Australian Penthouse, May 2007 – Blood Money

FREELANCE FIGHTERS❯❯
BLOOD
MONEY
Private security contractors have filled a massive security
vacuum in Iraq, and among them are hundreds, maybe
thousands, of ex-military Aussies. Their business is deadly, they
operate under no legal framework and they represent the future
of warfare. But a word to the wise – don’t call them mercenaries
[ WORDS BY ROB O’BRIEN ]
| 36 | PENTHOUSE
I
t’s the deadliest road in the world. It’s known as “Route
Irish” and it winds its way from Baghdad airport to the
Green Zone. In July last year, a team of four security
contractors from Triple Canopy, a US firm, was heading to
the airport. “I want to kill somebody today,” ex-US Marine
Jacob Washbourne supposedly said. According to The Washington
Post something evil ensued: Before the day was over… the
guards had been involved in three shooting incidents. In one,
Washbourne allegedly fired into the windshield of a taxi for
amusement, according to statements from the three other guards.
Fijian army veteran Isireli Naucukidi said Sheppard, who was
driving, cut off the taxi on Washbourne’s orders, giving him a
better shot. Naucukidi said the three American guards laughed
as they sped away, the fate of the Iraqi taxi driver unknown.
Schmidt told Washbourne, “Nice shot”, according to Naucukidi.
Another day, another death.
Since the Iraq war started in March 2003, the use of civilian
contractors – aka private security contractors (PSCs) – has
mushroom-clouded alarmingly.
A February 2006 UK Government Accountability Office report
found that there were approximately 48,000 private contractors in
Iraq, employed by 181 different companies. It is the UK’s largest
export to the war-torn country.❯❯
PENTHOUSE | 37 |
The Australian Government couldn’t tell
you how many Aussie PSCs are there right
now, but it’s likely to be closer to the number
of troops on the ground than you’d think. The
Herald-Sun reported the figure at around 100,
but those who know say it’s a lot more.
Australian military, police and security
officers head privately to Iraq to earn
between US$300 and US$700 ($410 and
$960) a day, although the high demand for
contractors is now forcing US companies to
scour poorer countries for cheaper recruits.
“There are hundreds if not thousands
of Australians over there doing that work
and you never hear about it,” says Rob
Redenbach, an Australian who worked as
a contractor for the US State Department.
“Part of the reason you don’t hear about it
is because you’ve got the best police and
military units in Australia. They’re the golden
boys – and the powers that be don’t know
how to respond to that.”
Redenbach spent six months in Iraq in
2005, at one point being responsible for
guarding the Shiite and Sunni leaders who
drew up the new constitution. It’s a job he
documents in his book Wave Man
(reviewed on page 30).
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A Blackwater USA helicopter on patrol and, left, Robert Young
Pelton with a Blackwater team
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There
are two
Australian security
firms currently in Iraq, Unity
Resources Group and the Perthbased OAM. Between them,
they have employed hundreds of
Aussies in the Middle East. Neither
company was particularly keen to
speak to Australian Penthouse.
PSCs flooded Iraq after the fall of
Saddam Hussein in 2003, when multimillion-dollar defence contracts were
offered by the US to firms such as the
London-based Aegis and the US-based
Blackwater USA. The jobs ranged from
protecting politicians, non-government workers,
oil fields, corporate clients and airports, and
between them, the freelancers or roamers
required to keep Iraq under control (loosely
speaking) have irreverently become known as
“the Coalition of the Billing”.
War attracts a certain kind of character,
and the US author and filmmaker Robert
| 38 | PENTHOUSE
Young Pelton knows them
well. He calls them “Ronins”
(literally “drifting person”), because they
wander the world looking for places to apply
their skills. Wars do help in this respect.
Young Pelton has spent time in some
of the world’s most hostile terrains. He
covered the hunt for Bin Laden with the CIA
in Afghanistan and spent four weeks with
Blackwater USA in Iraq, on Route Irish. He
knows the work of “mercenaries” better than
anyone and has charted the rise of security
contractors in Iraq in his 2006 book License
to Kill, Hired Guns in the War on Terror. The
world of the security contractor, he says, is
an insular but sociable spider’s web of exmilitary men from all over the planet.
