[R-G] Blackwater Is Here to Stay

[Anthony Fenton]

  Published on Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Blackwater Is Here to Stay
Despite reports that the company is leaving the mercenary business,  
Blackwater’s future is secure
by Jeremy Scahill
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/23/usa.iraq

It seems that executives from Blackwater Worldwide, the Bush  
administration’s favourite hired guns in Iraq and Afghanistan, are  
threatening to pack up their M4 assault rifles, CS gas and Little Bird  
helicopters and go back to the great dismal swamp of North Carolina  
whence they came. Or at least that’s how it is being portrayed in the  
media.

This story broke on Monday, when the Associated Press ran an article  
based on lengthy interviews with Blackwater’s top guns. Since then,  
the story has picked up considerable steam and generated a tremendous  
amount of buzz online and in the press. After all, Blackwater has long  
been a key part of the US occupation and has been at the centre of  
several high-profile scandals and deadly incidents. Add to that its  
owner’s ties to the White House and the radical religious right in the  
US and it is clear why this is news. On top of that, Barack Obama - a  
critic of Blackwater - just completed a tour of Iraq, where he was  
touting his withdrawal plan.

Among the headlines of the past 24 hours: “Blackwater plans exit from  
guard work“, “Blackwater getting out of security business“,  
“Blackwater sounds retreat from private security business“, and  
“Blackwater to leave security business“. One blogger slapped this  
headline on his post: “Blackwater, worst organisation since SS, to end  
mercenary work.”

Frankly, this is a whole lot of hype.

Anyone who thinks Blackwater is in serious trouble is dead wrong. Even  
if - and this is a big if - the company pulled out of Iraq tomorrow,  
here is the cold, hard fact: business has never been better for  
Blackwater, and its future looks bright. More on this in a moment.

Back to the matter at hand. Complaining that negative media attention  
and congressional and criminal investigations are hurting business and  
that the Blackwater name had become a catch-all target for anti-war  
protesters, the company’s brass told the AP that Blackwater was  
shifting its focus to its other areas of government contracting, like  
law enforcement and military training, as well as logistics.

”The experience we’ve had would certainly be a disincentive to any  
other companies that want to step in and put their entire business at  
risk,” said Erik Prince, Blackwater’s reclusive, 39 year-old founder  
and owner. Company president Gary Jackson said Blackwater has become  
like the “Coca-Cola” of war contractors, a brand representing all  
private companies servicing the Iraq occupation. Jackson charged the  
company had been falsely portrayed in the media, saying, ”If [the  
media] could get it right, we might stay in the business.”

All of this sounds a bit like whining on a children’s playground.

Shame on journalists for not recognising the noble work of the gallant  
heroes and patriots (who happen to be paid much more than US troops  
and have not been subjected to any system of law and who can leave the  
war zone any moment they choose) and forcing Blackwater to consider  
abandoning its (very profitable, billion-dollar) charitable  
humanitarian campaign in Iraq. Remember, according to Blackwater, it  
is not a mercenary organisation. It is a “peace and stability”  
operation employing “global stabilisation professionals“.

While they were at it, Jackson and Prince should have blamed those  
wretched 17 Iraqi civilians who had the audacity to step in front of  
the bullets flying out of Blackwater’s weapons in Baghdad’s Nisour  
Square last September. After all, following those killings, Erik  
Prince told the US Congress that the only innocent people his men may  
have killed or injured in Iraq died as a result of “ricochets” and  
“traffic accidents”. If that is true, Nisour Square might have been  
the most lethal jaywalking incident in world history.

As for the current hype, the day after the AP story broke,  
Blackwater’s long-time spokesperson Anne Tyrrell was quick to clarify  
the matter. Blackwater, she said, has no immediate plans to exit the  
security business. “As long as we’re asked, we’ll do it,” she said.  
Meanwhile, the US state department, which renewed Blackwater’s  
contract for another year in April, says it has received no  
communication from the company indicating it is not going to continue  
on in Iraq. “They have not indicated to us that they are attempting to  
get out of our current contract,” said undersecretary of state Patrick  
Kennedy.

As of 2005-2006, according to the company, about half of Blackwater’s  
business was made up of its security work in places like Iraq,  
Afghanistan and post-Katrina New Orleans. Today, Jackson says it is  
about 30%. ”If I could get it down to 2% or 1%, I would go there,” he  
said in the interview.

Blackwater, like all companies operating in US war zones, is following  
political developments very closely. The company may be bracing for a  
possible shift in policy should Obama win in November. Blackwater  
could be contemplating resignation before termination. On the other  
hand, Obama has sent mixed messages on the future of war contractors  
under his Iraq policy. While he has been very critical of the war  
industry in general - and Blackwater specifically - he has also  
indicated he will not “rule out” using private armed contractors at  
least for a time in Iraq.

Perhaps Blackwater has already gotten what it needed from Iraq: over a  
billion dollars in contracts and a bad-ass reputation, which has  
served it well. In May, Blackwater boasted of “two successive quarters  
of unprecedented growth.” Among its current initiatives:

• Erik Prince’s private spy agency, Total Intelligence Solutions, is  
now open for business, placing capabilities once the sovereign realm  
of governments on the open market. Run by three veteran CIA  
operatives, the company offers “CIA-type services” to Fortune 1000  
companies and governments.

• Blackwater was asked by the Pentagon to bid for a share of a  
whopping $15bn contract to “fight terrorists with drug-trade ties” in  
a US programme that targets countries like Colombia, Bolivia,  
Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. The New York Times said it could be the  
company’s “biggest job” ever.

• Blackwater is wrapping up work on its own armoured vehicle, the  
Grizzly, as well as its Polar Airship 400, a surveillance blimp  
Blackwater wants to market to the Department of Homeland security for  
use in monitoring the US-Mexico border.

On top of this, Blackwater affiliate Greystone Ltd, registered  
offshore in Barbados, is an old-fashioned mercenary operation offering  
“personnel from the best militaries throughout the world” for hire by  
governments and private organisations. It also boasts of a “multi- 
national peacekeeping programme,” with forces “specialising in crowd  
control and less than lethal techniques and military personnel for the  
less stable areas of operation.” Greystone’s name has been  
conspicuously absent in this current news cycle.

At the end of the day, maybe this is just a story, a whole lot of a  
hype and a dash of misdirection from a pretty savvy company. Safe  
money would dictate that Blackwater plans on continuing to be, well,  
Blackwater.

Consider this. The other day Blackwater president Gary Jackson told  
the AP: “Security was not part of the master plan, ever.”

Interesting claim. It was in fact Jackson himself who, back at the  
beginning of the Iraq occupation, described his goal for Blackwater as  
such: “I would like to have the largest, most professional private  
army in the world.”

Jeremy Scahill is the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s  
Most Powerful Mercenary Army.