Category: Private Military Companies

UPDATE on The $50m contract to fight piracy… the unknown paying the lesser known

~ Matt Armstrong

Top Cat Marine Security is registered under Laura Casini, Esq. at what seems like a residential location.I mention the location because there are some interesting circumstances
surrounding this company. It had moved its operations to St Stephen,
South Carolina, to the great expectations of the locals. But, then in Oct 2004, things changed according to the local news: "the
door to Top Cat is padlocked, the company is facing
eviction, one of its top officials has been arrested on a charge of
issuing a fraudulent check and a default judgment was issued against
the company Monday." Interesting bit is the title of Peter Casini:
Chief Operating Officer. He seems to have gotten a promotion in the
last year, but in a Reuters article he’s head of research and development.

Removed from the site TopCat Marine Security site
recently is their address after some have questioned their shared
location with other sites Here’s the cached version.
It seems they share an answering service with other firms (after doing
some WhoIs searching and google address search). The office of record
is just a phone bank. Not particularly normal for a firm awarded with a
$50m international contract.

The webmaster, as of this writing, broke all the links on TopCat Marine Security, all
links now begin with: file:///macintosh%20hd/users/brian/desktop/. A little fidgeting, and the press release for the Somalia contract is available here:

Somalia, which hasn’t had an effective government since 1991, can’t deal with the pirates — and the U.S. government this week advised ships to travel in convoys or simply stay away. Top Cat’s strategy is to go
after the "mother ship" that launches small, high-speed boats
some 100 miles off the coast to carry out the attacks.

"Our goal is to take the mother ship," Casini said from Nairobi,
Kenya. "To disable, to disarm, whatever it takes."

Under their contract the company will set up five bases where former Navy
SEALs and Army Special Forces members will train the anti-pirate teams.
The firm will also provide state-of-the-art patrol boats, backed by helicopters, to go after the mother ship.

The final comments:

  • Where’s the money coming from? CNN/Reuters would like asks…
  • From the PMC commentators… "how long until a pirate attack w/ a Cobra boat?"
  • The State Department had to approve this contract. Some reports list the contract at $55 million, but that exceeds the min for notifying Congress. Likely it is just below ($49.9m), but it still required State approval.

:: SEE UPDATE 2 ::
This updates a previous article

The $50m contract to fight piracy… the unknown paying the lesser known

~ Matt Armstrong

On 25 November 2005, the "Transitional Federal Government of Somalia" signed a $50m deal with US private marine security company Top Cat Marine Security, Inc. to "establish new Somalia Coast Guard and Security Forces". The press release on Top Cat’s website was unavailable as of this writing (403 error). According to a Chinese online newspaper, Topcat "will help fight terrorism, curb illegal fishing and combat pirates, who have used speed boats, automatic weapons and satellite phones to target UN-chartered ships and other vessels." This may provide to be an interesting case study on private security forces.

The progenitor of Topcat is likely CobraBoats, the firm owned by Peter Casini, Jr. Mr Casini holds the patents on the high-speed boat technology (see sections for 8 Feb 01 and 18 Mar 02) that Topcat was likely created to hire out.

Not sure if there’s anything to it, but Xinhua reports the deal was with "Somali Fisheries and Marine Resources Minister Hassan Abshir Farah" and Topcat and not the head of state Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, as reported by BBC.

The absence of a functioning government in Somalia raises the obvious questions of who is funding this operation. The cost of the contract is actually curious itself: $50m. This is at, and likely just below, the threshold of required to notify Congress for contracting of defense services. It was hard to read, but it also seems Somalia is still an embargoed country, without an update since 1993.

The long of it is the Bush Administration has allowed this to take place. Why? To provide additional security through tax payer dollars to the region? Or is NATO or the EU picking up part of the bill? Highly doubtful.

:: See related Somalia posts here ::

Consequences of privatization of security .:. in practice in Iraq

~ Matt Armstrong

The details are clear on this one. Any security change, as the article notes, is scary and likely to result in problems. However, when it is the Green Zone and elections are coming up, are corporate concerns more important? Would this change happen if these were public force (i.e. US Military) units instead of private force units? Probably not. The hand off would be delayed or there would be a significant overlap, something that is simply not possible with these private companies. From Green zone security switch causes anxiety:

Though the entrances and perimeters of the zone are
patrolled by Iraqi forces and some coalition troops, much of the
interior — including the embassies and the 12-story Council of
Ministers building — is guarded by a private security company.
   

British-based Global Strategies Group lost the contract for the job in an open bidding process and handed over responsibility on Tuesday to Triple Canopy Inc., a Virginia-based company formed after the 2003 Iraq war by Delta Force veterans.
 

This is one of the most significant items:    

Another
concern is that Triple Canopy employees have been recruited mainly in
Latin America and speak little English. Global Strategies relies
heavily on British-trained Nepalese Gurkhas and Sri Lankans, a majority
of whom speak at least some English and often speak it well.

