Introduction
Private Military Firms (PMFs) are an emerging branch of actors in postmodern military conflict. While the use of ‘mercenaries’ goes back centuries, the corporatization and intricate governmental infiltration by private contractors has shifted the control that sovereign states have over levels of violence in their foreign conflicts. Modern definitions of PMF groups distinguish private military companies (PMCs) from private security companies (PSCs) and draw further distinctions from mercenaries, the latter of whom bear the negative, decades-old connotation of soldiers for hire. For this assessment of private contracting during the United States occupation of Iraq following 9/11, I employ PMFs as the collective term for these groups. The proliferation of the private sector and military contracting in foreign conflicts necessitates an exploration of the effectiveness of PMFs in counterinsurgency practices; PMFs’ relationship to international law; and the extent to which indiscriminate violence by PMFs is controlled.
Implications of PMFs in world conflicts are understudied; although mercenaries have been used historically, increased privatization of today’s conflicts in the age of weapons of mass destruction poses a wider threat of anarchy and calls into question the strength of conventional rules of engagement. Counterinsurgency (COIN) itself is an emerging field of military study, with only recent proliferation into the world of academia in light of the U.S.’ “forever wars” and resulting COIN practices. Limited information is known about the efficacy of parallel COIN practices when they are executed by a paramilitary force. Further, the general lack of transparency in the private military firm sector prevents immediate examination of applicable cases. Only now, when broader accounts of PMF actions have been recorded and publicized, can some scholarly assessment be produced.
Several complications arise when analyzing the role and conduct of PMFs. There is not one standard type of private military company; operations by these groups vary significantly, as demonstrated in a number of cases including Sierra Leone (PMF: Executive Outcomes), Afghanistan (PMF: Blackwater), Iraq (PMF: Blackwater), and Sudan (PMF: Wagner). Operational variations include PMFs’ interactions with civilian populations along the way and the success of the operations. Even within a given company, operational goals vary from humanitarian and domestic support (i.e., Blackwater post-Hurricane Katrina) to support for American counterinsurgency support (i.e., Blackwater during the War on Terror).
In this paper, I examine the dangers and advantages of private contractors, with a specific focus on Blackwater—now Constellis, hired for military operations in U.S. foreign operations. I begin by outlining the notable role of Blackwater, a private military company, in Iraq during the early 2000s U.S. COIN efforts against Islamist insurgents. I pay special attention to the prevalent and unfettered use of indiscriminate violence in Blackwater operations, as well as the perceived advantages of using private companies for special military operations. Indiscriminate violence describes the collective targeting of combatant and civilian populations without credible distinguishability between the two. Then, I explicate the backlash effects of Blackwater operations on U.S. troops. The following section of this paper deals with the lack of accountability that companies such as Blackwater enjoy in the context of both domestic and international law. Finally, I demonstrate that private military companies’ subversive behaviors negatively impact U.S. COIN operations. Addressing claims of brutal efficacy, I show that the advantages of operating outside sovereign state rules of law not only violate any semblance of just war, but also further motivate the grievances of host nation populations (such as Iraq in 2004) due to the denial of atrocities committed. I find that Blackwater’s indiscriminate practices in Iraq bred Iraqi distrust, incited reprisals, and represented greater oversights of contractor accountability within the U.S. government. I contend that the ethical failings of these practices decreased counterinsurgent success.
I assert that the foreign policy effects of private contracting groups can be generalized, regardless of the purported goals of the groups (offensive, defensive, etc.) due to their “out-group” status. Context for this paper’s examination of Blackwater during the Iraq War stems from the faltering of U.S. national troops in forming an adequate “coalition of the willing” during the initial invasion into Iraq.
