Ellen Knickmeyer has a piece in today’s waPo that I simply have to draw attention to.
The article is about a network of ill-supervised forces that together make up the Facilities Protection Service (FPS), which she describes as the government’s largest paramilitary force, with 145,000 armed men and no central command, oversight or paymaster.
The FPS was first established by Viceroy Paul Bremer (remember him?) back in September 2003, with the mission of guarding Iraqi government facilities.
That was, of course, some five months after the US troops had stood idly by while just about every Iraqi government ministry, hospital, museum etc was subjected to top-to-bottom looting by private bands of miscreants. (Oh, with the exception of the Oil Ministry, which somehow the US forces did see fit to guard.)
But what’s interesting is how Knickmeyer describes what the FPS has become since September 2003:
- Although the FPS guards are not police officers, they were allowed to wear variations of the blue uniform of Iraqi police. Many witnesses and survivors of death squad-style attacks have said the assailants were dressed in police uniforms.
FPS guards often are seen roaming Baghdad’s streets, holding Kalashnikov assault rifles and crowded into the backs of pickup trucks, some marked with insignia of the FPS or of the various government ministries they serve.
Increasingly, U.S. and Interior Ministry officials describe the FPS units as militias, each answering only to the ministry or private security firm that employs it.
As I read her piece, the way that it seems to work is this. Each Iraqi government ministry (and perhaps other government entities, as well) has to put out a contract for its own security. These contracts are placed with what she describes as “private security companies”, which then hire and organize that ministry’s FPS units.
Are the “private security companies” in question Iraqi-owned and run? Or are they owned and run American, British, South African, Israeli, or other foreign “experts” in this field? She doesn’t say.
But what does seem clear is that– in addition to the huge (and notably unsuccessful) efforts the occupation authorities have put into trying to recruit, train, and organize new army and police units for the still-weak Iraqi “government”–the occupation authorities have also been helping to pump arms and money into a large number of FPS units that come under the supervision of “private security companies” (i.e. companies of mercenaries.)
And the funds for these most likely come from the “budgets” of the ministries concerned.
And the result is to establish a large number of parallel and unsupervised mercenary-led forces inside the country.
Does anybody wonder why the “security” situation in occupied Iraq is so shockingly bad?
Does anybody wonder why the Iraqi “government ministries” are unable to accomplish very much of anything at all?
I guess I shouldn’t have been so shocked by reading this story. But I was. I had heard of the FPS before, of course; but I’d sort of kept it in mind that it was just one or two forces of “tribal” irregulars who were being paid (or, paid off) to provide security along some isolated lengths of national pipeline somewhere… No big deal.
But the FPS phenomenon is a much bigger deal than that. The way Knickmeyer describes it, every government ministry has one of these things– in other words, they’re operating inside heavily built up areas. And they’re each being run separately, and being run by mercenary security companies…
Maybe this is the ultimate in the neocons’ plan to destroy any concept of a functioning national government for Iraq. I just hope the anti-occupation forces in Iraq are strong and well-organized enough to be able to put an end to this immoral and violence-sowing occupation regime as soon as possible.
Mercenaries are the future, not just in Iraq, but everywhere. Here is what Blackwater USA says about themselves:
“We are not simply a ‘private security company.’ We are a professional military, law enforcement, security, peacekeeping, and stability operations firm who provides turnkey solutions. We assist with the development of national and global security policies and military transformation plans. We can train, equip and deploy public safety and military professionals, build live-fire indoor/outdoor ranges, MOUT facilities and shoot houses, create ground and aviation operations and logistics support packages, develop and execute canine solutions for patrol and explosive detection, and can design and build facilities both domestically and in austere environments abroad.”
http://www.blackwaterusa.com/about/
Remember, these guys were really the “first responders” when Katrina devastated New Orleans. Of course their mission was not to help the poor dark-skinned people left homeless by the floods, but to protect the property of the rich whites living on the high ground. First things first.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051010/scahill
http://www.guardian.co.uk/katrina/story/0,16441,1567656,00.html
We’re creating a free-market libertarian paradise in Iraq. That was Paul Bremer’s mission, remember? And he’s damn proud of the job he did too.
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/wariniraq/paulbremer.htm
Immoral, amoral, horrifying, has to be faced.
I don’t have the URL handy but there is an interview on Tomdispatch with Mike Davis which helps to see this in overall terms, I think (especially part 2).
“I guess I shouldn’t have been so shocked by reading this story. ”
I have had this experience plenty of times. There must be a rule that if there is some facet of the occupation you are not familiar with in detail, the reality will be much worse then you expect. Iraq reminds me somewhat of a hellish “Catch 22” world. Milo Minderbender would love Iraq.
