[News] Mercenaries Circling Haiti
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Wed Mar 3 11:18:42 EST 2010
Mercenaries Circling Haiti
By <http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/billquigley>Bill Quigley
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
http://www.zcommunications.org/mercenaries-circling-haiti-by-bill-quigley
On March 9 and 10, there will be a Haiti
conference in Miami for private military and
security companies to showcase their services to
governments and non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) working in the earthquake devastated country.
On their website for the Haiti conference, the
trade group IPOA (ironically called the
International Peace Operations Association until
recently) lists eleven companies advertising
security services explicitly for Haiti. Even
though guns are illegal to buy or sell in Haiti,
many companies brag of their heavy duty military experience.
Triple Canopy, a private military company with
extensive security operations in Iraq and Israel,
is advertising for business in Haiti. According
to human rights activist and investigative
reporter Jeremy Scahill, Triple Canopy took over
the Xe/Blackwater security contract in Iraq in
2009. Scahill reports on a number of bloody
incidents involving Triple Canopy including one
where a team leader told his group, "I want to
kill somebody today
because I am going on vacation tomorrow."
Another company seeking work is EODT Technology
which promises in its ad that its personnel are
licensed to carry weapons in Haiti. EODT has
worked in Afghanistan since 2004 and provides
security for the Canadian Embassy in South
Africa. On their website they promise a wide
range of security services including force
protection, guard services, port security,
surveillance, and counter IED response services.
A retired CIA special operations officer founded
another company, Overseas Security & Strategic
Information, also advertising with IPOA for
security business in Haiti. The company website
says they have a "cadre of US personnel" who
served in Special Forces, Delta Force and SEALS
and they state many of their security personnel
are former South African military and police.
Patrick Elie, the former Minister of Defence in
Haiti, told Anthony Fenton of the Inter Press
Service that "these guys are like vultures coming
to grab the loot over this disaster, and probably
money that might have been injected into the
Haitian economy is just going to be grabbed by
these companies and I'm sure they are not the
only these mercenary companies but also other
companies like Haliburton or these other ones
that always come on the heels of the troops."
Naomi Klein, world renowned author of THE SHOCK
DOCTRINE, has criticized the militarization of
the response to the earthquake and the presence
of "disaster capitalists" swooping into
Haiti. The high priority placed on security by
the U.S. and NGOs is wrong, she told Newsweek.
"Aid should be prioritized over security. Any
aid agency that's afraid of Haitians should get out of Haiti."
Security is a necessity for the development of
human rights. But outsourcing security to
private military contractors has not proven
beneficial in the U.S. or any other
country. Recently, U.S. Representative Jan
Schakowsky (IL) and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders
(VT) introduced bills titled "Stop Outsourcing
Security" to phase out private military
contractors in response to the many reports of
waste, fraud and human rights abuse.
Human rights organizations have long challenged
the growth in private security contractors in
part because governments have failed to establish
effective systems for requiring them to be
transparent and for holding them accountable.
It is challenging enough to hold government
accountable. The privatization of a public
service like security gives government protection
to private corporations which are also difficult
to hold accountable. The combination is doubly difficult to regulate
The U.S. has prosecuted hardly any of the human
rights abuses reported against private military
contractors. Amnesty International has reviewed
the code of conduct adopted by the IPOA and found
it inadequate in which compliance with
international human rights standards are not adequately addressed.
This is yet another example of what the world saw
after Katrina. Private security forces,
including Blackwater, also descended on the U.S.
gulf coast after Katrina grabbing millions of dollars in contracts.
Contractors like these soak up much needed money
which could instead go for job creation or
humanitarian and rebuilding assistance. Haiti
certainly does not need this kind of U.S. business.
In a final bit of irony, the IPOA, according to
the Institute for Southern Studies, promises that
all profits from the event will be donated to the
Clinton-Bush Haiti relief fund.
Bill Quigley is legal director of the Center for
Constitutional Rights and a long-time human
rights advocate in Haiti. <mailto:Quigley77 at gmail.com>Quigley77 at gmail.com
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