Literature Review
PMFs broadly commit acts of indiscriminate violence outside of the rule of law, thereby alienating the host population and decreasing the effectiveness of state or private COIN forces. I aim to advance current schools of thought regarding causes and effects of PMF ineffectiveness. Theorists posit that in the event of indiscriminate violence, free riders—in this case, the persuadable population who are civilians at the start of a conflict—will seek sanctuary with rebels. This drive to the rebels presents a solution to the insurgent collective action problem, wherein insurgent groups face the challenge of convincing a neutral populace to risk death in going against the state and its COIN forces. Defined by “rough” selection criteria and “targeting everyone . . . with no effort to determine guilt or innocence,” populations facing indiscriminate violence have no reason to choose to aid COIN or state forces since they are fundamentally vulnerable and the costs of joining an insurgency are reduced. As evidence from the U.S.–Vietnam war suggests, indiscriminate counterinsurgency fueled insurgents by prompting the emergence of weaker local governance structures and lowering the at-large population’s civic engagement. The American counterinsurgency strategy in Vietnam asserted that enemy-centric firepower was to come first, and population-centric “hearts and minds” would follow. Due to resultant findings indicating the adverse effects of indiscriminate firepower during the Vietnam War, U.S. Army/ Marine Corps Field Manual 3-24 was drafted to provide an updated view of modern COIN strategy as predominantly a population-centric approach spearheaded by General David Petraeus. Findings from spatial discontinuity studies of bombing during the Vietnam War then illustrated that “overwhelming firepower” instigated increased militant activity and weakened governance structures. In fact, assessments of indiscriminate violence across various cases concludes that indiscriminate violence is “at best ineffective and at worst counterproductive.”
PMFs are seen as profit-maximizing businesses operating with little regard for human or moral consequences; their soldiers operate primarily for personal gain. Consistently, PMFs have outbid each other, leading to undersupplied and manned missions creating circumstances necessary for events like the Blackwater in Fallujah crisis. Further, PMFs face little accountability from state governments who bear responsibility for “private security forces acting on [their] behalf through government contracts and cannot delegate this responsibility.” Consequently, many of the crimes alleged to have been committed by PMFs are never acknowledged by the firms themselves (simply businesses trying to achieve quarterly growth) or by their contractually-bound governments, who prefer to sweep unfortunate incidents out of public view.
A second school of thought alleges that PMFs provide significant outside backing for military conflicts and increase the effectiveness of their operations by operating outside the constraints of public opinion since the ethics and illegality of indiscriminate violence are not a hindrance. Further, domestic policy greatly influences the extent to which states can conduct public COIN operations. Narratives generated by the American public’s notion that liberal order must be restored abroad heavily dictate the leeway afforded to American politicians during foreign military operations. In Chechnya, indiscriminate violence perpetrated by a government unconstrained by public opinion and studied through a difference-in-difference model was found to successfully deter insurgency operations as long as geographic and population sizes were sufficiently limited.
Proponents and critics of PMFs acknowledge a concrete advantage of acting outside national institutions: private companies can act quickly, avoid bureaucratic red tape, accomplish goals at any cost, and disregard public opinion at the expense of losing political power. As O’Brien mentions, “The U.S. Government did not have to undergo the political risk associated with sending national armed forces into security situations which are little understood or supported domestically.” As was the case in Croatia, private contractors enabled the U.S. to covertly support a cause without fairing public discourse and disapproval. However, the covert nature of these activities also engendered a lack of accountability for actions that angered local or civilian populations, hindering future COIN operations.
A summary perspective follows that while PMFs initially displayed shortcomings on the battlefield, their eventual integration into the U.S. military structure effectively employed these paramilitary troops and overcame initial shortcomings. This hypothesis is structured around the idea that when private military firms first emerged, their incursion into the sovereign state system was unexpected and therefore presented a significant shortcoming with regard to a chain of command conflict. The argument posits that by 2008, PMFs had increased their coordination with national militaries rather than vying for control over a system (theoretically evidenced by friendly fire decreases between contractors and national forces). Since PMF contractors are still not explicitly classified as combatants, mercenaries, or civilians under International Humanitarian Law (IHL), there remains a question as to the level of control or coordination exerted by the U.S. over its contracted employees.
The second shortcoming mentioned is the “cowboy argument,” which argues that PMF participation alienates host populations through their inherent aggressive practices. Only after the damage done by the Nisour Square Massacre of 2007 did the Department of Defense outline specific measures permitting the use of deadly force. Even so, proponents of these guidelines call them “futile if there are no corresponding measures in place to detect and to sanction violations.”
