The rise of the ‘Third Wave’
The increase in the use of PMCs has grown dramatically these last ten years. During the first Gulf War in 1991 for every one contractor there were 50 military personnel involved. In the 2003 conflict the ratio was 1 to 10.14 The military had been planning to dramatically increase its long-term reliance on the private sector in 2003, independently of the conflict. The plan, overseen by then-Army Secretary Thomas E. White, was known as the “Third Wave” within the Pentagon, and could have affected 214,000 military and civilian positions, about one in six Army jobs around the world. It would also have provided a major boost to the Bush administration’s effort to move large blocks of government work into the private sector.
But the initiative came to a temporary standstill in April 2003 when Secretary White resigned after a two-year tenure marked by strains with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. White has claimed that in a memorandum dated March 8, 2002 he warned the Department of Defense under secretaries for army contracting, personnel and finances that the army lacked the basic information required to effectively manage its burgeoning force of private contractors.Though more than two years after White ordered the Army to gather information the Army still has not collected the data.
The “Third Wave” initiative may now be showing new signs of life. One news report suggested that the Pentagon has set a deadline of October 2005 to increase by 20,000 the number of front-line troops by replacing back-room uniformed personnel with civilians and contractors. Within a decade, the target is 300,000 more troops.The PMC sector has been undergoing a significant quantitative and qualitative shift over the past decade. In an article published earlier this year Prof. Deborah Avant of George Washington University wrote:
Private security contractors (PSCs) now provide more (and more kinds of)
services, including some that have been considered core military capabilities in the modern era. This brings contractors closer to the battlefield. In Operation Iraqi Freedom, contractors provided operational support for systems such as JSTARS and Patriot, and were heavily involved in postconflict reconstruction, including in raising and training the Iraqi army and police forces. A small number of firms have provided armed personnel that operate with troops on the battlefield. Much more common, however, are PSCs that support weapons systems, provide logistics, provide advice and training, site security, and policing services to states and non-state actors.
Also new is the transnational nature of the market. Private security is a global phenomenon. In the1990s every multilateral peace operation conducted by the UN was accomplished with the presence of private military or security companies. States that contracted for military services ranged from highly capable states like the United States to failing states like Sierra Leone. Global corporations contracted with PSCs for site security and planning and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) working in conflict zones or unstable territories in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Latin America did the same. And since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon there has been a notable increase in the formation of new PMCs. “The idea was to create a security consulting company that could work for entities like the Department of State and the Department of Defense to deal with the situations that were going to arise in a post- 9/11 world," said Jamie Smith, a former Navy SEAL who founded SCG International Risk.20
Even the CIA has hired contractors to bolster its paramilitary force. Johnny "Mike" Spann, the first American killed in combat in Afghanistan, on November 25, 2001, was one such CIA employee. In light of the controversy over PMC involvement in the Iraqi prison scandal it is worth remembering that Spann was working as an interrogator when
he was killed. Two other CIA civilian contractors, Christopher Glenn Mueller and William "Chief" Carlson, were killed in an ambush in Afghanistan on October 25, 2003 while tracking terrorists near Shkin, Afghanistan.22 In fact, similar to the situation with PMC and
regular military forces (discussed in section 3 below), private companies are aggressively seeking highly trained employees of intelligence agencies to fill government contracts, leading to a critical spy drain.
Center for Public Integrity, Washington, D.C.,
http://www.publicintegrity.org/wow/bio.aspx?act=pro&fil=IQ 386 EG&G Technical Services Inc., .
http://egginc.com/Iraq-Work-Condition.pdf
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