“When you meet these guys, you
realise they’d be doing something for
much less money if the war wasn’t on,”
he says from his home in San Diego,
California. “This is the gold rush, this
is the Wild West. When these gigs put
up, they all rush to them.”
Young Pelton believes the security
contractor boom in Iraq has been underplayed
(not least by the Australian government).
He says there are well over 70,000 PSCs of
varying levels of military expertise and skill
in Iraq, all facing the day-to-day threat of
attack. Since Iraq’s reconstruction began,
916 deaths have been reported for contractors
working on US-funded projects in Iraq.
David Isenberg is an independent analyst
for the Washington DC-based British American
Security Information Council and has been
an authority on the rise of PSCs since the
1990s. He believes the reasons for the thriving
industry in Iraq and the deployment of private
forces for peacekeeping duties dates back to
the end of the Cold War, when the retreat
of US and Soviet forces freed up millions of
soldiers, mainly from Western countries. A
new era of freelance military activity was born.
“There was the US and Soviet Union,
two bulls in a China shop no longer raging
at each other,” Isenberg says. “They were
cutting back their military establishment. At
the same time they no longer felt compelled
to intervene in every conflict in the world.
With new conflicts and the US withdrawing,
this vacuum was created, and in this case
there was a market opportunity.” A market
opportunity called Iraq.
Nathan (not his real name) is about to take
another trip to the Afghan capital Kabul. He
has worked as a PSC in Afghanistan and Iraq
for several years and says most of the work
involves protecting, rebuilding, reconstructing
and guarding – jobs not associated with the
hard-ass “mercenary” image.
“Those working in the professional
security and risk industry don’t like the term
mercenaries used about them,” he says.
“Partly because the services they offer are
purely defensive, not offensive.”
Kiwi Gary Brandon agrees. He is a classic
Anzac Ronin, and a classic example of the
ex-military types who seek financial and
personal gain from Iraq’s private security
sector. Following 15 years in the NZ military,
Brandon undertook two lucrative stints in
Private security contractors go through a training drill in Iraq
Iraq, one guarding Baghdad airport, another
guarding an engineering project for the USbased Armor Group, which he documents in
his upcoming book Kiwi Under Fire In Iraq.
“We’re working for privately listed
companies,” he says. “We don’t actually do
direct action against the insurgency – we’re
protecting clients and their interests.”
Brandon was severely injured by a roadside
bomb that hit his convoy on 6 January last
year, shattering his heel and tibia. He made
the decision to have his lower right leg
amputated last year. But here’s the crazy
bit – he’s looking to go back.
“Your heart’s beating, you never know
what’s going to happen… I did seven weeks
with them [Armor Group] before I got blown
up,” he recalls. “The company wants me to
get back to work. I’ll see what they offer.”
Young Pelton can recall working with
1/2
ad
PENTHOUSE | 39 |
Blackwater contractors on rebuilding a police
station in northern Iraq. “We were basically
guarding gravel. People were getting killed
taking gravel to a construction site. And
everybody knew that after that police station
was built they’d blow the shit out of it,
which they did, within 30 days.”
It doesn’t help, then, that the generally
good work done by contractors is undone
by a minority of morons. The United Nations
High Commissioner for Human Rights is
currently investigating human rights
abuses by mercenaries,
private military and
security companies.
The Triple Canopy
shooting last July
was something of an
exception – there has
been little oversight and
accountability within the
industry – a problem that
has dogged its reputation.
“It’s like the Internet,”
Isenberg says. “You have a
new field and the law has
not caught up. The existing
laws… are oriented against
mercenaries of yesteryear.”