The final shortcoming this argument addresses is the impunity argument. Previously discussed, this argument addresses a lack of accountability mechanism built into the government. Even those who argue that increased oversight over time has increased accountability note that despite the expiration of Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) Order 17, a military order implemented by the COIN coalition which provided immunity for government contractors in Iraq, three firms are still exempt from Iraqi jurisdiction: Blackwater, Triple Canopy, and Dyncorp. New legislation was then implemented, but nonetheless, “ . . . a strong minority of 30 percent deemed [the statement that “armed contractors are given free reign to misbehave with little accountability”] as “typically true.” These expert accounts provide significant anecdotal reports that governmental oversight is lacking.
Argument
Studying the effects of indiscriminate violence committed by paramilitary groups on the broader insurgency within a given area, I posit that the Blackwater’s subversive and unethical indiscriminate violence operations, characteristic of PMFs, led to an increase in Iraqi population backlash, ineffective counterinsurgency, and a hardening of Iraqi opinions to the U.S. through mechanisms of distrust and humiliation. I contend that Blackwater repeatedly conducted operations in Iraq using techniques of indiscriminate violence without regard for sovereign U.S. or international law. As such, they broke principles governing conduct before and in the midst of formal conflict outlined in Just War Theory, since Blackwater truly acted in an anarchical manner. These lawless yet goal-oriented techniques prevented the U.S. from wanting to or being able to hold Blackwater accountable for its actions. Thus, Blackwater continued to systemically prioritize profits over human life.
Blackwater’s indiscriminate practices hurt the U.S. counterinsurgency effort by sabotaging their “hearts and minds” approach, in direct contrast to ideals outlined by the U.S.’ Army/ Marine Corps Field Manual 3-24. Not only did this sabotage create direct Iraqi reprisals in the form of resistance, but it also led to hardened ideologies and ideological uprising against the West (evidenced by the ideologically-driven Mahdi Army who drove collective Iraqi action against U.S. troops). Denials of Blackwater actions piled on top of existing Iraqi humiliation generated lingering distrust among the Iraqi population. One philosophy proposes that PMFs filled a necessary gap in troop shortage at the beginning of the Iraq War. However, I postulate that the supposed gap filled by PMFs became a feedback loop in which further U.S. forces defected from national militaries to PMFs in order to seek additional profit. Regulations placed upon PMFs prior to Blackwater’s rise to such monopolistic power could have prevented their marketization of the conflict labor market. While PMFs may have been necessary to some components of the war effort, their gross overreach and ethical breaches outweigh the positive support they provided to counterinsurgency efforts.
Method of Evaluation
To demonstrate key failures of the use of PMFs, the Iraq War offers plenty of recorded interactions between contractors and the host country, as well as ineffective and effective phases of U.S. and PMF counterinsurgency. The generalizability of this case is questionable, although many comparisons can be made to ethnically divided and rough terrain civil conflicts on the African continent, where foreign intervention by PMFs is prevalent and rising.
Why Iraq? Private security contractors in Iraq had been assigned more expansive roles than previously assigned to American contractors such as transporting supplies, escorting convoys, and interrogating prisoners. The Iraq War itself presents an intrinsically important case as it concerns an ethno-religious conflict that contributed to a broader divide between the ideological East and West, the developing and developed world. The Blackwater case study presents a poignant reflection on what many consider an infamous example of private contractors in counterinsurgency. Headed by a right-wing, ideologically-extreme figure, Erik Prince, Blackwater became synonymous with military contracting during the Iraq and Afghan Wars due to the publicity generated by a variety of controversial incidents. The company’s notoriety presents a unique opportunity to examine information about more of its activities; further, several of the largest contracts awarded in the Iraq War were won by Blackwater and its numerous subsidiaries. Blackwater developed a reputation as the “leading mercenary of the U.S. occupation” in Iraq.
I will include evidence of recorded casualties of PMF personnel during these wars as well as deployed personnel. I will also assess levels of violence during COIN operations within the recent Iraq invasion. I examine specific events of indiscriminate violence by the U.S. military and by Blackwater to qualify reasons for PMF failure. Through qualitative analysis of primary and secondary sources, I aim to form an argument regarding the effects of private military company and external force punitive strategies on insurgent response to collective violence, as well as the ethics of PMFs left at their current level of regulation.
