Outsourcing Occupation

Outsourcing occupation

By Hamish Chitts

For the past few years, private military contractors have out numbered US troops in Afghanistan despite a doubling in the size of the US occupation under the Obama administration. There were more contractors than US troops in Iraq a year ago, but the number of contractors dropped slightly this year to 120,000 — equal to the number of US troops. These contractors often provide “logistical” support as cooks, truck drivers, in warehouse workers, etc. Even the actual “guns for hire” are not often used in offensive operations but provide bodyguards, security for embassies and private businesses and even guards for military bases.

The October 6 New York Times reported that the US plans to vastly expand its embassy in Islamabad, and create a consulate in Peshawar, the capital of the Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. Providing security for these projects are large numbers of contractors from Xe Services (formerly Blackwater) and DynCorp. According to the NYT, “the Pakistani military and the intelligence agencies are concerned that DynCorp is being used by Washington to develop a parallel network of security and intelligence personnel within Pakistan” and “there have been a series of complaints by Islamabad residents who said they had been ‘roughed up’ by hefty, plainclothes American men bearing weapons”. The NYT also reported on August 21 that at hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Xe contractors assemble and load Hellfire missiles and 1100 kilogram laser-guided bombs on remotely piloted Predator aircraft, work previously performed by CIA officers. They also provide security at the covert bases.

According to an October 16 Press TV report, the Pentagon has outsourced a new military intervention into Somalia: “Michigan-based CSS Global Inc. secured the contract under the plea of ‘fighting terrorism and piracy’ and ‘protecting’ Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government.” In the US itself, Blackwater was contracted to patrol the streets of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Xe Services is also a leading trainer of police, private security and military within the US.

These private security firms perform tasks that would in previous wars would have been performed by uniformed military personnel. This has allowed US politicians and the supportive corporate media to fudge the figures when it comes to the size of occupation forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. In September the Obama administration was able to increase the number of US combat troops in Afghanistan by 14,000 without announcing any increase in overall troop numbers by withdrawing 14,000 uniformed logistic personnel whose duties were taken over by civilian contractors.
Historical use of mercenaries

The use of mercenaries in differing forms predates capitalism. Early class societies were ruled by warlords who maintained their rule through a privileged warrior class. In times of war and territorial expansion, ruling classes used their accumulated wealth to employ the idle warriors of other societies not directly involved in the conflict. One of the earliest records of the use of mercenaries is from 484 BCE, when the Persian empire employed Greek mercenaries to assist its invasion of Greece. All the ancient empires supplemented their regular armies with mercenaries. In Europe this practice continued under feudalism and was common during the emergence of capitalism.

As European states began carving up the world and trade wars took on a global scale, there emerged a company that makes modern private military companies look like rank amateurs. The London-based East India Company started on December 31, 1600, with a charter, granted by Queen Elizabeth I, that awarded the company a monopoly of trade with all countries to the east of the Cape of Good Hope and to the west of the Strait of Magellan.

The English East India Company traded mainly in cotton, silk, indigo dye, saltpetre, tea, and opium, but through its own private army and navy, it helped establish the British Empire in South Asia. The company gradually reduced its trading operations and turned solely to conquest, assuming rule and administrative functions over more and more of the Indian subcontinent. Company rule in India began in 1757 and lasted until 1858, when, following the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the UK government assumed direct administration of India and absorbed the company’s 24,000 troops into the British army. The company itself was finally dissolved in 1874.

The French and Dutch set up their own East Indies companies during this same period. In the Western Hemisphere, all the major European powers employed naval mercenaries known as privateers, who were essentially pirates contracted by a nation-state to disrupt the merchant shipping of its rivals. As the 19th century ended, the new imperialist states had gained enough wealth to afford large standing armies and navies. They no longer needed to supplement their military forces with mercenaries.

