Reply #6: Making A Killing -The Business of War..Oct. 28, 2002

[ElsewheresDaughter]

http://www.publici.org/dtaweb/report.asp?ReportID=469&L1=10&L2=10&L3=0&L4=0&L5=0

(WASHINGTON, Oct. 28, 2002) – At least 90 companies that provide services normally performed by national military forces – but without the same degree of public oversight – have operated in 110 countries worldwide, providing everything from military training, logistics, and even engaging in armed combat. Amid the global military downsizing and the increasing number of small conflicts that followed the end of the Cold War, governments have turned increasingly to these private military companies to intervene on their behalf around the globe, a new investigation by the Center for Public Integrity’s International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has found.

With the ongoing international military presence in Afghanistan and a possible war in Iraq on the horizon, the issue of military privatization has taken on new relevance. Since 1994, the U.S. Defense Department has entered into 3,061 contracts with 12 U.S.-based private military companies identified by ICIJ, a review of government documents showed. Not every contract was for military services; records obtained from the Pentagon were not specific enough to determine the purpose of each of the contracts.

Private military companies – a recently coined euphemism for mercenaries – are just one face of the increasing trend of the privatization of war, the investigation found. A small group of individuals and companies with connections to governments, multinational corporations and, sometimes, criminal syndicates in the United States, Europe, Africa and the Middle East have profited from this business of war.

Arms dealers have profited from a massive unregulated sell off of low price surplus armaments into the most fragile, conflict-ridden states and failed states. The weapons, mostly from state-owned Eastern European factories, have found their way to Angola, Sudan, Ethiopia, Colombia, Congo-Brazzaville, Sri Lanka, Burundi and Afghanistan – where conflicts have led to the deaths of up to 10 million people during the past decade.

The investigation profiles arms dealers like Victor Bout and Leonid Minin, both of whom were born in the Soviet Union and, after its breakup, became involved in the profitable trade in arms to Africa. Bout, a Russian pilot, allegedly supplied arms to the Taliban, and was dubbed “the Merchant of Death” for supplying weapons to a series of African conflicts. Minin, a Ukrainian, was charged with supplying weapons that fueled a bloody war in Sierra Leone. Both have been accused of having ties to international criminal syndicates by various international authorities.

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read the full report here
http://www.icij.org/dtaweb/icij_bow.asp
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mid the military downsizing and increasing number of small conflicts that followed the end of the Cold War, governments turned increasingly to private military companies – a recently coined euphemism for mercenaries – to intervene on their behalf in war zones around the globe. Often, these companies work as proxies for national or corporate interests, whose involvement is buried under layers of secrecy. Entrepreneurs selling arms and companies drilling and mining in unstable regions have prolonged the conflicts.



A nearly two-year investigation by the Center for Public Integrity’s International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has also found that a handful of individuals and companies with connections to governments, multinational corporations and, sometimes, criminal syndicates in the United States, Europe, Africa and the Middle East have profited from this war commerce – a growth industry whose bottom line never takes into account the lives it destroys