Evaluation of Evidence
Blackwater conducted operations indiscriminately in Iraq. Embedded in Field Manual 3-24, indiscriminate violence contradicts practices of limited or selective violence. The following acts mark a systemic pattern of indiscriminate violence where either noncombatant deaths were not avoided, or Blackwater operatives preemptively employed mass killing methods:
On December 24, 2006, a drunk contractor named Moonen shot the bodyguard to the Iraqi Vice President in the Green Zone of Baghdad. Rather than being held accountable, he was simply billed for his plane ticket home.
February of 2007 saw the Iraqi Media Network shooting where a Blackwater sniper shot and killed three guards at a state funded facility “without any provocation,” although Blackwater claimed self-defense with little evidentiary support.
Three months later, Blackwater forces killed a civilian driver of an Iraqi vehicle and engaged in an armed standoff with Iraqi officials, refusing to acknowledge their role in the incident the day after killing at least four Iraqis in an unrelated standoff.
In September 2007, Blackwater committed the Al Wathbah Square killings, killing five Iraqi civilians “without justification.”
One week later, Blackwater came under fire for its most famous incident. A group of fighters in Nisour Square gunned down 17 civilians with no direct prompting, creating a “terrifying scene of indiscriminate shooting.” Lack of coordination even presented through infighting of Blackwater guards, with two reportedly pulling weapons on each other.
To amplify the brutal image of these fighters, Blackwater “deployed scores of Chilean mercenaries, some of whom trained and served under . . . Augusto Pinochet.” Pinochet’s dictatorship was largely known for orchestrating indiscriminate disappearances, and these skills seemed to “fit” Blackwater’s approach in Iraq.
An Iraqi traffic policeman noted, “Two weeks ago, guards of a convoy opened fire randomly that led to the killing of two policemen … I swear they are Mossad,” he said.” This unpublicized incident and its perception within the country as random contributes to the reputation contractors developed locally as mercenaries indistinguishable from the overall U.S. military effort.
Blackwater did not follow or care to follow U.S. and international regulations regarding either warfare or international justice. The U.S. government follows standard operating procedures (SOPs) set forth by its top generals and publicly debated about in military discourse. Written in part by John Nagl and General Petraeus, key operators in Iraq, Field Manual 3-24 explicates components of so-called ‘good governance.’ As Hazelton describes in “The Fallacy of Hearts and Minds,” discriminate force that can win over the “hearts and minds” of civilians is an essential intervening variable of good governance because indiscriminate and civilian harm fuels insurgencies. However, Hazelton argues that the use of force is beneficial in violent statebuilding. Using a case study of Malay, she recalls that after a shift from Briggs’ indiscriminate “New Villages” plan, implementation of more discriminate force led to greater development of informants, cooperation with elites, and eventual success.
Blackwater, in contrast, operates without the oversight of government conduct manuals in order to achieve their bottom line.In fact, Erik Prince has publicly stated that Blackwater functions under the Department of Defense rules for contractors and not for U.S. national soldiers; he emphasizes this distinction when discussing the legality of actions attributed to Blackwater operatives. As noted, “Blackwater operated in a legal gray zone, seemingly outside the scope of both U.S. civilian and military law and immune from Iraqi law.” U.S. military officials also cite national service inexperience for failing to “prepare adequately for the use of contractors” and noting a lack of trained oversight personnel. While various justice processes and civilian lawsuits in the wake of the Nisour Square Massacre and the U.S.’ shift to more “liberal narratives” have reversed this trend, Blackwater had openly declared its forces above the law during their deployment to Iraq.
The U.S. government did not and could not hold Blackwater accountable. Across both sides of the political aisle, American lawmakers found it difficult to formally disapprove of Blackwater’s actions during an era where they were protected by these very companies when traveling abroad. Blackwater had gained notoriety in the “summer of 2003, after receiving a $27 million no bid contract to provide security for Ambassador Paul Bremer, who headed the Coalition Provisional Authority from May 2003 to June 2004.” Their fame grew throughout their tenure of protecting Bremer, who became a highly wanted and “hated” figure in Iraq. “Even staunch critics of Blackwater/Xe therefore find general disapproval difficult to articulate.” These so-called staunch critics included powerful Democrats Diane Feinstein and Barack Obama; despite having moral objections to the extraneous effects of these companies, they recognized their utility in providing effective diplomatic security at any cost. Thus, Blackwater’s cycle of firing at will continued.