I
wonder if the Latin American soldiers were details in the bidding
process and if said process including evaluation criteria on the
military impact of this. Generally, the ability of Private Military
Companies to interact with regular military is ignored. In this case,
it is clear that is not possible.

This and similar contracts are approved by the civilian leadership,
in this case the State Department, and not the military leadership.

Marines get OK for Special Forces

~ Matt Armstrong

Lurking below the surface of better integration with domestic and foreign militaries is one of the last paragraphs in the news announcement Marines get OK for Special Forces:

Also, many veteran special forces troops have been lured into the booming private security industry, where their skills can command salaries of more than $200,000 a year.

This commanding statement alludes to a real problem of highly trained professionals: pay or honor. This doesn’t have to be the dialectic it is. I believe the drive for special operations is an effort to reinvigorate the institutional aspect of the military, away from the occupational, while combing greater pay and skills.

Blackwater Oath: a pledge to the sovereign or a play to look more American?

~ Matt Armstrong

A long time ago the prevailing military doctrine dictated a strong officer corps to lead men into battle. With the rise of nationalism, improvements in tactics and technology, and increasing institutionalization (or bureaucratization) of the state, new ways ofpositioning the military within civil society appeared. Instrumental to this was an advanced officer corps reinforcing and promulgating the
hierarchy of the civil authority over the military through the
enshrinement of professionalism and ethics. Pledges to the state and/or nation and/or tribe were exceptionally important in the field of honorable men (and now women, of course).

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Alternative Taxonomy for PMCs?

~ Matt Armstrong

R. Stanton Scott revisits Thomas Adams article in Parameters (Summer 1999) with his categorization of PMCs, but there is more to the taxonomy than services offered. In his foundational article, Adams describes three types of mercenaries.

Heavily weighted, the term of "mercenary" has come to be associated with Executive Outcomes and Sandline. Mercenaries are typically cast as individualistic, Rambo soldiers of fortune. With large corporations such as NorthrupGrumman (Vinnell) and CSC (DynCorp) behind some of the more prolific private military companies, another, more fluid taxonomy was required than Adams’ three baskets.

P.W. Singer, in Corporate Warriors, uses a spear analogy to describe how far or near the firms are from "implementation" in combat. Singer maintains the three general types of Adams with his own terms: Military Provider Firms, Military Consultant Firms, and Military Support Firms. His "tip of the spear" typology allows for granular shifting along an axis towards or away service offerings.

The singular x-axis plotting is inadequate, however. It ignore a substantial descriptor of the firms that I believe is crucial when understanding their participation in the state vs non-state structure: location of headquarters.

The institutionalized system of state and non-state relationships is interconnected with limitations on the civilian leadership of the private military company. The location of the HQ grants or prohibits legal action by legalist states, thereby promoting various actions by the principals of the PMC.

For example, an operation such as Tim Spicer’s Sandline (now defunct), based off-shore from the United Kingdom, provided relief from potential legal actions. When investigating Sandline in the Sri Leone affair, found that even if they could take action against his corporation, they were limited because of its location. (See Private Military Companies: Options for Regulations). This holds true when attempting to put pressure on the HQ host government (see Annex B of previous).

On the y-axis would be three marks, just like the x-axis. These three would indicate the nature of the state and indicate the personality of the firm. The first mark would be a Western industrialized state such as the United States, Britain, Germany, etc. These states have deeply ingrained civil-military relationships (or civil-society-military, but that’s a different discussion) and institutionalized legal and financial systems (sticks and carrots).

The second bucket would be weak states without the distinct civil-military relations and more permiable institutions. These would include Belarus, Israel, or others. Israel is an interesting inclusion mostly because of its military with too much control of the political process and willingness to provide services to those who will pay (also known as the "biting the hand that feds syndrome").

The last mark would be HQ’s in the outlaw states such as Afghanistan or North Korea. This is not to say NK has a PMC, but such a "corporate" entity would be by definition not independent and would be the tool of the state. These would either be better classified as pirates or state

This two dimensional plotting lends itself to the accountability question, to be discussed soon.

PMC publicity getting more negative

~ Matt Armstrong

The friction between soldiers of the state and contract soldiers issimilar to that of information technology departments over
a decade ago. The difference between stuff of Dilbert cartoons and Marines vs Zapata Engineering is neither Dogbert nor Ratbert carry an M4.

Just as the airline industry was poaching US Air Force pilots in the seventies and eighties, the private military companies have been not so quietly doing the same today. From a USA Today article (courtesy Military.com):

Experienced
military explosives specialists can earn $250,000 a year or more
working for the private companies. In the military, an enlisted man
with 10 years’ experience can make more than $46,000.

The article goes further to mention the heat between contractors and soldiers working together. This problem is going to get worse before it gets better.

