http://www.forbes.com/sites/charlestiefer/2015/11/26/in-yemen-war-mercenaries-launched-by-blackwater-head-were-spotted-today-not-good-news/2/
Nov 26, 2015 _at_ 09:44 PM 6 views
In Yemen War, Mercenaries Launched By Blackwater Head Were Spotted
Today -- Not Good News
Charles Tiefer ,
Contributor
I cover government contracting, the Pentagon and Congress.
The United Arab Emirates, as reported in today’s New York Times, has
hired foreign mercenaries, from a program launched by Blackwater’s
head Erik Prince, and secretly sent them to the fighting in Yemen.
This is not a good sign. Blackwater private security alienated Iraqis
against the United States. Now the use of foreign mercenaries will
signify to the “outs” in the Middle East that the rich will buy
guns-for-hire to use against them.
This program gets laid out in a New York Times piece entitled,
“Emirates Secretly Sends Colombian Mercenaries to Yemen Fight.” It
explains that this is “the first combat deployment for a foreign army
that the Emirates has quietly built in the desert over the past five
years.” The Emirates had a brigade of 1,800 soldiers from Latin
America which provided 450 troops now arriving in Yemen. It seems
there are also going to be hundreds of other foreign mercenaries —
Sudanese and Eritrean soldiers — brought into Yemen.
These can be viewed as a second generation of foreign mercenaries
hired by the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. In the first
generation, still powerful, in 1975 Saudi Arabia brought in Vinnell
Corporation, an American defense contractor, to train the “Saudi
Arabian National Guard.” This is a force outside the official Saudi
military and the Ministry of Defense (and larger than the Saudi
military). Instead, the 75,000 man National Guard reports to the King.
This makes its main duty to suppress internal political unrest that
challenges the state’s authoritarian structure. Vinnell receives $819
million for its maintaining 1000 employees in Saudi Arabia doing
contract work with the National Guard and Royal Air Force.
The little-known Vinnell is now owned by Northrop Grumman. It has
undertaken projects in fifty other countries, including for the United
States in the Vietnam War, when it ran secret intelligence programs.
Its advantages include giving the Saudis the very top-grade American
support without any “official” United States involvement.
In 2011, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia’s neighbor and ally, was shaken during
the Arab Spring by unrest. It has a downtrodden Shia majority ruled
over by a Sunni minority. The Saudis sent the Vinnell-trained National
Guard in, with other forces, to crush the unrest.
How will the Emirates mercenaries be perceived in Yemen? Recall how
Blackwater was perceived by the Iraqis. The private security was
always loathed, much worse than Iraqi feelings about U.S. troops. The
Iraqis at least felt U.S. troops, as the U.S. army, were managed by
government policy under military discipline. They saw Blackwater as
the opposite – able to run wild, and not subject to the controls of an
army.
A Blackwater security detail infamously killed two dozen civilians in
Nisur Square in Baghdad in 2006. It took a half-dozen years, but
eventually the Blackwater men were convicted for this in federal
court. Private security also has a large role helping the U.S. and the
Afghan regime in Afghanistan. There is great difficulty striking the
balance between a role for them that is limited, and one that
antagonizes the locals and takes on tasks that belong to troops.
One can understand the fears of the populations. It is said in
Afghanistan that when private security takes a convoy through an
Afghan town, they open fire at the start, and keep firing, to “warn”
the locals away. (Or that they sit down with the Taliban, and pay them
off – that is, pay the enemy with U.S.-provided dollars – for safe
passage.)
It is already enough of a problem in the Middle East that the
populations must worry about their rulers using the country’s own
police and military against them. If they must now envisage their own
rulers – or foreign rulers, like the Emirates — buying foreign
mercenaries, too, to use against them, it will be worse.
Received on Thu Nov 26 2015 - 22:01:47 EST