Powerful national military officials were even incorporated into this partnership: General Petraeus was famously guarded by Blackwater contractors in Iraq, as they were known for their aggressive “defense” tactics (as evidenced in their self-defense assertions regarding the Nisour Square Massacre, which were later overturned). Even on the legal front, Blackwater enjoyed the protections of Bremer’s power and favor in the passage of Order 17, which provided immunity for U.S. contractors operating in Iraq. Order 17 equipped Blackwater with the shield it needed to maintain an extrajudicial presence in Iraq: it legally solidified the U.S.’ inability and ultimate unwillingness to hold contractors to the same legal standards as U.S. soldiers, who would have been swiftly court-martialed at the first hint of untoward behavior.
A notable example of this phenomenon is the widely publicized horror committed at Abu Ghraib prison. U.S. interrogators and soldiers involved in the dehumanization, humiliation, and torture of Iraqi prisoners were court-martialed for their crimes shortly after the incident; none of the private contractors named in the U.S. Army investigation reports had been charged, prosecuted or punished until this year. For other crimes, Human Rights Watch found in 2023, “no evidence the U.S. government had paid any compensation or other redress to victims of detainee abuse in Iraq, issued any individual apologies or other amends, or opened any pathways to permit those who alleged they were tortured to have their cases heard.”
Blackwater, having no incentive to do otherwise, prioritized profits over human life, which bolstered their indiscriminate practices. A key component of Blackwater’s practices involves their competitors. Blackwater, simply a business conglomerate, must outcompete other private military firms and even national armies to sustain its profits. Exemplified when Blackwater wrested control of kitchenware contracts from ESS (a dining services contractor) and deployed four Blackwater security contractors to their deaths in Fallujah with no backup and little protective weaponry, their bottom line of profit remained the most important. As the conflict in Iraq waged forth, Blackwater decided to hire Chilean forces after Jose Miguel “Mike” Pizarro lobbied for his Pinochet-era fighters. These brutal, albeit effective, Blackwater fighters were swiftly replaced by cheaper Jordanian alternatives after Pizarro insulted Blackwater executives by signing a contract with their direct competitor, Triple Canopy. Purely a business decision, Pizarro notes the degradation of Blackwater’s fighting capacity after switching to cheaper forces. In an Iraqi civilian lawsuit against Blackwater for indiscriminate practices, the plaintiffs assert, “Blackwater benefits financially from its willingness to kill innocent bystanders.”
Consequently, Blackwater hurt U.S. national counterinsurgency practices. Blackwater changed U.S. COIN practices through more than just theory, opinion, or attitude. Indiscriminate actions and public snafus “forced policymakers to jettison strategies designed to win the counterinsurgency on multiple occasions, before they even had a chance to succeed” including the “U.S. Marine plan for counterinsurgency in the Sunni Triangle” which was never enacted due to “uncoordinated contractor decisions in 2004 that helped turn Fallujah into a rallying point of the insurgency.” Singer goes on to name the Blackwater contractor incident as a hindrance to proceeding with U.S.-Iraqi cooperation on “post-[troop] ‘surge’ political benchmarks.” While COIN strategies in Iraq posed many difficulties, proponents of indiscriminate violence in certain insurgency cases posit that “the Sunni population is probably too numerous for indiscriminate violence to do anything but backfire and produce further anger.”
U.S. military officials had first-hand negative reactions to Blackwater’s COIN practices. Retired Army officer Ralph Peters said, “Armed contractors do harm COIN—counterinsurgency efforts. Just ask the troops in Iraq.” In more strategy oriented terms echoing the tenets of Field Manual 3-24, Colonel Thomas Hammes said, “Blackwater’s high-profile conduct in guarding Bremer broke the ‘first rule’ of fighting an insurgency: ‘You don’t make any more enemies’” and that their lack of constraints were “. . . ‘hurting our counterinsurgency effort.’”