However, Pelton Young believes the
war, the contractors and the legal issues
surrounding them were all part of a broader
plan to avoid accountability right from
the start: “The Bush administration has
sidestepped a lot of ugly confrontations by
simply hiring out the dirty work. It’s crystalclear this entire privatisation of the war on
terror was deliberately created to sidestep
public criticism and going back to voters to
explain what you’re doing.”
Aegis Defence Services may be one of
the largest contractors in Iraq (courtesy of
a cool US$300m deal with the Pentagon),
but its CEO, Tim Spicer, is definitely one
who has been tarred by the “mercenaries
of yesteryear” brush. Spicer has twice been
caught with his mercenary mits in the cookie
jar – once when the armed forces of Papua
New Guinea rebelled against him and his
team hired to protect the remote island of
Bougainville for the PNG government, and
once when he was embroiled in military
operations in Sierra Leone, which included
importing weapons in violation of the UN arms
embargo. His company, Sandline International,
caused a major diplomatic row that eventually
led to its demise. Given such displays of
underhandedness, it’s small wonder the
“mercenary” tag gets flung around so readily.
The recurring problem on the ground
has been some very high-profile killings.
Four Blackwater contractors were shot,
burnt and strung up in Fallujah in 2004
when they were attacked by an angry mob.
It alerted many in the West to the murky
but burgeoning world of security in Iraq.
Professor Kays Juma, a 72-year-old Australian,
was also shot dead at a security checkpoint
in Baghdad last year having wrongly been
identified as a threat. The perception
seems to be that contractors are quick to
get their guns off, but Redenbach explains
that there is often very little time when
patrolling checkpoints (under standard rules
of engagement) to ascertain whether an
approaching vehicle is hostile or not.
“You’ve got your 100-metre bubble, it’s
the main tactic to defend against suicide
attacks… If someone comes within 100
metres – you shoot into the bitumen, you
shoot into the grill, then you shoot into
the driver’s head,” he says.
The Australian Department of
Foreign Affairs doesn’t bother
registering contractors now and
wouldn’t be able to tell you how
many are on the ground in Iraq
or Afghanistan at the moment.
When Redenbach decided to
head to Iraq, he just went – the
only permission he received was from his
wife. PSCs are not even added to the body
count when they are killed. Gordon Conroy,
a former SAS commander who started up
Unity Resources Group, told the Sun-Herald:
“When a marine gets killed, it is not a good
look politically. When one of us is killed,
well, we are contractors – it is not as bad.”
Accountability and control have been
bugbears. According to a study released in
February 2006 by the Special Inspector
General for Iraq Reconstruction: “Shortly
before its dissolution in June 2004, the CPA
[the Coalition Provisional Authority] was still
unable to account for 10 per cent of its
staff in Iraq.” The CPA can also be blamed
for letting private contractors operate with
immunity from the local legal process.
“Corporations weren’t going to work in
a war zone if they were subject to a bizarre
Tim Spicer arrives at court in
Papua New Guinea in 1997
Australian security
specialist Rob Redenbach
court system or being arrested by corrupt
cops,” Young Pelton says.
Although adhering to their own rigorous
codes of conduct, PSCs work under no
jurisdiction. In theory, they are liable to
prosecution. In reality, this has happened
just once, when David A Passaro, a former
CIA contractor, was accused of beating
an Afghan prisoner to death. Invariably,
instances when contractors kill an Iraqi
(mistakenly or not), lead to the PSC being
immediately shipped out of Iraq without so
much as a slap on the wrist.
“I know of at least two [incidents]
where they got that guy straight of the
country,” Redenbach says. “One of them
they had to hide. It’s such a basket case. If
that happened in a Western country, you
wouldn’t be able to hide. In Iraq, you can.”
Unsavoury rumours surround PSCs
wherever they go. It has been claimed
that Blackwater’s men walk the streets in
long trench coats and armed with Samurai
swords, that their tactics are to shoot first
and ask questions later. Some contractors
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have been dubbed “black death” by the
locals. Some have been accused of shooting
Iraqis for sport.