Peacekeeping Accountability and Private Military Companies

~ Matt Armstrong

Conventional wisdom has been going away from general war for a while now. Low-intensity warfare impacting all four networks of power (economic, political, religious / ideology, and military / violence) will be the dominant form of conflict. In this age of instant communication, increasing diasporas, and short travel times, conflict even in remote regions have some trickle-down effect on the US. Kofi Annan, writing in Foreign Affairs, in discussing his proposed changes to the UN Security Council acknowledges the clear and present dangers of ignoring challenges in the periphery. Thomas P. M. Barnett is apparently making a living, at least in part, on the actual and perceived division between the ‘core’, ‘periphery’, and ‘non-integrating’ gap in his new map.

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USMC vs PMC

~ Matt Armstrong

What happens when you put two military forces within close proximity with each other, do not integrate C2, or otherwise share IFF resources? Is it called friendly fire when a US military force fires upon a US corporate force?

The Marine Corps Times, Boston.com, and NPR have raised the profile of an incident last month where US Marines halted a private military force comprised of US and Iraqi citizens…

Marines with Regimental Combat Team 8 detained 19 civilian contract
workers in Fallujah, Iraq, in late May after the contractors were seen
firing from their vehicles on Marine positions and Iraqi vehicles,
according to a Corps press release.

The Marine Corps times is the only news outlet I reviewd that included
the reference the governing rule of law for private security forces, Memorandum 17 issued by the Coalition Provisional Authority in its last days (also stored here since the CPA website may be offline after 30 June 2005).

Private security companies in Iraq are regulated under Memorandum 17, a rule enacted
under the Coalition Provisional Authority that requires them to
register with the Iraqi Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Trade and
be free of a criminal record or terrorist ties. The memorandum also
spells out a “code of conduct” that stipulates that when contractors
use their weapons, they must “fire only aimed shots, fire with due
regard to innocent bystanders [and] immediately report [the] incident
and request assistance.”

The company involved, Zapata Engineering, put out a statement on 9 June 2005 disagreeing with the Marine’s account of being fired upon or witnessing Zapata’s men firing from their vehicles.

On Saturday, May 28, 2005, Zapata Engeineering employees were engaged in a routine convoy in Northern Iraq. Marine Corps personnel in a nearby outpost intercepted the convoy team. Citing
security concerns, the Marines escorted the convoy without incident to
Camp Fallujah for questioning. Convoy personnel cooperated fully with
the Marines’ requests. Prior to this date, we had safely completed
hundreds of similar convoy missions in Iraq.

The fact Zapata Engineering was engaged on a US Army Corps of Engineers contract is important in how this could play out. Memo 17 requires registration and provides certain limitations ("primary role of PMC is deterrence") and constraints ("liable under applicable criminal and civil codes") but enforcement requires the backing of the US government.

The UK House of Commons issued a report in 2002 identifying the US as having the most
extensive regulatory regime, partially as a result of attempts to control weapons
technology and partially as a result of the American legalist tradition. The International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) of 1986 has a significantly high threshold and limited functional oversight. A functioning bilateral Status of Forces agreement (CPA’s Order 91, also available here, is a related problem here)  would be indicative of a functioning government capable of upholding its contractual obligations.

The US Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (MEJA) of 2000, along with the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), apply to persons who are employed by or accompanying the armed forces outside the
United States or who are members of the armed forces and subject to UCMJ and
who are not a national or resident of the nation in which the crime occurred.
The punishment for committing the new crime is that which would have been
imposed under federal law had the crime been committed in the United States. However, Zapata’s forces were not accompanying US armed forces and MEJA has no teeth and has never been used.

There is always the humanitarian law bucket. The Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) of 1789 and the Torture Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 1991 rely heavily on expensive prosecutions within the US. Zapata, if they were to press charges, would likely not have the financial resources or the strong case.

The most likely resolution of this situation is the US government threatening (with the potential to follow through) to terminate the contract with Zapata.

This incident is clearly a harbinger of things to come. What happens when things go more wrong? See a detailed timeline of the Belarus mercenaries conducting (possibly) extracurricular services for the Ivory Coast / Cote d’Ivorie November 2004. The retaliation by the French was severe and then promptly silenced by the same. This was likely due to their desire to limit foreign interest in their (re)colonial intervention.

When outsourcing fails you

~ Matt Armstrong

Microsoft’s South Korean MSN site, apparently very popular, more so than the US version, is operated by a third party. This vendor apparently did not patch their servers hosting MSN Korea, allowing for the malicious code to be inserted. On the technical side, disconcerting is the (currently) unknown (or not made public) duration the malicious code was operating.

Source: CNN.com – Microsoft:MSN site hacked in South Korea – Jun 2, 2005.

Microsoft acknowledges that hackers booby-trapped its MSN Web site in South Korea to steal passwords from visitors.

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