CIA

Punishing the cowboys: Blackwater, justice, and easier wars

April 18, 2015 by Strife Staff

By Charlie de Rivaz:

A Blackwater Little Bird Helicopter flies over the Republican Palace in Baghdad, December 2007. Photo: jamesdale10 (CC 2.0) — A Blackwater helicopter flies over the Republican Palace in Baghdad, Iraq, December 2007. Photo: jamesdale10 (CC 2.0)

On Monday, four former employees of Blackwater, the notorious private US military contractor, were sentenced for the killing of 14 unarmed civilians and the wounding of 17 more in Iraq in 2007.

Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard each received 30 years in prison after being found guilty of several charges of voluntary and attempted manslaughter. Nicholas Slatten, the team’s sniper, was sentenced to life for first-degree murder for his part in the killings, which took place while the four men were working as part of a security detail for the US State Department.

Slatten began the massacre by firing at the civilian occupants of a car caught up in traffic at the roundabout in Nisour Square, Baghdad. In the ensuing confusion three armoured vehicles opened fire, strafing the cars and pedestrians in and around the square with heavy machine guns and grenade launchers, causing what the lead prosecutor described as ‘a shocking amount of death, injury and destruction’. The defendants’ claim that they believed they were under attack did not convince the jury, who convicted them in October 2014.

After Nisour Square

In the fallout from the massacre in Nisour Square, Blackwater was blocked from providing diplomatic security in Iraq – the so-called ‘cowboys’ were sent home. Indeed, you might have expected a general cooling off in the relationship between the private security companies and state militaries.

But there’s been nothing of the kind. Between 2008 and 2011 there were more military contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan than soldiers. Compare this to the First Gulf War, when there was one contractor to every hundred soldiers. [i] Most of the contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan were working in logistics: building bases, doing the laundry, cooking the food. But a significant chunk – 18% in 2012[ii] – were involved in providing security, exactly what Slough, Liberty, Heard and Slatten were supposed to be doing on that fateful day in Nisour Square.

Even Blackwater is still involved, albeit under a new – less threatening – name: ‘Academi’. As part of the failed counter-narcotics effort in Afghanistan, Academi has received $309 million from the US government. Erik Prince, Blackwater’s founder, escaped any liability for what happened in Nisour Square and is now gallivanting around Africa for Chinese mining, oil and gas companies as part of his new outfit, Frontier Services Group. In the war against ISIS, Prince has called for the US government to ‘let the private sector finish the job’.

Rotten apples?

The use of private military contractors by governments has increased, not decreased, since the Nisour Square massacre. But does it really matter? After all, weren’t Slatten and co. just a few rotten apples, caught up in the heat of the moment?

It is difficult to know how many ‘rotten apples’ are working for private military companies. In 2012, Faiza Patel, then Head of the UN Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries, claimed that the rot was widespread, alleging that private military contractors had been involved in extrajudicial killings and sex trafficking. A 2008 RAND survey found that 20% of diplomatic personnel who had worked with armed contractors in Iraq found them to be ‘unnecessarily threatening, arrogant or belligerent’. This was echoed by a 2010 New York Times article, which claimed that American troops saw contractors as ‘amateurish, overpaid and, often, trigger-happy’.

It has also become clear that private contractors were heavily involved in the torture of Iraqi detainees during the so-called ‘War on Terror’. One of the most striking revelations from the CIA Torture Report, apart from the systematic use of brutal practices like ‘rectal hydration’ and ‘rough takedowns’, was that private contractors conducted 85% of the interrogations of terror suspects. In late 2012, L-3 Services Inc paid $5.8 million in damages to 71 former detainees of Abu Ghraib who allege that they were tortured by employees of the US defence contractor.

Hiding in the shadows

But the truth is that little is known about the behaviour of private military contractors, because they typically operate in the shadows, beyond the scrutiny of the media. Most governments do not publicise the military contractors they hire, and much of what they get up to on the ground is either classified, or obscured by layers of further sub-contractors.

