|
|
 |
|
| Opportunities & Exposures: Security |
Hired Guns
Deborah Avant
01/01/2006
|
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Blackwater USA, a North Carolina–based
private security company (PSC), joined the relief effort on the Gulf Coast,
donating the services of an SA-330 Puma helicopter. Other PSCs from the United
States, the United Kingdom and Israel sold their law enforcement services to the
department of Homeland Security, to oil companies with damaged facilities and
even to celebrities who rushed to the region to help. Two weeks later,
Blackwater made the news again when two if its employees were killed while
working in Iraq.
 The growing role of the private sector in security is a
dramatic indicator of the shifting relationship between public and private
entities in the 21st century. PSCs do scores of jobs that were once done by
soldiers, from building and maintaining camps in the field to supporting weapons
systems and providing law enforcement and training. They are rapidly becoming
indispensable to national militaries, private corporations, nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) and individuals around the world.
The implications of
privatizing security are hotly contested and the debate has polarized. Critics
claim that PSCs are mercenaries who threaten to undermine state control and
democracy. Others believe they offer professional solutions to intractable
security problems. This debate misses the obvious point: Privatizing security
poses both benefits and risks. Polarized debate also obscures potential
solutions that result from neither rejecting nor embracing private security, per
se, but from charting strategies that encourage PSCs to serve the public good.
The use of PSCs in both the Gulf Coast and Iraq provides a window into some
of their benefits. The PSCs can provide surge capacity to field forces quickly,
without the bureaucratic lead time. They can also field specialized forces.
Recruiting from databases of retired military and police makes it easier for
PSCs to hire people with particular experience—such as retired MPs, civil
affairs officers, special forces or even translators—and thus match specific
needs better than standing forces. PSCs are flexible. They can provide whatever
kind of force is needed. Finally, using PSCs, rather than troops, is seen as
less politically costly.
| It also diffuses control, leaving no one in charge—or accountable—for wrongdoing. |
The challenges that private security introduces,
however, are serious. The first is the legal uncertainty. The status of PSC
personnel and the appropriate laws and legal system through which to hold them
responsible leads to dangers for both PSC personnel and for those operating near
them. PSC personnel are generally not subject to military justice systems and,
depending on their citizenship status and where they are operating, may not be
subject to much of a legal framework at all.
Using private security also
reduces transparency in democratic states. In Iraq, the U.S. government does not
even keep track of the number of contractors sent there; media coverage of
government troops far exceeds that of PSCs; and, while military deaths in Iraq
are routinely covered and monitored, private contractor deaths are not. Finally,
using PSCs redistributes power over the control of force, either within the
government or to people outside the government (the oil companies, NGOs or
private individuals that hire PSCs). At the very least this recasts
accountability. In some instances, however, it also diffuses control, leaving no
one in charge—or accountable—for wrongdoing.
PSCs are eager for continued
profit, and this could be a tool for leashing them to the greater good. If
consumers insist that PSCs operate according to professional standards, demand
transparency and resolve legal confusion, PSCs are more likely to link profit
with legitimate behavior. For example, authorities should tell the residents of
New Orleans (or Baghdad) who Blackwater personnel are, why they have authority
to use force and to whom they are accountable. Locals should also have some
voice in this process. Many PSCs endorse setting these kinds of
standards.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