Blackwater’s indiscriminate use of violence led to Iraqi backlash. Causal logic can trace specific Blackwater events of indiscriminate violence to Iraqi incidents of violence. Iraqi civilians sued Blackwater in 2007 in response to the Nisour Square Massacre, where graphic evidence showed women and children fleeing gunfire.
A more notable instance of backlash occurred earlier in the war involving the Mahdi Army. The Mahdi Army, or JAM, was a Shi’a militia led by Muqtada al-Sadr, an ideological entrepreneur who fostered psychological commitments to the group through effective messaging. While Iraqis grew more and more discontent with U.S. reactions to Iraqi killings, Sadr blamed the U.S. and Iraqi governments for failing to provide security and service while gaining credibility through payoff to families of fallen Sadrists. In response to the indiscriminate killing of fifteen Iraqis and the arrest of Sadr’s deputy, the leader urged a rebellion. The resultant uprising led to a standoff in Najaf, where Blackwater contractors gave commands to U.S. national forces and fired thousands of rounds into a Mahdi crowd; accounts over which side fired the first shot are contested. As a product of the Najaf firefight, Sadr ordered widespread rebellion, which then led to 8 U.S. soldier deaths in the ensuant clashes; visual evidence showed tanks crushing Iraqi civilian cars.
Blackwater’s denial of atrocities led to an increased distrust between Iraq and the West; distrust mobilized the neutral populace against Coalition forces due to honor and humiliation. According to “Apologies in International Politics,” denial of atrocities committed fuels adversaries. Evidenced through reactions of South Koreans to Japanese erasure of World War II-era crimes against Korean women, refusal to acknowledge criminal behaviors against a state leads to higher levels of distrust in the affected population. Applied to the case of Blackwater in Iraq, the company’s blanket refusal to acknowledge multiple cases of wrongdoing against the Iraqi populace spurred reactionary movements against Western forces. In previously discussed cases such as that of the Moonen shooting, Blackwater offered either little or no compensation to families of the deceased. When they did offer compensation, it was often arbitrary or Iraqis viewed the amount proffered as a direct insult.In light of CPA Order #1: DeBaathification, in which members in the first three rungs of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party were stripped of their employment (which included civilians working local roles like principals of public schools), many Iraqis were unable to provide for their family’s wellbeing. Already humiliated by the American incursion upon their lives, Iraqis’ senses of honor (sharaf, interim, and ird) were progressively subdued.
A common generalization made of Coalition forces was, “I was not going to help make of Iraq a puppet regime for their interests and that of the Jews in the region.” Blackwater forces were perceived similarly, if not overwhelmingly against regional interests, “As it was, many ordinary people in Iraq believed private security contractors to be Mossad or CIA… ‘To us, the Americans are just like the Israelis.’” And if those perceptions created any doubt of the widespread distrust of these plainclothes, mysterious foreign occupiers, contractors had developed a known reputation among Iraqis as mercenaries “shooting down innocent Iraqis with total impunity.” The U.S.’ inability to create long lasting security further humiliated Iraqis, who were left with another failed state security crisis and lingering distrust.
Blackwater’s for-profit model and welcome cooperation with the U.S. government created a feedback loop further incentivizing the use of PMFs in U.S. conflicts. Blackwater’s business model did provide several advantages to the U.S. federal budget. However, pitfalls of contractors included the possibility of refusal to perform, which could not occur in the national army. Additionally, Blackwater’s pay grades meant that “[national] soldiers sought more lucrative posts with private companies,” especially upon their transition to civilian life. The spillover effects of these shorter-term, higher-paid contracting roles depleted national forces.
Ethical concerns over other national forces employed in Iraq arose as South African mercenaries banned from fighting in South Africa due to anti-apartheid laws found refuge fighting in Iraq. Brookings Institutions’ Peter Singer reported that Aegis, a firm similar to Blackwater but British and run by Tim Spicer, won a contract in Iraq. This, in turn, rewarded companies that simply spent more, leading to abuse and inefficiency. Blackwater and other private military contracts followed suit. Private contracting was especially active in Iraq as, “of summer, 2007, there were more “private contractors” deployed on the U.S. government payroll in Iraq (180,000) than there were actual soldiers (160,000). Even today, following eventual prosecutions of Blackwater contractors for the Nisour Square massacre and other atrocities in 2007, the simple rebranding of Blackwater to “Xe Services,” “Academi,” and eventually “Constellis,” provided sufficient cover for the U.S. government to hire the company as military guards in Afghanistan. From a globalized perspective, “economic and political crises are fueling demand beyond the sector itself,” meaning that the pure revenue-based success of these PMFs continues to attract the state military labor market.