Indeed, it is precisely this secrecy that makes private military companies so attractive to governments: they can hide both the violence and the cost of war. When a contractor dies no one lines the streets of Wootton Bassett, waiting for the flag-draped coffin to pass. Similarly, when a contractor abuses a civilian in a faraway warzone, the government doing the contracting can deny all responsibility. No pesky court-martials are needed; no reputations tarnished.

By employing private contractors, wars can be escalated on the sly, without the need for unpopular troop increases. This is foreign policy by proxy. The UK allegedly used SAS veterans in Libya, who claim they were paid £10,000 per month, to help topple Gaddafi in 2011. The US Congress was not made aware of the fact that Blackwater were assisting the CIA and JSOC in their ‘snatch and grab’ missions in Afghanistan (and even Pakistan) until it was disclosed by the CIA director in 2009.[iii]

At the same time, the costs of private contractors can be kept ‘off the books’ in a way that the costs of regular troops cannot, thereby making an expensive war seem relatively cheap. An estimated 70% of the costs to the US of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were kept off the books, funded by emergency appropriations approved outside of the Pentagon’s annual budget.

Regulating the cowboys

It is difficult to control what goes on in the shadows. Since the fifteenth century and despite Machiavelli’s warnings about the ‘undisciplined and treacherous’ nature of mercenaries, states have failed to effectively regulate the role of private companies in war. Even today, there is no effective system of legal accountability to check the behaviour of private military contractors; they typically operate beyond the jurisdiction of both national and international law.[iv]

For a long time it looked like Slough, Liberty, Heard and Slatten would evade justice too. It took over seven years before they were found guilty of the killings in Nisour Square, so long that the statute of limitations kicked in and prosecutors had to drop manslaughter charges against Slatten. In fact, the case only made it to trial after a personal intervention by Vice-President Joe Biden. Blackwater/Academi itself never got anywhere near the courtroom. If a case as high-profile and horrifying as Nisour Square proved so fragile, it is little wonder that private contractors rarely end up in court.

But even if there were effective regulation, even if we did live in a world where international law meant something and international institutions worked; even then it would still be better to reject the turn towards using private contractors instead of the regular state militaries.

More wars, bigger wars

This is because private contractors make war easier. With the support of private contractors, states can engage in more wars, and on a far grander scale than would otherwise be possible. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan would not have gone ahead without the support of private contractors: there just weren’t enough soldiers.

In particular, private contractors make unilateral wars easier. There’s a good reason that unilateral wars are unilateral: no one else supports them. If states could only entertain the possibility of going to war if that war had multilateral support, then both the legitimacy of the war and its prospects of success would be greatly increased.

Private contractors make war easier, and they also try damn hard to make it desirable. We should not kid ourselves into believing that these contractors are sitting quietly, twiddling their thumbs, waiting for the government to pick up the phone and call on their services. On the contrary, they are incentivised to lobby the hawks in government to make war. For the contractors, war equals money. It is no surprise that from 1998 Kevin Prince became a steady contributor to the Republican right – one of his recipients was, of course, George W. Bush.

Disturbingly, the more the government outsources its military needs, the more pervasive the war incentive becomes. Intelligence analysts working for companies like Blackwater are now judging security threats. Strategy experts working for these companies are now being asked their advice about the risk of prosecuting such-and-such a war. Those who stand to make money from war are gaining more and more influence in the corridors of power.

While we should welcome the weighty sentences handed down to the ‘cowboys’ responsible for the massacre in Nisour Square; it is no cause for celebration. There has been precious little change since the massacre. The state is still in thrall to the private contractors, and the contractors still operate in the shadows, beyond the eyes of the media and beyond the reach of the law. This matters. We have so far failed to tame the cowboys, we must not let them make violence an easy option.

