Fuzzy Signals

Who watches the watchers?

For more about the role of private contractors in the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, listen to Security Analyst Peter Singer on NPR's Fresh Air (May 11, 2004):

Singer, an analyst at The Brookings Institution, is the author of the book Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry. He'll discuss the use of private military contractors in Iraq, especially in light of the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison where civilian military contractors were involved in interrogations. Singer is an Olin Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution and coordinator of the Brookings Project on U.S. Policy Towards the Islamic World.

Kaki and Titan are the two companies named specifically. Titan is currently being bought by Lockheed Martin. There are more firms, of course, but these are the names I picked up.

First thing that I thought interesting: this private military industry didn't really exist, at least in this incarnation, until the 1990s. (Mercenaries pop up throughout history like bad weeds.) Why?... Perhaps to fill certain post-Cold War vacuums, and commerce follows the money: this is incredibly lucrative work, with many multi-million dollar contracts for everything from IT services, logistics, analytic capabilities, training the Iraqi Army, interrogation and translator services.

About 15,000-20,000 private contractors are now in Iraqi. The US has never before outsourced so many responsibilities and roles to private contractors before. This phenomenon is causing many concerns and raising critical questions. Here are some of Singer's worries:

Why is the US outsourcing these critical jobs to the private sector? Singer's theory: it was probably a function of a lazy bureaucracy, a way to get around all of the red tape within the current military organizational setup. They got a big check from Congress, and this was the easiest way to spend it. While outsourcing is often used to save money, improve efficiencies and quality of service—all good things and are probably needed in the military— it's not clear yet that this was the case . The early evidence suggests these good outcomes have not materialized, especially given the fact that these incidences may undermine the entire war project!

Where do these contractors fit into the chain of command? How are they held accountable? What kind of oversight do they have? No very much, it turns out. This is especially troubling since contractors are not subject to the court marshall system. None of the private contractor suspects have been charged with anything yet because of certain legal loopholes and gaps. Contractors, for instance, are provided special immunity from prosecution for committing acts that are part of your official duties. When does official duties include raping a prisoner? In a nutshell, these companies' activities are largely unregulated. For instance, some of the contractors have unsavory backgrounds, like former apartheid police and individuals associated with Chile's Pinochet regime. These legal gaps are not a problem until things go wrong. But this isn't the first time things have gone wrong. Recent history in the Balkans made this problem very clear when a private contractor who was caught committing major sexual crimes, e.g. raping and enslaving refugee women, the evidence being his videotapes. He was never convicted. Congress tried to make some changes, but they were superficial.

Is this appropriate work for the private sector to do? Governments do "guardian" work, said the sage thinker, Jane Jacobs, whereas commercial actors have a "trading" moral system—a crucial distinction that many policy-makers should be reviewing right now. In an interview, she explains

"...in a book called Systems of Survival, in which I separated the worlds of work into guardian operations, which have to do with territory—that means politics, religion, all the things that people have to do who are responsible for administering or guarding territory, and providing public amenities for it—and the other division is what is usually referred to as the private sector—commerce, manufacturing, banking, that sort of thing. When the two get mixed up—it’s sometimes inevitable that they do, but mostly it’s not, and in every case it’s hazardous to mix them—they get corrupt, and they get skewed in non-functional ways. The urban renewal kind of subsidies are a terrible example of mixing this sort of thing, so that the politicians you’re talking about, the policy-setters, they’re really guardians, they’re really territorial administrators, but they have provided monetary incentives for the private sector to do things it wouldn’t do otherwise, and that’s a mess." [My italics.]

Clearly, companies have certain conflicts of interest that complicate things when it comes to military situations. For one, companies have added organizational layers; they have shareholders and employees. Their shareholders want them to make money and make good risk-reward decisions. Military situations invariably take you well into high risk situations. If these jobs were non-essential jobs, then I could see this as being an attractive business opportunity. Things like mowing the grass, taking the garbage out, etc. Yet recently many of these contractors are carrying out tactical military jobs. Another factor to consider: the organizational relationship is quite different between employer and employee. This is a contractual relationship, and companies can't order employees the same way the military can a solider.

The upshot of this begs this key question: is it a good idea to be moving the location of military decisions outside of the military system? As the Taguba report surfaced, some of the contractors didn't even have military clearance. Not a good idea, if you ask me.

So if this is a pattern, part of a broader systemic issue, why has there been little or no policy response within the US? As Singer notes, there was some low level action. But Congress's attention span tends to follow what the public knows and cares about. Since the public really didn't really know about any of this, since this has been carefully kept out of the public eye, this really wasn't a priority.

What troubles Singer the most? Watching how Rumsfeld and some of the companies involved in this kind of work have responded to these questions. No transparency and even blatant untruthful spinning, which is something Rumsfeld was recently caught out on in a letter he wrote to certain Congressmen before the scandal broke. In gold-rush situations, when you don't know when the luck is going to run out, all kinds of bad behaviour starts to happen.

If this privatization of the military is proving to be a bad idea, who made this strategic decision within the US government? Who should be held accountable for this? Rumsfeld, of course. This was part of his grand plan to do "War-Lite". While enriching his friends and Republican party donors may have something to do with it as well, the main issue is his faulty policy judgment. This is enough reason to get rid of him. We can no longer trust this watcher, this Guardian of the state, to watch his watchers.

Posted by nicole at May 13, 2004 09:55 AM