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"Private security services Iraq"
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Hired Guns
This study reports the results of a systematic, empirically based survey of opinions of U.S. military and State Department personnel with Iraq war experience to shed light on the costs and benefits of using private security contractors (PSCs) in the Iraq war. For the most part, respondents did not believe that PSCs were \"running wild\" in Iraq, but they held mixed views on PSCs' contribution to the U.S. military operation and U.S. foreign policy objectives.
eBook
Making a killing : the explosive story of a hired gun in Iraq
In September 2003, James \"Ash\" Ashcroft, a former British Infantry captain who served in West Belfast and Bosnia, landed in Iraq as a gun for hire. It was the beginning of an 18-month journey into blood and chaos. In this action-packed page-turner, Ashcroft reveals the dangers of his adrenalin-fueled life as a security contractor in Baghdad, where private soldiers outnumber non-U.S. Coalition forces in a war that is slowly being privatized. From blow-by-blow accounts of days under mortar bombardment to revelations about life operating deep within the Iraqi community, Ashcroft shares the real, unsanitized story of the war in Iraq direct from the front line.
Book
Private military and security companies, contract structure, market competition, and violence in Iraq
Conflict environments exacerbate an incentive dilemma between employers and private military and security companies (PMSCs). PMSCs seek to maximize profits, but employers seek to minimize expenses and maximize services. We argue that PMSCs are influenced by two complementary economic factors: contract structure and intra-sector competition. Contract structures are set by employers and establish compensation constraints and intra-sector competition identifies potential replacements. Both impact service delivery. We find that PMSCs with contract structures that lack performance incentives, even in the presence of competition, increase the likelihood of violence in Iraq. PMSCs that lacked intra-sector competition had a similar but smaller effect.
Journal Article
THE UNDERBELLY OF GLOBAL SECURITY: SIERRA LEONEAN EX-MILITIAS IN IRAQ
In the aftermath of the Sierra Leone civil war, demobilized militia soldiers have become an attractive resource to private security companies. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, this article traces the outsourcing of security at American military bases in Iraq to Sierra Leonean ex-militias, facilitated by a British security company and the Sierra Leone government. In doing so, the article contributes to the ongoing scholarly debate on the privatization of security by offering a \"local\" ethnographically informed perspective on the micro-dynamics of \"global\" security. It is argued that the supply of global security depends on a form of local immobility: on a population that is \"stuck\", yet constantly on the move to seize opportunities for survival and recognition. Structured by a chronological account of the recruitment, deployment, and deportation of Sierra Leonean exmilitias, the article discusses how these former militia soldiers experience being reduced to mere bodies rather than recognized labourers. It concludes that notions of race and slavery are employed by the ex-militias to make sense of their predicaments, but most notably as a moral response to the unequal relationships in which they find themselves embedded, in the context of security outsourcing in a global economy.
Journal Article
The Effectiveness of Contracted Coalitions
The debate on the effectiveness of Private Security Contractors (PSCs) in Iraq has been waged ever since their first appearance. Statists have argued that they are much less effective than regular troops, while neoliberals consider them an effective supplement to regular troops. However, so far, both schools alike have drawn on anecdotal evidence only; yet, such evidence is prone to a high margin of error and does not allow a comparison of different actors. This article addresses these shortfalls by providing hard data, drawn from the Wikileaks “Iraq War logs” data set, on the conduct of PSCs in Iraq and comparing their performance to that of regular troops, that is, the US and Iraqi armed forces. In general, if PSCs are co-deployed alongside regular troops and oversight is institutionalized, their performance supersedes that of poorly trained military personnel, such as the Iraqi military, and in many cases even that of the highly capable US military.
Journal Article
'EYE SPY PRIVATE HIGH': Re-Conceptualizing High Policing Theory
This paper contests traditional analyses of high policing, suggesting that it needs to be decoupled (in theoretical terms) from its umbilical linkage to public actors and the preservation and augmentation of state authority. Arguing that conventional conceptualizations of high policing fail to acknowledge the role of private actors, we adopt the term 'private high policing' to more accurately reflect the complexity of this paradigm. In particular, we note a long legacy of protecting dominant interests within corporate power structures, as well as increased involvement in outsourced security services for Western states. This has reached its zenith in the recent conflict/reconstruction efforts in Iraq. Eschewing conventional notions of the 'proxy' debate, we propose a more complex relationship of obfuscation whereby both public and private high policing actors cross-permeate and coalesce in the pursuit of symbiotic state and corporate objectives.
Journal Article
A New Statelessness? The Truman Doctrine, the Modern Latin American Mercenary, and the Economic Entrenchment of the Third World
During the Cold War, the Truman doctrine guided America towards extensive involvement throughout Latin America. Today, American private security companies recruit heavily from this region, drawing some of the same men who the CIA had covertly trained in the 1970s–1980s to fight in the modern manifestation of other Cold War conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Currently, both American and foreign proxy conflicts continue to expand while relying heavily on Latin American mercenaries, raising important questions on the status of Latin American fighters in the world and their influence on the character of modern warfare.
Journal Article