant pressure from the Bush administration, only a handful of countries in the region joined the so-called Coalition of the Willing, contributing a combined to tal of slightly more than 1,000 soldiers to the U.S.-led war effort...
...Not only has this phenomenon not stopped,” says Amada Benavides de Pérez, a member of the UN Working Group, but recruitment in Latin America actually “has been increasing...
...Stories like these are not unique for those in the re gion who have worked for ties and diplomats...
...Reports surfaced shortly after this paramilitary pipeline between Chile andIraqbeganflowingthatPizarrowas posting flyers on military bases and using e-mail to lure active-duty military personnel to the private sector...
...Since 2005, when the company was booted out of Honduras, most its recruits have come from Peru...
...The military experience for thousands of Chileans were still a relawhom $1,000 a month is a lot of money...
...The unprecedented privatization of the war in Iraq has given rise to a private military industry that was all but nonexistent 20 years ago...
...All told, Pizarro sayshecontracted756Chileansforthe two companies, and possibly others, while he was in business, Scahill reported...
...A dual citizen of Chile and the United States, Pizarro served in the militaries of both countries and to this day defends the Pinochet dictatorship...
...Located just outside Tegucigalpa, the base is a notorious legacy of the Contra war, having been used by Washington in the 1980s to train Nicaraguan counter-insurgents, as well as Honduras’s infamous Battalion 316 death squad...
...After leaving the Marines as a translator for the U.S...
...In the 1991 Gulf War, for example, there was one contractor for every 60 soldiers on the ground...
...As Tito Tricot, a former political prisoner who was tortured under the dictatorship in Chile, told Scahill, the Chileans working for these firms in Iraq “are valued for their expertise in kidnapping, torturing, and killing defenseless civilians...
...This paltry sum—though Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries, told Mother Jones magazine...
...For instance, Louis E. V. Nevaer reported in 2004: “Newspapers in Chile have estimated that approximately 37 Chileans in Iraq are seasoned veterans of the Pinochet era...
...Chilean senator Alejandro Navarro, an outspoken critic of the privatewarindustry,hasestimatedthat about2,200ChileanshavebeentoIraq and that 1,000 remain there, according to the Buenos Aires–based newspaper Página 12 and Chile’s Santiago Times...
...Peter Singer, a leading expert on the private security industry at the Brookings Institution, has estimated that there are citizens from 30 countries employed as security contractors in Iraq...
...citizenship once he completed his contract...
...or British special forces can be paid recognize the role that Latin officers from latin as much as $1,000 per America could play in the booming new mercenary america perform day in Iraq, according to The New York Times...
...Without reversing the radical privatization agenda that has taken hold in Washington, the U.S...
...In the interest of improving profit margins, private military firms in Iraq are increasingly turning to the developing world for armed guards...
...Embassy in Iraq for a year and claims the company promised him U.S...
...Some argue that this is merely a result of poor vetting, while others do not see it as an accident...
...head of the United Nations country’s flag...
...invasion of Iraq in Rio de janeiro, april 2003...
...In “what other region of the world are you going to find reasonably westernized people with military experience, in some cases with combat experience, who will Eric Stoner is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in The Nation and Yahoo News...
...Offerpersonnel speak,” he asks, noting that ing the unusually high salary of about the U.S...
...In October 2003, Pizarro traveled to Blackwater’s headquarters in Moyock, North Carolina, to pitch the idea...
...Urquía filed a complaint against Your Solutions with the Honduran authorities, as have at least 16 others, but his case is not being pursued because he is not currently in the country...
...He recently served as a researcher on the revised, updated version of Jeremy Scahill’s Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army (Nation Books, 2008...
...Another Honduran guard badly injured his foot while in Iraq...
...After only several months in operation, the Honduran government fined Your Solutions and kicked the company out of the country for violating the law, which prohibits the training of foreign soldiersonitssoil.Nevertheless,before the ax fell, Triple Canopy trained and sent at least 189 Hondurans and 105 Chileans to Iraq, according to the UN Working Group...
...invasion of Iraq...