The growing use of PMFs operates in direct opposition to Just War Theory, providing little justification for Bush’s assertion that Iraq was in fact, a just war of counterterrorism. A core tenet of Just War Theory asserts that the actors must be sovereign states. While terrorism as a category of conflict calls into question the general applicability of Just War Theory to counterterrorism cases, PMFs clearly and egregiously violate this point. PMFs, acknowledged to operate outside sovereign state government control (and thus not subject to their justice systems) represent a clear shift to an anarchical system. Delineated through the series of indiscriminate attacks questionably initiated by Blackwater forces, jus ad bellum ideals (principles guiding when states should initiate force, including war as the last resort and avoidance of gratuitous violence) were clearly disregarded during the Iraq War. As Crawford notes in her analysis of Just War Theory in the context of counterterrorism, discrimination in warfare has been complicated by postmodern counterterror. As shown in the Iraq War, U.S. targeting has engendered violence feedback loops: Crawford describes the Taliban’s transformation from a community defense force to terrorism due to U.S. targeting over Al Qaeda interactions. The implications of this egregiously unethical warfare therefore call into question Crawford’s support of Bush in his assertions that Iraq and its counterterrorism was just, as well as how paramilitary groups can justify their actions in the future.
Conclusion
Examining the role of Blackwater in the Iraq conflict elucidates the cooperation of sovereign militaries with their private counterparts. While some states contract with PMFs to avoid domestic political consequences, the effectiveness of the COIN operations, or lack thereof, should guide governments on structuring the nature of their joint efforts. Through an examination of Blackwater in Iraq alongside U.S. national forces, I conclude that Blackwater decreased counterinsurgent success in Iraq through repeated and systemic indiscriminate practices enabled by a lack of state control or accountability.
I contend that Blackwater forces bred distrust through their numerous indiscriminate killing practices; lack of accountability or government oversight along with sheer denial of indiscriminate practices prove the argument of denial and backlash with the Mahdi Army reprisal. There are no mechanisms for making amends after PMF warfare, encouraging dangerous reprisals in foreign occupations and lowering the likelihood of future cooperation. Given this distrust and violations of just war principles, PMF practices as they stand in counterinsurgency are inherently unethical and cannot be defended by Just War Theory.
In addition to ethical concerns, the for-profit business model, feedback loop of violence, and growing U.S. dependence on PMFs is cause for alarm. Considering the government’s inability to provide adequate oversight and Blackwater’s history of detrimental incursions into Iraq, a growing reliance on these firms and potential for host populace backlash must be anticipated with strict regulation.
A potential counterpoint questions what the U.S. would have done without PMFs in these conflicts. Given the long and continuing history of PMF groups, perhaps the more pertinent counterfactual to consider is what enforcement mechanisms must be put in place to avoid indiscriminate violence and other aforementioned pitfalls. The ineffectiveness of indiscriminate violence would necessitate greater efforts by both international institutions and sovereign governments to place limits on PMFs. With some increased accountability and regulation today, PMFs remain covertly used in several foreign occupations. PMFs are a prevalent aid in conflicts considering their range of utility, but many negative implications of Blackwater’s counterinsurgency actions persist: for example, Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) cited Blackwater and Abu Ghraib abuses in its release of the “Revived Caliphate.” To suppose that actions perpetrated decades ago carry few implications for terrorism and counterterrorism today would be a naive assumption, and our policies today must acknowledge the U.S.’ faltering of PMF regulation. Future research questions addressing PMF practices in postmodern warfare should consider the extent to which PMFs employing selective violence contribute positively to counterinsurgency operations, as well as compare the effectiveness of PMF and foreign military interventions in reducing insurgent violence.
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Featured/Headline Image Caption and Citation: Soldiers during the Iraq War, Image sourced from Rawpixel | CC License, no changes made
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