In November 2005, a disgruntled exAegis employee posted a “trophy video” on
You Tube depicting his former colleagues
shooting at Iraqis in civilian cars. The Aegis
team is seen opening fire with an automatic
weapon at an approaching Mercedes.
Another sequence shows a PSC firing at a
white sedan, running it off the road. Aegis
subsequently conducted an investigation
and concluded that these were “legitimate
operations”, that the video had been “taken
out of context” and that there was no
evidence that civilians had been killed. The
Pentagon declined to take further steps.
Redenbach in turn recalls vividly one of
Blackwater’s botched operations. “At the
compound where I was living they came in
shitless of him. They shoot everything and
anything – the days of quiet operators and
steely eyed guys are long gone.
“There were rangers, marines, cops –
“hearts and minds” wasn’t in the vocabulary.
They have to get to and from A and B alive.
If they have to take out a few cars or fire a
few rounds, they don’t give a shit – because
the one time you hold off, you get blown
up. And they did get blown up – about a
month after I left.”
Nathan says that Iraq has created an
unsustainable artificial bubble in security work.
“That bubble is now bursting with companies
struggling to pick up work away from Iraq
and salaries are often reducing for guys on
the ground at the same time as the threat
levels are getting worse,” he adds.
Redenbach and Young Pelton are inclined
to agree. “With Iraq and Afghanistan, there’s
government and the Red Cross is looking
at a broader global framework under which
private contractors can legitimately operate
in war zones. Also, last year, the British
Association of Private Security Companies
was set up, a lobbying body keen to
promote self-regulation. Young Pelton is less
optimistic about regulation but accepts the
role private companies now play in conflicts:
“Legislation will come too late, there’ll be a
whole new problem.” However, he adds that
the general trend of employing contractors
from less-developed nations – Fijians,
Peruvians, Chileans – whilst Iraqis take more
responsibility for security, will continue as the
US withdraws.
More glaring for those outside the
industry is the precedent set with the use
of private contractors in war, which may, if
nothing else, simply offer governments a way
Iraqis stand at the scene of a shooting in Baghdad, in which one Iraqi was
shot after foreign private security guards opened fire on his car in 2004
and shot one of the residents. They read the
situation wrong and shot him through the
window,” he says.
Of course, the reason private security
work is occasionally unfairly scrutinised and
wrongly labelled the business of mercenaries
is because it is prone to attracting individuals
with no moral compass. “I always liken
this to the rationale of having a prostitute
or getting married – the service is the
same but the responsibility and morality is
much different,” Young Pelton says of the
argument for deploying private contractors.
“They’re all marines and small town cops.
You tell a small town cop he’s going to Iraq,
he goes and buys $5000 worth of queer
gear and walks around like he’s filming
Rambo Part V – most people are scared
| 42 | PENTHOUSE
now a market demand for those services,”
Redenbach says. “Before, there would have
been people who put their hands up, but
there was nothing to put your hand up for.
Now, there is an opening, they can go in,
put a flak jacket on, and operate in a team.”
One of the few positives to take from
Iraq is that the war has forced the industry
to grow up. According to the managing
director of the British company Janusian
Security: “Most of the serious players are
quite supportive of bringing in some degree
of regulation. It is traditionally globally an
unregulated industry except with a few
exceptions. Iraq is forcing the industry to
grow up and consider how the industry
should be regulated.”
A joint initiative between the Swiss
of committing to conflicts in far-away places
without getting mud on their hands.
Attaching the mercenary tag to private
security contractors has been all too easy,
although understanding the nuances of the
industry has not. “Of course we’re talking
about guys with guns: if it shoots, it bleeds;
if it bleeds, it leads,” Isenberg says.
With regulation and accountability, those
men now working on the fringes of conflicts
will become commonplace. Wars will be
contracted out to privatised forces, freelance
guns, whatever you want to call them. It’s
the future, however messy it might be now.
“I encourage any country to come to grips
with the reality of privatisation,” Young Pelton
says. “That’s healthy. “It’s the application of
it that I find to be so baffling.”
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