Charlie de Rivaz is an MA student on the Conflict, Security and Development programme at King’s College London. For three years he worked in Argentina and Colombia as an English teacher and journalist. His main interests include the political economy of war, international human rights law, conflict resolution, and state-building. Charlie is the Managing Editor of Strife blog.

NOTES

[i] Pattison, James (2014), The Morality of Private War, OUP
[ii] Ibid, p.22
[iii] Ibid, p.149
[iv] Ibid, p.147

Did torture cost American lives?

December 11, 2014 by Strife Staff

By Christopher D. Kolenda:

US soldier in Iraq. Photo: US Army (creative commons)

“The enemy is the enemy, until he becomes my prisoner,” I remember Lieutenant General Hal Moore saying, “then he is my responsibility”. Moore was with co-author Joe Galloway at Fort Hood, Texas, in 1993. They were talking to officers from 1^st Squadron, 7^th Cavalry, Moore’s unit in Vietnam, about their book We Were Soldiers Once … and Young.

The message has stuck with me ever since.

This conversation from over twenty years ago came to my mind as I read the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report about the use of so-called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’.

It makes disturbing reading. One cannot help but be horrified by the graphic descriptions of actions that Americans inflicted on detainees in the wake of the September 11 attacks – torture, in several instances.

The Senate reports a number of cases in which members of the CIA questioned the legality and efficacy of the techniques, but were allegedly rebuffed. That roughly 85% of the detention and interrogation efforts were reportedly carried out by contractors, who do not share the same oaths or professional values as CIA members, raises other important questions.

The Central Intelligence Agency’s response thankfully notes that the program will not be reinitiated under any circumstances, and carefully explains that their counterpoints to the Senate report in no way suggest an ends-justify-the-means case for the practices employed.

A recent op-ed by former Agency leaders makes no such distinctions. They emphasize that the prevailing sense of fear at the time over another attack and the (disturbing) lack of knowledge about al-Qaeda justified the need for “enhanced” techniques. The outcomes, they suggest, saved American lives.

But did unintended consequences, directly or indirectly, actually cost American lives? That question is beyond the scope of the Senate report, the Agency response, and the arguments by the former CIA leaders. It merits thoughtful attention nonetheless.

Observation #8 from the Senate report notes some of the negative effects of the program on the efforts of other agencies, such as the State Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation. Observation #20 suggests that America’s moral standing in the world has suffered. Impacts on the Department of Defense are not mentioned.

This brings me back to the discussion with Hal Moore. Protection of civilians and combatants no longer posing a threat – wounded, sick and prisoners – even at increased risk to yourself, should distinguish American soldiers in times of war. This would be a principle in any organization that I led. It was also, I believed, a practical necessity.

Equally important was to foster a command climate that encouraged, even demanded, candid feedback. Even the best guardians need other guardians animated by common principles.

How we treat others in combat, whether they be civilians faced with impossible real-world choices, people who cannot protect themselves from violence and brutality, and incapacitated or detained fighters on the battlefield we may have been trying to kill a moment beforehand, says a lot about us.

I relied on this principle time and again as a commander in combat in Afghanistan as we dealt with the real-world complexities of fighting an insurgency – in some cases an insurrection – that wore no uniforms, blended with the population, and played by a very different set of rules.

You find yourself in a constant battle of unenviable trade-offs – balancing risk to the mission, risk to your soldiers, and protection of others, for instance. Uncertainties abound over which local actors to trust and how much, over what rules and incentives motivate them, about which information and various interpretations of it to believe, and how best to accomplish the mission and defeat your adversaries or sets of adversaries.

You also find yourself contending with a wide range of emotions. Elation over winning a battlefield engagement; visceral anger and anguish when your soldiers are wounded or killed; outrage when civilians are brutalized or killed by your enemy; sadness in the face of human suffering; anxiety and concern over setbacks; joy and satisfaction at success.