To maintain this advantage over smaller rivals, the idea was propagated that mercenaries were unsavoury and amoral. This went hand in hand with capitalist nationalism and the idea that for working people there was no greater honour than to fight “for your country” as a member of its national military forces. Many countries, including the US, Britain and Australia, outlawed their citizens becoming mercenaries. They became restricted to bit players in smaller conflicts during the Cold War.
Necessary for US imperialism

At the start of the 21st century, imperialist capitalism needs the widespread use of mercenaries once again. To overcome their bad reputation, these new mercenary forces have been re-branded as “private military companies” (PMCs) and individual mercenaries as “contractors”. The renewed outsourcing of war to privateers is due to sheer economic and political necessity as US imperialism struggles to maintain its global dominance without mass conscription into its official military forces.

The November 14 New York Times reported that White House budgeting uses $1 million per year per soldier in Afghanistan as a working number. The figure would greatly increase without contractors, who aren’t clothed, fed or equipped by the government. Nor does the government have to pay them when they leave the war zone. Contractors do not become veterans, so the government does not have to pay benefits or provide services that it does for its own troops. While the common image of contractors is of highly paid people from rich First World countries, the majority are drawn from poor Third World countries like Fiji and El Salvador or for the poorer countries of Eastern Europe. They receive high wages in comparison to wages paid in their home countries, but for the PMCs, the US and its imperialist allies, they are a cheap source of security and service task labour.

Another advantage for the imperialist occupying powers is the reduction in political costs. If another contractor dies, there is no flag-draped coffin. If PMCs cut costs by supplying inadequate equipment, as some relatives of contractors killed in Iraq have tried to prove, there is no political scandal. Similarly, when PMCs do not provide for their injured employees. Probably the most concerning advantage is provided by “corporate confidentiality”. This can be greater than military secrecy and allow government agencies to hide all sorts of illegal practices from public scrutiny, based on the legal right of capitalist businesses to keep secrets from competitors. This is probably why Washington now entrusts one of its most sensitive weapons, Predator drones, to Xe Services.
Not a moral issue

There is no moral difference between contractors and those in uniform. On September 16, 2007, when Blackwater contractors murdered 17 Iraqi civilians in Nisour Square, Baghdad, many on the left held this incident up to show that it is wrong to use reckless and amoral mercenaries. This ignores the fact that the US military uses similar tactics in built-up areas, known as “free fire zones”. The Iraq Veterans against the War “Winter Soldier” forums over the past few years have heard hundreds of US veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan testify to the regular killing of civilians by US soldiers.

The use of PMCs in Iraq and Afghanistan should be challenged because they are an attempt to reduce the political costs of these occupations and because they hide the real size of the occupation forces. Their use should be opposed because they add to the risks of the working people they employ. During World War I, Scottish socialist and anti-war campaigner John Maclean told a Glasgow anti-war protest: “A bayonet is a weapon with a working man at either end.” This is true whether the “cannon fodder” in the imperialist war machines wear military insignia or a company logo.

[Hamish Chitts is a member of the Revolutionary Socialist Party and one of the founders of Stand Fast — a group of veterans and military service people against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For information about Stand Fast visit Stand Fast or phone 0401 586 923.]

Crisis in Nepal's capitalist democracy

Crisis in Nepal's capitalist democracy

By Ray Fulcher
http://directaction.org.au/issue14/crisis_in_nepalese_capitalist_democracy

When Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal (widely known as “Prachandra”) became Nepal’s prime minister last August, his party — the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), UCPN (M) — pronounced it a “golden dawn” for Nepal after 10 years of civil war. Nepal’s unpopular monarchy had just been abolished, and the Maoists had won the largest number of seats in the Constituent Assembly (CA), the country’s new parliament.

But a year later, the Maoist-led government has been replaced by a coalition of rival parties, headed by PM Madhav Kumar Nepal of the social-democratic Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), CPN (UML). The coalition government includes six ministers from the conservative and formerly pro-monarchist Nepalese Congress (NC) party. Without the support of the biggest party in the parliament, the new government has little legitimacy in a country wracked by fuel and food shortages and mired in rampant corruption.

