Blackwater and Security Contractors: The History of Mercenaries

It's a Wednesday morning in the chaparral-like environment, in a small, reclusive town, southwest of Kabul, Afghanistan. The sun is peaking out over the mountain range. Denizens from their slumber, some, waking with AK-47s'. It was a quiet lull, contrasted sharply by a sudden and abrupt yell and a series of bangs from kicked open doors. Men, not in Afghanistan or U.S. military garb swarm in the packed small hut rooms of these waking townspeople.

These men, though not recognizably military, appear to seem mostly American, one or two South Americans, and maybe an Eastern European. There are outside Afghan military officials watching with a privateer and one or two U.S. officials, and lastly, a contingent of Afghan military trainees taking notes. This is a training exercise.

News networks talk of the organization called Blackwater Worldwide, a mercenary business that has hundreds of thousands of dollars of no bid contracts and is the largest of the contractors in Iraq right now. As a private company, Blackwater ops are rarely published for the public. The head and founder of this organization is a former U.S. Navy SEAL who attended Naval Academy, graduated Hillsdale College, and was an intern for George Bush senior's White House - his name is Erik Prince.

In 2003, Blackwater bagged its first high profile no-bid contract for $21 million for guarding the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, L. Paul Bremer. Since then, Blackwater has been paid $320 million out of the $1 billion, five-year State Department budget for the Worldwide Personal Protection Services. Blackwater earned further profit by winning the contract to protect the U.S. embassy in Iraq.

The pentagon and company representatives estimate the numbers of armed security contractors working in Iraq to be between 20,000 to 30,000, while with other estimates by the organizations at around 100,000 - even though no official figures exist. Blackwater mercs range from former American Special Forces operatives, to former U.S. soldiers, to American ex-law enforcement elements, and also Bosnians, Filipinos, and Chileans.

Mercenary organizations such as Blackwater are nothing new in the modern world, or ancient history. The earliest recorded account of the mercenaries was in Egypt in the thirteenth century BCE, where Pharoah Ramsess II used 11,000 mercenaries during his battles. These mercenaries were in fact mostly foreigners consisting of people from Nubia, Libya, Syria, Canaan, and Sherdens from Sardinia. Mercenaries have been found in almost every known conflict throughout history in places like Asia, Europe, the Americas, and even Africa in recent history, including the American War of Independence. Even Britain has their own quasi-sanctioned military force, called the Gurkas. And the French also do something very similar with their French Foreign Legion.

Mercenaries are very different from terrorists; they fight in open known conflicts in conflict zones and are sanctioned by both illegitimate and legitimate governments and revolutionary movements. They are covered by the Geneva Conventions of 1949, under Protocol Additional GC 1977, under Article 47. A captured soldier must be treated as a lawful combatant, and, therefore, is a Protected Person, with Prisoner of War (PoW) status.

The Geneva Conventions documentation is the most widely accepted international definition of a mercenary, even though not universally accepted fully. These groups, like Blackwater, though arguably a military force and operation - they cannot be completely controlled by the U.S. government. They are answerable to some measure to the U.S. State department.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercenaries
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater
http://www.greystone-ltd.com/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/01/AR2007100100882.html?nav=rss_nation
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/03/washington/03blackwater.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-black4oct04,1,1033994.story?track=rss&ctrack=1&cset=true