You operate in a world of fine lines, easily crossed. Elation can turn to bloodlust; anger and outrage into revenge; concern into paralysis; sadness and joy into pity and hubris. Your principles and candid people around you keep you on the right side, especially in the most difficult and dangerous and disorienting circumstances.

I found in Afghanistan that the principles of protection and candour normally carried manageable short-term risks, but had significant positive practical implications.

I was astonished to find, however, that many Afghans believed that Americans engaged in torture and human rights abuses as a matter of policy. Many, I discovered, did not see us as the ‘good guys’. They feared us. I learned over time that several opportunists had beforehand provided bogus reports to eager officials. These reports often provoked military actions against their otherwise innocent rivals. The former knew exactly what buttons to push. Their rivals swore blood-feuds against the Americans. All this made the insurgency stronger, the fighting tougher, and our job much, much harder.

My subsequent tours in Afghanistan suggest that our experience was not unique. Of course demands that our Afghan partners respect human rights rung hollow to some. Even Taliban leaders and associates would contrast their treatment of U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl with rumours and reports of torture of their people by Americans.

It is in this context that I suggest the need for further examination. The program did not exist in isolation. It formed part of the context in which our forces operated in combat. Over seven thousand American service members were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan; tens of thousands live with wounds visible and non-visible. Many more civilians were killed or wounded. A precise answer to the cost in lives is unknowable.

There are important questions about how the program may have affected the conduct of the wars, including:

To what extent did the perceptions and justifications of the program, to include the actual and perceived use of torture, affect our soldiers and their mission?
To what extent did senior leaders’ public justifications of the program affect broader policy and strategy options in the conduct of the wars?
To what extent did perceptions and justifications of the program promote an ends-justify-the-means mentality within the military in Afghanistan and Iraq?
To what extent did the perceptions and justifications foster a belief in the military that such practices were acceptable and could be used by them in combat?
To what extent did ‘false positives’ or erroneous reports, perhaps made out of fear of torture, lead to military actions that cost lives (civilian and military) and created unnecessary enemies?
To what extent did the actual and perceived use of torture compromise the military’s moral standing in the eyes of the people in Afghanistan and Iraq? In what ways did that affect the mission and its prospects of success?

The CIA is filled with people who were repulsed by the behaviours cited on the Senate report. These public servants saved American (and Afghan and Iraqi) lives while upholding the values that make the Agency great. To what extent the program that troubled them affected the conduct of the wars, and the people conducting them, merits further investigation.

Did the mentality that created and justified a program intended to save American lives cost American and civilian lives, too, and what can we learn from that?

Christopher D. Kolenda is a Senior Military Fellow at King’s College London and President and CEO of Kolenda Strategic Leadership which helps Not-for-Profit organizations maximize their impact in conflict zones. He commanded Paratroopers in combat and served as Senior Advisor to three Commanders of International Forces (ISAF) over four tours in Afghanistan. See his two books on applied combat leadership: Leadership: The Warrior’s Art and The Counterinsurgency Challenge.

Editors’ note: Strife and the US Foreign Policy Research group will be hosting our first annual conference 4 March 2015 at King’s College London entitled: “A world in flux? Analysis and prospects for the U.S. in global security”. Leading up to this, we will be featuring a number of articles and responses to current events related to US and global security from a variety of students, researchers, practitioners and academics. This article is part of that series.

The tortured narrative of a nation at war: USA & the CIA Torture Report

December 10, 2014 by Strife Staff

By Tyrell Mayfield:

What is more important: truth or trust? Are they mutually exclusive? Does one require the other? These are the questions that America is struggling with as it finds itself once again standing at the crossroads of legal, moral, and social justice.

The recent release of the summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program describes—in over 500 pages—what America has long referred to as ‘enhanced interrogation’. Most of the world called it what it was: torture. America has shown the world a redacted report – the original is 6700 pages – that describes what it has done in its quest to protect itself and its way of life from those that would do it harm. It turns out that America has clearly harmed itself and its own credibility more in the process than it gained in any meaningful way.