There is some think tank person who has written about the privitization of the military.
One thing I have wondered about is what is the significance of the appointment of Bremer to rule Iraq? There was a little noted article in a Florida newspaper in which ex-ruler Garner states that he was replaced because he was not willing to execute Bush’s agenda to thwart democracy in Iraq.
Bremer did not appear out of nowhere. He has a background. About all I know about him is he used to be a U.S. official in Guatemala and has connections with Kissenger. What are Bremer’s skills and what does it mean when he appears somewhere to “manage things”?
Report:Suicidal troops sent into combat
U.S. military violated own rules on mentally ill troops, newspaper finds
– U.S. military troops with severe psychological problems have been sent to Iraq or kept in combat, even when superiors have been aware of signs of mental illness, a newspaper reported for Sunday editions.
Salah, have you read the book “Catch 22?” I don’t have a copy handy, so can’t quote verbatim, but one of the book’s themes was that the only way guys could get out of combat was to prove they were crazy, and if they wanted to get out of combat, that proved they weren’t crazy, so they had to stay in. That book and “1984” tell you pretty much everything you need to know to understand the current US government.
Is this the same Facilities Protection Service I see in the US? On my way home for work, I must drive by a Federal employee parking lot (in Denver). Surrounded by fencing, and sometimes I see a police/security car in the lot. The label that catches my eye is “Homeland Security”. But when I look closer at the car I see “Facilities Protection Service”.
Catch 22 is a great read. I should go read it again, its been a few years.
Mercs are the long term answer to low recruitment rates. What bit of democracy we have left in the US is that we don’t have conscription. So people are voting against this war with their feet, and not joining the military. The long term answer to that is mercs. That and deals like offering military service to non-us citizens and saying that’s their way to citizenship.
Nowadays, we hire the Hessians.
And if Hessians has a resonance in the US 230 years later, you can take a guess at just how much our mercs are loved in Iraq. Winning those hearts and minds.
“Mercs are the long term answer to low recruitment rates.”
Mercs? Oh – I guess you mean mercenaries? Well, I have an even better idea. How about not starting wars of aggression? How about using the military strictly for defense?
The provisional authority had each ministry set up a Facilities Protection Service to guard things the police could not or would not. The police were mainly AWOL, asleep at HQ, selling their equipment, or collecting bribes. The only way to secure a pipeline or transformer was to have the oil or power authority pay the people who were supposed to do the protecting. A disproportionate share of expenditures on basic industry or services is for security. Pity the poor youths who have to take these dangerous jobs.
This was not the planned outcome of any AEI or libertarian think tank. The simple truth is that no one has a clue how to overcome the sectarianism, insurgent infiltration, absenteeism, or theft and graft which beset the police.
The present conundrum is that everything is supposed to be fixed if the militias can be abolished or folded into the police. Perhaps the exact opposite has occurred all along.
One flaw in the information flow is that contract and field personnel must file positive reports or perish. No contractors or military officers in charge of training the police dare file a FUBAR report. Minions of some security contractors even troll and defame people who venture “Mission Not Accomplished” remarks. See the Amazon “reviews” of Etherington’s “Revolt on the Tigris.”
There is big money to be made in all the base building and training programs, no matter what the eventual outcome. Rosy progress reports assure contract renewals, promotions, and please the Pentagon and WH. And military personnel will also be reluctant to question the work of their potential post-retirement employers. It is a sad “fool us again” replay of the phantom WMD fiasco.
Dear Mrs. Cobban,
This sory about mercenaries rings a bell in my memory. We had such groups in France in the late Middle Ages. I do not remember their name (bandes noires??) but I believe that a study of ther behaviour, as well as the way the French Kingdom got rid of them might prove useful in the present times. By the way, it might be instructive to cross-check the relationship between mercenaries and thieves in the “guerres de religion” times. Why not double cross with the “War of thirty years” in Germany ; we have plenty of time to live with these gentlemenand we should know as much as possible of their natural ? inherited ? skills.
Best regards, from a newcomer to your blog
“This was not the planned outcome of any AEI or libertarian think tank.”
True, JKoch, but it was THE outcome of much AEI planning, and of the general political and economic policies promoted by libertarian think tanks.
John C.
You’re right, but it also works two ways, as escape clams for those who my brought to justices on clams they are sick in their minds, Please read more…
Brutality in a U.S. uniform
John C. here we go, the excuses ready for them as the military has begun an investigation into the incident.
Marines in Iraq killed civilians