“What we have here is a crisis of governance — a weak state that has no control over much of the country,” Aditya Adhikari, comment editor of the Kathmandu Post daily, told Agence France Presse on July 20. Wendy Cue, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Nepal, told AFP that three years after the end of the civil war, little had changed for most people. “A lack of development was both the cause and the consequence of the conflict. Three years on, people are still waiting for the peace dividend.”

Dahal resigned as PM on May 4 following a fallout with Nepalese President Ram Baran Yadav, of the NC, over Dahal’s dismissal and Yadav’s reinstatement of army chief General Rookmangud Katawal. In his resignation speech, Dahal declared that he quit in order “to create a conducive environment and save the peace process”. His resignation was indicative of the Maoist party leadership’s perspective of seeking to create a stable parliamentary democracy in Nepal that would be conducive to the further development of Nepal’s capitalist economy.

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement of November 2006 — Dahal’s “peace process” — marked the end of a ten-year Maoist “People’s War”. Under the agreement, the Maoists joined an interim government to organise elections to a Constituent Assembly that would draft a new constitution. On May 28, 2008, the interim parliament legally abolished the monarchy and declared the country a republic. In July, Yadav was elected Nepal’s first president by the CA and a month later Dahal became prime minister of a coalition government that included most of Nepal’s parliamentary parties.

Under the peace agreement, the Maoists’ 19,000 rebel fighters were confined to UN-supervised camps, pending their integration into the Nepalese Army (NA). The pro-monarchist Katawal, who had received training from the US Special Forces, came into conflict with Dahal’s government over a number of aspects of the peace agreement. Key terms of the agreement included a freeze on recruitment by both the NA and the Maoists’ Peoples Liberation Army (PLA), and the progressive integration of the PLA into the NA. Katawal refused to even consider the integration of PLA cadre whom he considers “politicised” and withdrew the NA from the National Games, held between branches of the security forces, because the PLA was participating.

Katawal also oversaw three separate recruitment drives for the NA in direct violation of the peace agreement. When Dahal’s government decided not to extend the terms of eight brigadier-generals who had reached mandatory retirement age, Katawal ignored the government and reinstated these generals. In April Dahal’s government asked Katawal for “clarification” of these acts of insubordination. He did not respond.

On the day that Dahal sacked Katawal, the CPN (UML) and other key coalition partners withdrew from his government, and supported President Yadav’s resinstatement of Katawal. Following Dahal’s resignation, the UCPN (M) initiated protests in the streets and in the parliament over Yadav’s action, but have made no moves to return to armed struggle. This is consistent with Dahal’s and the UCPN (M)’s desire to “save the peace process”. Behind this desire is the Maoist leadership’s class-collaborationist perspective of forging an alliance with the “national, patriotic” capitalists to strengthen Nepal’s underdeveloped capitalist economy. This, in the Maoists’ view, will be beneficial to both the capitalists and the working class.

In a January 2009 interview, Baburam Bhattarai, Nepal’s then finance minister and UCPN (M) political bureau member, declared that “both management and workers have a common interest now, for the development of the economy” and “industrial capitalism or productive national capitalism caters to the market within the country and utilises the labour and resources of the country. We are in favour of that sort of capitalism.”

Consistent with its pro-capitalist politics, the UCPN (M) refuses to campaign for the most fundamental step towards creating a working people’s government — the replacement of the capitalist NA with a revolutionary national army. Even after General Katawal’s insubordination and the NA officer corps’ support for him against the Maoist-led government, the UCPN (M) leadership took no steps to mobilise its mass base to break the power structures of the Nepalese capitalist state, preferring instead to “save the peace process”. Even the Communist Party of India (Maoist), long time allies of UCPN (M), criticised the Nepalese Maoist leaders in June for allowing the “old Royal Nepal Army” to continue “to be the bulwark of the present state structure in Nepal while the PLA is a passive onlooker” confined to UN-supervised camps.