America rode an unprecedented wave of international support into Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks, which targeted the economic, military, and political arms of the nation’s power. The attacks, notable for their simplicity and profound impact on the American psyche, galvanized the country in a way that was perhaps last seen with the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbour on 7 December, 1941. In other words, on 12 September 2001 anything was possible in America. The narrative that emerged was one universally understood: America was a nation that would respond in a measured and purposeful way to ensure its security and exact retribution for an unprecedented attack on its homeland.

To say that it has been a long road would be a drastic understatement. It has most certainly been a complicated one, full of technicalities, abstract ideas, and an undeclared war against a non-state actor. It is likely that this last complication—the non-state actor—served as the point of departure for a series of policy decisions that have brought America through the invasion of a sovereign nation without any real justification, the debacle of Abu Ghraib, and now the disclosure of a prolonged policy of behavior which in hindsight is nothing short of appalling.

Had America gone to war against a nation with a uniformed army, obligations to treaties and conventions would have proscribed the behavior now in question. In an undeclared war against an ideology, America applied executive policy where moral courage was required. One is now compelled to ask what positives, if any, can come of this behavior and its now very public disclosure? Does America believe that if it tells the truth, even when it harms its own image, that it will become a more trustworthy entity in the eyes of the international community? Can America change the way other states, cultures, and people view it by disclosing its own wrongdoing?

Truth-telling is only the first step in building trust. What comes next is more difficult: it requires that people and institutions be held accountable and that real and meaningful change be enacted. This suggests that the release of the ‘torture report’ may in fact serve two purposes. First, the report clearly demonstrates that America acted in a manner which was inconsistent with its own ethical values and boundaries. That these boundaries were, for a time, obscured by anger and injury, and further complicated by a prolonged campaign against a non-state actor is in part a reasonable explanation, but it is no excuse for the behaviour that followed. America seems to be coming to terms with its own actions; whether or not it can reconcile its conduct with its identity by holding individuals and institutions accountable remains to be seen.

Second, the report demonstrates that while America’s actions were inconsistent with its own identity, it is still a country that is capable of admitting when it is wrong. Make no mistake, America’s humility will not be appreciated by its detractors. They will simply argue that America is finally providing the world a glimpse of what it is capable of or, worse yet, what it considered to be acceptable and legal behaviour. But that is not why this report is important – its true value resides in its ability to regain some of the confidence of its allies and supporters. America has, after all, pressured many other states to reconcile the grievances of its own citizens with truth and justice commissions. Should it not ask the same of itself?

These two paths can be traveled at the same time. As with the release of the photographs from Abu Ghraib, America has once again torn off its bandage and revealed a self-inflicted wound to the world. What happens next will determine if the American narrative can help the nation recover its credibility or if the narrative of its detractors will remain dominant. Regardless of the kinetic power of the American military, so long as the opponent’s narrative remains compelling and dominant, the persuasive capabilities of American instruments of national power will continue to wane.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the USAF, the DoD, or the U.S. Government.

Ty Mayfield is a Political Affairs Strategist in the U.S. Air Force. He holds an MA in International Relations from the University of Oklahoma and an MA in National Security Studies from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA. Ty is participating in the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff directed AFPAK Hands program and splits his time between Washington D.C. and Kabul, Afghanistan. @tyrellmayfield

CIA Torture Report released: 'torture doesn't work'

December 9, 2014 by Strife Staff

By Charlie de Rivaz:

A few hours ago the Senate Intelligence Committee released parts of the long-awaited 6000-page ‘CIA Torture report’. The report has revealed the extent and the brutality of the torture used by the CIA during the ‘War on Terror’, initiated in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the USA.

The report tells us that the infamous ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ used by the CIA against detainees were even more extreme than first thought, and go far beyond the ‘severe mental or physical suffering’ required to be torture.