...More than1,000applicantsquicklyresponded, andbyFebruary2004,Blackwater’s 0 an enormous amount for many Latin Americans—has since become the going rate for recruits throughout the region...
...Established in 2005 to war for as long hours, wages partially paid or unpaid, ill-treatment and monitor this new industry, as possible...
...Not a single penny,” he told the Salt Lake Tribune...
...In the spring of 2003, public opinion in Latin America was vehemently, and overwhelmingly, opposed to the U.S...
...What should be a national shame,” Tricot added, “turns into a market asset due to the privatization of the Iraq war...
...One group of five guards, for example, has filed a complaint against the company for sending them to work in Baghdad’s Red Zone, despite being hired to protect the Green Zone...
...While the exact number of private personnel in Iraq today is likely higher than official estimates, at least 180,000 private contractors are working there, according to recent government figures cited in the Los Angeles Times...
...Peruvian contractors, much like those from other countries, have little legal recourse when something goes wrong...
...Citing the definition of a mercenary as “a professional soldier working for a foreign government,” Prince told the House Oversight Committee that incontrast,Blackwater’semployeesare“Americans working for America, protecting Americans...
...One of the most controversial roles being outsourced is armed protection for convoys, government facili exposing those involved in Your Solutions’ operations there, Urquía was forced to flee the country...
...ing to the Private Security Company Association of Iraq there are more than 180 such interest of prowar u.s...
...Latin America, says Adam Isacson, director of programs at the Center for International Policy, is a predictable site for U.S...
...Indeed, it is in the interest of pro-war U.S...
...Not only are far more contractors operating in war zones than in the past, but they are now responsible for many tasks that used to be carried out exclusively by the military...
...Nonetheless, he has appealed the sentence and is currently walking free...
...military training for the “static protection” of State Deprograms worldwide...
...In the end, however, it comes down to supply and demand...
...Often signing their contracts in a rush on the way to the airport, the Peruvians are also likely unaware that any claims against the company must be filed in a court in Virginia, where Triple Canopy is headquartered...
...Another guard says that for six days he was held in custody and isolation in degrading conditions after telling his supervisors that he planned on returning home...
...military—with roughly 160,000 troops in the country—the “junior partner in the coalition that’s occupying Iraq...
...Echoing this gruesome past, one Triple Canopy trainee explained that he and his fellow recruits were instructed “to be heartless when it was uptoustokillsomeone,evenifitwasa child,” Agence France-Presse reported...
...Accord-It is in the private security companies...
...Greystone Limited, a Blackwater affiliate set up in 2004 in the tax haven of Barbados, has recruited Iraq security guards from countries throughout Latin America, includ ing Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, El Salvador, Honduras, and Panama, as journalist Jeremy Scahill has reported...
...Despite signing a contract that states the employer is responsible for providing medical and hospital insurance, he was not declared unfit for work and forced to man his lookout tower on crutches...
...Hired by Triple Canopy, Urquía guarded the U.S...
...nonetheless, thousands of latin americans have joined the occupation, many of them as private contractors...
...To address this problem, Benavides proposes a two-pronged strategy: strengthening laws at both the national and international level, and passing a regional treaty, similar to the 1977 convention against mercenaries that exists for Africa...
...ButBlackwaterisfarfromtheonlysuchcompany hiring “third-country nationals,” or employees who are not from the United States or Iraq...
...Indeed, it was Pizarro who “opened military functions in Iraq—under out and began providing Chileans to Triple Canopy, another large private the door” for these firms to recruit in the region, as José Luis Gómez del Prado, a corporate logo rather than their military company in Iraq, offering salaries of only $1,000 per month...
...Their contracts stipulate that they voluntarily accept every risk “known and unknown,” and exonerate Triple Canopy from any liability even if the contractor is harmed by the company itself...
...It’s their natural partment and Coalition Provisional ground to find people with Authority buildings...
...Embassy and other sites in Baghdad’s Green Zone by hiring recruits almost exclusivelyfromLatinAmerica( especiallyEl Salvador, Nicaragua, Colombia, Chile, Peru, and Honduras), as Foreign Policy magazine noted...