In a July 11 article, Adhikari noted that, “After the ouster of the Maoist-led government, staunchly anti-Maoist forces such as the Nepal Army have become increasingly emboldened; they will pressure the government to maintain a hard line against the former rebels, even as they try to expand their say over the government on other matters. In particular, the army will likely try to force the government to inform the Maoists that no integration of Maoist combatants into the army will take place, thus breaking a longstanding gentleman’s agreement…

“The hardline within the military would like to have a greater say over the affairs of the state, and it believes that it could intimidate the Maoists into ‘good behaviour’ by the threat of force; at the same time, though, it also knows that it does not have the credibility to directly take control of the state. As such, the army needs a political face, which could take the form of a broad group of anti-Maoist parties coming together in support of a president-led, military-backed regime.”

Escalating US proxy war in Pakistan

Escalating US proxy war in Pakistan

By Ray Fulcher
http://directaction.org.au/issue12/escalating_us_proxy_war_in_pakistan

Since late April, more than 15,000 Pakistani troops have engaged militarily with 3000-4000 Taliban fighters in Pakistan’s Swat valley in North-West Frontier Province. The fighting has displaced more than 1 million civilians, driving the total number of internal refugees from Swat to more than 2 million. The refugee crisis began last year when the Taliban began a terror campaign to impose their version of Sharia law and retain control of the region.

The signing of the “Malakand accord” between the Pakistani government and the Taliban on February 16 wrote Sharia into the local law codes. All of Pakistan’s mainstream political parties — the Pakistan People’s Party, the Muslim League (Nawaz) and the Awami National Party — supported the accord. But it did not stop the Taliban’s reign of terror. Attacks on political opponents, government officials and offices and girls’ schools continued. Girls were attacked for not wearing the burkha and men for not having sufficiently long beards. Some local tribesmen have mounted armed resistance, but their struggle has been hampered by weapons inferior to those of the Taliban. The Pakistani military’s offensive and the subsequent mass displacement of tribal peoples has further obstructed resistance.
Indiscriminate offensive

Although the army is targeting the Taliban in this operation (unlike former offensives into the region ostensibly against the militants), its methods are causing more harm to the civilian population than to the Taliban. According to residents interviewed by Saeed Shah of McClatchy Newspapers on May 4, the army’s assault is “flattening villages, killing civilians and sending thousands of farmers and villagers fleeing from their homes”. One resident told Shah: “We didn’t see any Taliban; they are up in the mountains, yet the army flattens our villages”.

Washington orchestrated the latest offensive but has expressed public concern regarding the army’s tactics. Admiral Michael Mullen, head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters on April 27 that, in recent years, the Pakistani army had undertaken “bursts of fighting” against insurgents, but this was “not sustained” by follow-up measures. He spoke of the need for a “hold and build aspect” to military operations. According to Saeed Shah, US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told him that the Pakistani army is “just destroying stuff. They have zero ability to deliver [aid] services” and “They hold villages completely accountable for the actions of a few”. In the village of Kawga, for instance, the military had destroyed 80 of the 400 houses, according to local residents.

On the weekend of May 23-24, the military operations moved from rural areas of the valley to its major town, Mingora. Most residents fled, but an estimated 20,000 civilians remain in the fortified town, held by the Taliban. The move into urban areas threatens to involve bloody street fighting, with high civilian casualties and mass destruction of civilian infrastructure. Pakistani army spokesperson Major-General Athar Abbas said on May 25, “The pace of the operation will be painfully slow. So be patient. But the operation has started, and, God willing, we are going to take it to a logical conclusion.”
Pakistani army and Islamic militants

The Pakistani military has held direct power for 33 of Pakistan’s 60 years and wields indirect control during the brief periods of civilian rule. Washington has long been pressuring Islamabad to destroy Taliban bases inside Pakistan and has been frustrated by the military’s seeming reluctance to engage them.

On October 14, Washington leaked a national intelligence estimate that complained that “the Pakistani military is reluctant to launch an all-out campaign against the Islamists”. Indeed, the military waited 25 days after the Taliban swept from Swat into Buner (in the Malakand district) before responding. This delay allowed the Taliban to entrench themselves and take hostage 2000 villagers from the Pir Baba area in northern Buner. Buner is a strong anti-Taliban region, which had raised its own militia to oppose the Taliban. But soon after the invasion of Buner, the government ordered all anti-Taliban militias in the Malakand district to disband.