The use of waterboarding – or “near-drowning”, as the CIA itself describes it – has long been known. Then there was hooding, slaps and “wallings”, which involved slamming detainees against walls, alongside the familiar techniques of isolation, sleep deprivation, stress positions, and long-term exposure to loud and dissonant noises. But there were also the mock executions, the revving of power-drills near heads, the “rectal rehydration” (unnecessary feeding through the anus), the “rough takedowns” (dragging a nude but hooded detainee up and down the corridor while punching and slapping him), as well as the threats to sexually abuse a detainee’s mother, to harm his children, to only let him leave “in a coffin-shaped box”.

The torture report has shown that the full details of the CIA’s torture regime were not revealed to Congress or the White House, and that senior CIA officials repeatedly overruled interrogators concerned about what they were being asked to do. The CIA also misrepresented both the extent and the effectiveness of their torture program. These findings will lead to serious questioning about the future role of the CIA.

But I believe that the most lasting impact of the report is that it finally puts to bed the lie that torture can be justified by national security concerns. The report categorically states that the CIA’s torture regime “was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees” (p.11).

The belief that torture can be justified on national security grounds is not uncommon. Unfortunately it has been held by politicians with the power to act on that belief. Tony Blair and Jack Straw allegedly knew at least some of the details of the CIA’s ‘interrogation’ regime and did not act to prevent MI6’s complicity in it. Dick Cheney has repeatedly extolled the virtues of the CIA’s regime. Just yesterday he said that “when we had that [CIA] program in place, we kept the country safe from any more mass casualty attacks, which was our objective”.

This belief that torture can be justified also infects the minds of ordinary people. It stems from our intuitive response to the “ticking bomb” scenario: if we torture the terrorist then we save the city from a nuclear bomb, if we don’t then millions die. Put in such stark terms we cannot help but be seduced by torture, and arguments about the importance of human dignity become, quite frankly, obtuse.

But the issue with the “ticking bomb” is that in the real world we cannot be so certain. We cannot know for sure that the terrorist we have is the one with the vital information, or that torturing him will reveal that information. The CIA torture report demonstrates this more forcefully than, arguably, any other document in history.

The torture of Hassan Ghul, who led the CIA to the courier who would in turn lead the CIA to Bin-Laden, provided “no actionable information”. All the useful information he provided came before he was tortured. The same is true of Abu Zubaydah, who revealed the crucial information that led to the capture of a senior al-Qaeda operative before he was tortured. During his waterboarding he just told the CIA the same thing again. This operative was Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who, after waterboarding, told the CIA about the ‘Second Wave’ of 9/11 attacks that had been planned for the West Coast. But the CIA already knew all of this information, which had been revealed – without torture – by a Malaysian national four years earlier.

In each of these cases, and the 17 others investigated in the report, the CIA claimed that their ‘interrogation’ program had led them to the crucial information. But they were lying every time. The information was either revealed before torture or, when torture did lead to information, it was stuff the CIA already knew. At no point was torture effective in preventing terrorist attacks. The fact that the CIA pretended that it was shows that they believed they needed a real justification for their actions (presumably because they knew their actions were wrong or, at the very least, on shaky legal ground).

I hope that the belief that torture works, that we need it to protect our countries, will finally be put to bed. The CIA torture report is the most unequivocal declaration of the inefficacy of torture. We do not live in the world of the “ticking bomb”; we live in a world of uncertainties, and in this world waterboarding, wallings and rough takedowns do not work. So the next time a politician, or anyone for that matter, says that torture is necessary to protect us, remind them of today, when we were shown, definitively, that it is not.

Charlie is an MA student on the Conflict, Security and Development programme at King’s College, London. For three years he worked in Argentina and Colombia as an English teacher and journalist. His main interests include the political economy of war, international human rights law, conflict resolution, and state-failure and state-building. Charlie is currently the Managing Editor of the Strife blog.

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