The Privatization of War

We all know what comprises the ritual of returning the corpse of a soldier who died on foreign soil: Solemn music, the national flag, escorts and salutes, covered in great detail by the media. Politicians and generals have words of consolation for the grieving family members, many of them so young that they frequently have babies in their arms.

But that was not what was experienced by Deely, the sister of Robert, an ex-parachutist who died in an ambush in Iraq and whose body was brought from Kuwait to the Glasgow airport. The man in charge of the funeral explained to Deely that 10 bodies had arrived in the plane and two of them were impossible to identify. Robert’s coffin looked like a “big orange box.” There wasn’t any fanfare, no British flag, not one journalist, not one question. His death, as far as is known, was not included on any list. The reason was very simple: Robert was no longer a parachutist and at the time of his death was a “private contractor.” Some call them business soldiers or security advisers. The Iraqis call them mercenaries.

War is deliberately being privatized bit by bit right under our noses. The orange box that served as a coffin for Robert demonstrates as such, just like the statistics. Patrick Cockbum, a respected commentator specializing in the situation in Iraq, calculates that at the height of the occupation there were around 160,000 private contractors in the country, many of whom, possibly up to 50,000, were heavily armed security personnel. The war and following occupation would have been impossible without their contribution.

Thanks to Paul Bremer, the leader designated by the United States to direct the Coalition Provisional Authority, all those contractors enjoyed immunity from Iraqi laws by virtue of Order 17, that the Iraqi Parliament felt itself obligated to accept (and that was in effect from 2003 until the beginning of 2009).

No one is interested in counting how many Iraqi civilians have died or been wounded at the hands of the private contractors, but lots of evidence exists that indicates that there was generalized abuse. The killing of 17 civilians carried out by Blackwater in the center of Baghdad was the most famous incident, but there were many more that weren’t talked about. A veteran contractor told me, under the condition of anonymity, that he had spoken with a South African who told him that killing an Iraqi was the same as “killing a kaffir” (the derogatory term used in South Africa to refer to blacks). Other contractors in good faith, proud of their professionalism, talked to me about how the “cowboys’ ” violence repulsed them. If there was a contractor involved in an incident that would have caused commotion, their business speedily removed them from the country… impunity by decree.

While the ordinary contractors risked their lives and personal safety in Route Irish, the executives of these businesses made fortunes. David Lesar, Halliburton’s representative adviser (the previous representative adviser was Dick Cheney), made a bit less than $43 million in 2004. Gene Ray of Titan obtained more than $47 million between 2004 and 2005. J.P. London of CACI profited $22 million. And the important thing is always the details; the private contractors charged the U.S. Army up to $100 to do just one soldier’s laundry. In an official report dated January 2005, the special investigator general for the Reconstruction of Iraq, Stuart Bowen, revealed that more than $9 billion had disappeared in cases of fraud and corruption, and during a period of very limited Provisional Authority. Economic impunity also existed.

As one contractor told me, “the place stank of money.” It’s not strange that many poorly paid soldiers and members of the Special Forces looked for work with these private companies, with those where they saw their only opportunity to get rich.

But they didn’t just make a lot of money.

We are now accustomed to seeing images of carnage and killings there. We are used to stories of thousands of millions of missing people, corporate greed, abuse, torture and secret jails. The detailed calculation of 654,965 dead up to June 2006 done by The Lancet is almost impossible to fathom. Now everything appears conveniently far away, in time as well as in space. As they say, the Iraq overflow has invaded us.

But then there is coming back home, to the United Kingdom and the United States. Iraq is on the minds of our children.

I was astonished to learn from the Combat Stress organization, which works with soldiers who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, that PTSD takes a while to manifest, on average around 17 years. They are preparing themselves (along with the U.S. Army) for an enormous avalanche in the coming years.

Norma, a friendly nurse about to retire who had spent many years with former soldiers, was the one who opened up the way to this story when she told me, “Many of these men are in mourning for their old identities.” One former soldier showed me a painting he had painted of himself. “I just want to get the old me back,” he said.

Order 17 has been revoked in Iraq, but its spirit continues to dominate: the stench of impunity, the lies, the disdain for international law, the boycotting of the Geneva Conventions, the secret jails, the torture, the murder, and the hundreds of thousands of deaths. When I imagine the intellectual authors of all the aforementioned — Bush, Blair, and company, with Aznar behind them charging all those millions after his speeches and dinners and interdenominational foundations, I cannot stop thinking about the nurses in Fallujah that today assist in the births of children with two heads and deformed bodies thanks to the chemical bombs dumped over the city… the gift that we leave to the future.

In a shameful speech directed at the soldiers at Fort Bragg on Dec. 14 to commemorate the end of the U.S. military occupation, Obama told the enthusiastic troops that they left “with their heads held high.” With the usual mix of sentimentalism and hypocrisy that they do so well, they cried over their dead and ignored the killing of the Iraqis. In a decent world, they would lower their heads in embarrassment, they would beg forgiveness for their brutality and they would begin to pay compensation for the millions of lives destroyed throughout generations.