19 August 2005
The other army
But anyway, surely the Chilean military culture has something to do with this. For a country of 13 million people, it has a very powerful army, with a rich history of brutality against its own people. They were, after all, trained by the Prussians back in the day. Unfortunately, those were the article's only mentions of the Chileans. Luckily for me there is Google, which produced a Christian Science Monitor article from earlier this year, posted on globalpolicy.org and entitled, "Firms Tap Latin Americans for Iraq."
¶ 9:57 AM 
Most people who follow the War in Iraq with some regularity are aware that the Department of Defense hands out contracts to dozens of private firms for "security." These groups, called mercenaries by some and private security companies by themselves, are lucrative employers for retired special forces soldiers. The NY Times Magazine this past weekend published a must-read article, "The Other Army," on it all. 25,000 armed men making lots of money running around a warzone, unregulated by the Department of Defense and the Iraqi "government" make for a fascinating story to tell. The article begins by focusing on Triple Canopy, one of these companies, employer of about 1,000 ex-soldiers. 200 are from the U.S. What caught my eye was where the others are from:
Triple Canopy now has about 1,000 men in Iraq, about 200 of them American and almost all the rest from Chile and Fiji.
Chile and Fiji, huh? Being that the origins of these sorts of firms are found in former Apartheid-era South African soldiers looking for private military work at the end of Apartheid, a thought naturally occurred to me: are these guys Pinochet's (former Chilean military dictator) old storm troopers?
If so, it seems all that great experience still doesn't put them on equal footing with the 200 Americans:
He didn't specify his salary, but Americans and other Westerners in the business tend to make between $400 and $700 a day, sometimes a good deal more. (The non-Westerners earn far less. Triple Canopy's Fijians and Chileans make between $40 and $150 dollars each week and sleep in crowded barracks at the Baghdad base, while the Americans sleep in their own dorm rooms. The company explained the difference in salaries in terms of the Americans' far superior military backgrounds and their higher-risk assignments.)
But anyway, surely the Chilean military culture has something to do with this. For a country of 13 million people, it has a very powerful army, with a rich history of brutality against its own people. They were, after all, trained by the Prussians back in the day. Unfortunately, those were the article's only mentions of the Chileans. Luckily for me there is Google, which produced a Christian Science Monitor article from earlier this year, posted on globalpolicy.org and entitled, "Firms Tap Latin Americans for Iraq."
Throughout Latin America there have been numerous press reports of contracting and subcontracting firms recruiting in Chile, Colombia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Each of the countries has had recent - and in Colombia's case, ongoing - wars, which make for large pools of experienced military and police.
A little more Googling came up with this article, from the Guardian:
The US is hiring mercenaries in Chile to replace its soldiers on security duty in Iraq. A Pentagon contractor has begun recruiting former commandos, other soldiers and seamen, paying them up to $4,000 (£2,193) a month to guard oil wells against attack by insurgents.Last month Blackwater USA flew a first group of about 60 former commandos, many of who had trained under the military government of Augusto Pinochet, from Santiago to a 2,400-acre (970-hectare) training camp in North Carolina.
If you are capable of reading Spanish, check out the results of this Spanish-language Google News search for "Blackwater," the name of another one of the big contractors that has been recruiting in Latin America. There are mentions of Colombians and Chileans being the most numerous of the Latin American recruits, and of a company founded by a Chilean, Zapata Engineering, setting some of this up as well.
The NY Times article makes the point that these companies, though rejecting classification as mercenaries, are fundamentally changing our concept of military conflict, and essentially reverting it back to medieval times. The concept of fighting a noble fight in defense of nation-state is being replaced by that of military "skill" as a valuable commodity, one as potentially lucrative as legal or medical expertise.
I see, particuarly as this relates to Latin America, a dangerous and related problem. A country like the US with vast amounts of capital, and great need to protect its economic position, needs to only rely on that capital to do so. The importance of convincing its populace that particular uses of force are just, righteous, and worthy of its blood is greatly diminished. Democratizing regions of the world without such great amounts of capital are unable to compete and lose the most skilled elements of their police and security forces. Furthermore, far from being a social and economic negative, pass association with a brutal military regime actually gives an individual economic opportunity, all the while removing them from the oversight of a democratically elected government.
I will be researching and writing about this more. If anyone has any thoughts or more information, please comment.
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Thought you would be interested in the article from Mother Jones back in November http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/notebook/2004/11/11_200.html. It mainly focuses on the use of regimes from former apartheid South Africa. More evidence of the scary privitization of war and the use of soldiers of fortune or govt sponsored terrorists in Iraq.
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: Friday, August 19, 2005 11:42:00 AM
: Friday, August 19, 2005 11:42:00 AM<< Home