...Making the rounds with the media and testifying before Congress, Prince repeatedly said that his employees are not mercenaries, as critics contend...
...One Chilean contractor who went to Iraq through one of Pizarro’s companies told the UN Working Group that 17 of his fellow active-duty soldiers “had requested leave to be recruited...
...JULY/AUGUST 2008 update Outsourcing the Iraq War: Mercenary Recruiters Turn to Latin America a former Blackwater contractor who fought in Iraq shows his gun, which commemorates the 2004 battle of najaf...
...Army is about a quarter La-$3,000 per month, Blackwater began tino and that Latin America accounts hiring a steady stream of Pizarro’s men for about 40% of U.S...
...One of the first people to poor ex-soldiers and former police tive bargain, considering that former U.S...
...industry was José Miguel essentially Pizarro soon branched Pizarro Ovalle, a former arms broker...
...While ex-soldiers from the Balkans, Fiji, Nepal, the Philippines, South Africa, andUgandaareallcommoninIraq,LatinAmerica has proven to be a particularly fertile recruiting ground for these companies...
...Princewasreceptiveduringtheirmeeting and gave him the go-ahead...
...government customers...
...HuGH GeNTry / WorLd PIcTure NeWs NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS update work for low wages, who speak a lan-first batch of Chilean commandos, 77 guage that a lot of our own military of them, was on its way to Iraq...
...In February 2007, one of Triple Canopy’s subcontractors indicated that the company had 1,130 Peruvians working in Iraq at the time...
...Blackwater employees in Baghdad’s Nisour Square had killed 17 Iraqi civilians the previous month, causing an uproar and the suspension of official diplomatic convoys throughout the country for four days...
...This statement would come as a surprise—and aslapintheface—tothethousandsofLatinAmericans and others from outside the United States whom the company has hired to fill its contracts in Iraq since the war began...
...Given the recent history of repressive regimes throughout the region, it is likely that many Latin Americans working for private military firms in Iraq have been responsible for human rights abuses in their home countries...
...Southern Command in 1999, Pizarro decided to cash in on his unique connections and began facilitatingarmsdealsbetweenLatinAmerican militaries and U.S...
...The actual number of Chileans in Iraq is undoubtedly higher, since mercenary firms also operate there clandestinely...
...Shortly after the United States invaded Iraq, he set his eyes on a new lucrative business opportunity: the provision of Chileans to mercenary companies...
...Pizarro returned immediately to Chile and placed a discreet ad in El Mercurio, the Santiago daily, looking for former military officers for “work abroad...
...In the end, Pizarro was fined and sentenced to 61 days in jail for his recruitment activity, a punishment that is not likely to dissuade many from following in his shoes...
...In fact, in some countries security contractors have said that they were given a contract to sign only once they were on the plane, at which point they realized that their salary would be much less than promised...
...In a recent statement, Triple Canopy said it no longer recruits from either Honduras or Chile, but “continues to hire security personnel from Latin America to work in Iraq because they are diligent workers, reliable, professional and in some instances specifically requested by our U.S...
...policy makers to outsource the human costs of war for as long as possible...
...While Latin America government officials’ recalcitrance on the war may have dealt a diplomatic blow to the United States, it did not stop thousands of poor ex-soldiers and former police officers throughout the region from performing essentially military functions in Iraq—under a corporate logo rather than their country’s flag...
...As Scahill douGLas eNGLe / LaTINPHoTo.orG NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS update noted in congressional testimony, this makes the U.S...
...mercenary companies to recruit personnel...
...By Eric stoner In october, erik prince, the 39-year-old CEO of Blackwater Worldwide, a leading private security company operating in Iraq, went into damage-control mode...
...policy According to the UN Working Group, the Hondurans who went to Iraq with companies in operation that makers to Triple Canopy reported “irnow employ 70,000 armed private security contractors outsource the regularities in harsh working contracts, conditions in the country, and that numhuman costs of with excessive working ber is only growing...
...Department figures relies far more on foreign hiring than Blackwater, filled its contract to protect the U.S...
...Public sentiment in latin america was strongly against the war...
Vol. 41 • July 2008 • No. 4