In the past three years, the military has mounted three separate operations against the Taliban in Swat but has failed to win control of the region or suppress Islamist operations. Taliban terrorism has escalated, and their political control has expanded.

The military’s reluctance derives from its ambiguous relationship with political Islam. While not subscribing to any one ideology, the military sees itself as the protector of the Pakistani Islamic state, so its interests have often coincided with those of the jihadist groups. The military established radical Islamic militias to help fight India over Kashmir. The army also encouraged the spread of Islamism in the Afghan border regions in order to suppress Pashtun nationalism. The military-linked Inter-Services Intelligence agency helped secure the Taliban’s 1993 victory in Kabul, with the assistance of US funds.
US Afghanistan-Pakistan policy

Although the army is targeting the Taliban and although all three mainstream parties support the offensive, the latest operation is essentially another half-hearted action brought about by pressure from Washington. The Taliban cannot be defeated in one province while remaining, as they do, under protection of the military in Punjab and Sindh. The military retains its doctrine of using jihadist forces for “strategic depth” in Afghanistan and against India.

The military was compelled to engage the Taliban in Swat because the US threatened to escalate its military activity inside Pakistan’s borders. Washington has made it clear that it sees Pakistan as part of the front line in its war in Afghanistan, because the Taliban use their bases in Pakistan border territories to launch attacks into Afghanistan. The US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, told a congressional committee on April 28: “We need to put the most heavy possible pressure on our friends in Pakistan to join us in the fight against the Taliban and its allies” and “We cannot succeed in Afghanistan without Pakistan’s support and involvement”. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and war secretary Robert Gates, in testimony before the Senate appropriations committee on April 30, put the Obama administration’s case for bolstering the Pakistan military’s capabilities to confront Islamic militants. Gates pushed the committee for US$400 million under the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund to assist the military to fight insurgents in Afghan border areas. He said that the money “is a vital element of the president’s new Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy”. Clinton backed this argument, stating, “Success in Afghanistan depends on success in Pakistan”.

Pakistan’s military has a record of using border “counter-insurgency” operations as cover for suppressing political dissent and imposing its control over autonomous tribal areas. For instance, in October 2008, General Kayani sought approval from the new civilian government for a major anti-insurgency crackdown. This political cover was duly delivered on October 22, when all 16 parliamentary parties endorsed a new resolution for a national response to terrorism. Kayani welcomed the resolution, saying Pakistan’s role in the so-called War on Terror “is indicative of an emerging consensus in Pakistan that terrorism has to be squarely addressed with the help of the people”. The resolution gave the green light for military occupation of the semi-autonomous tribal regions of North-West Frontier Province.
Repeated attacks

The US threat to extend its operations further into Pakistan if that country does not contribute to attaining US “success” is not an idle one. Between August and October 2008, the US military launched 12 attacks from Afghanistan against the Taliban border stronghold of Bajur in Pakistan, prompting the Pakistanis to launch their own offensive in the area to capture the key town of Loi Sam from the Taliban. US troops invaded a South Waziristan village, killing 20 “suspected terrorists”, including women and children, on September 3.

Unsurprisingly, the US incursions incensed public opinion in Pakistan and assisted the recruiting drive of the Taliban, especially in the border regions. In the weeks following the September 3 attack, the US stepped up air strikes by pilotless “drones” and invaded the territory with ground troops four times. At least 700 people have been killed by drone attacks in Pakistan since 2006. These attacks didn’t stop with the election of Barack Obama: 164 Pakistanis have been killed in 14 pilotless drone attacks in the four months of Obama’s presidency. Obama himself has articulated Washington’s intention to continue pressuring Pakistan militarily. He told a April 29 press conference: “We want to respect their sovereignty, but we also recognize that we have huge strategic interests, huge national security interests in making sure that Pakistan is stable and that you don’t end up having a nuclear-armed militant state.”