Dancing with wolves?

By Elsa Claro

In 2004, dramatic messages and photos about four American contractors executed in Iraq were released. The event led the unaware to think that these were civilians trying to repair what the invaders had destroyed, but it was soon learned that they were mercenaries.

Shortly before, details had circulated about companies created by former soldiers and officers, particularly from the American and British armies, who would act anywhere as long as they were paid in cash or with natural resources – money, mines or shares in African companies, for instance.

These corporations are the fruit of the neoliberal model that places the market and profits above any other ethical consideration and converts the fate of a country or its inhabitants into an article that can be either sold or bought. In other words, the wars were privatized, the same as industries, mines, sanitation systems or service infrastructures.

On such bases were created firms like Blackwater (recently renamed Xe Services LLC as a cover-up, after its presence in Iraq was forbidden due to its unjustified slaughter of civilians); the DynCorp (another Pentagon favorite); or, among others, the much-coddled Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI), which, according to former agent Philip Agee, is a CIA tool designed to destabilize countries that don’t have the kind of “democracy” the United States wants to impose.

The DAI operates in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua and other countries.

The DAI achieved particular notoriety when one of its contractors was arrested in early December 2009 in Havana, where he came with the assignment of delivering sophisticated means of satellite television to people unhappy with the Cuban process, on orders from the USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, another euphemistic title for an entity for espionage and subversion, disguised as a helpful institution.

Not even the spokesmen for the Obama administration, commissioned to deny the true nature of the detainee, could deny that there is a U.S. government program (much praised by Bush) “to promote democracy in Cuba and strengthen its civilian society.” To that end, the U.S. set aside $55 million in its federal budget and gave the DAI the biggest slice with the evocative name of “Cuba Democracy and Contingency Planning Program.” As The Washington Post put it, it was a program “to strengthen civilian society in support of a democratic government in Cuba.”

“The use of a network of organizations is a mechanism used by the Central Intelligence Agency to channel and launder funds and political support – strategic support – to groups and persons who promote its agenda abroad,” said journalist Eva Golinger. She was referring to the tactics of espionage, infiltration and subversion that have been forever directed at those governments that do not please the White House. If something like that ever happened in reverse, the White House would doubtlessly react with fury.

To conceal the tasks assigned to him on the island, Alan P. Gross, the imprisoned American, is described as an expert in international development, with 20 years’ experience and the innocent mission to help people to whom he delivered the equipment – so they could download music and link up with Wikipedia!

Another tale in circulation says that the recipients are Jews who need to stay in touch with their people.

Whoever the recipients are, the event proves that the mercenaries are well placed in the U.S. intelligence community. They have ample funds to disturb the performance of governments. That was the assignment given to the DAI in 2002 against the Bolivarian government of Venezuela.

Many think that the first context where mercenaries were deployed was Iraq, but the fact is that mercenaries fought along with regular U.S. troops in the Gulf War (1991), and Bosnia (1992-1995). Mercenaries from a company called MPRI fought in both the Croatian and Bosnian armies and even in the NATO ranks.

Little-known data indicate that in early 2008 there were more mercenaries in Iraq than rank-and-file soldiers. At the start of the occupation, in 2003, they numbered approximately 10,000. Five years later, they numbered 190,000, according to a census by the U.S. Central Command.

By that time, more than $85 billion had been spent to pay the services of those private military enterprises, according to a Congressional report that ordered successive investigations to determine how that money – released to George W. Bush – was utilized. The auditors reported embezzlement, transfer of state funds to private entities, influence peddling and the “disappearance” of millions of dollars.

“The taxpayers have been the victims of fraud, abuse and waste” because Halliburton charged in excess for its services in Iraq, said senator and one-time presidential candidate John Kerry.

Conservative estimates say that the privileged Halliburton was paid more than $13 billion in Iraq alone, even though it furnished spoiled food and undrinkable water to the soldiers. At the same time, the so-called contractors managed “interrogation” and torture sessions in Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, Bagram in Afghanistan, and secret prisons similar to one recently discovered in Latvia.

It would seem that the U.S. government uses this type of people because it has so many open foci and fronts that it’s running out of personnel. Also, mercenaries have a comfortable “quality,” because they act outside all laws and international conventions.

In 1989, the U.N. instituted an international convention against the recruitment, financing and training of mercenaries, whose hiring was prohibited by the Geneva Conventions signed at the end of World War II. Despite that, these private armies receive $100 billion every year.

To those who, like Gross, perform seditious functions, other funds are available.

The countless anomalies of the previous U.S. administration seem to be inherited by the present administration without major objection. This can be ascertained from the actions in Afghanistan-Pakistan, where about 104,000 are at work, or its efforts in Latin America. Since the start of the Plan Colombia, the U.S. has infiltrated mercenaries into the cities or into military operations. The rescue of former candidate Ingrid Betancourt and other hostages involved three of those mercenaries, made available by a U.S.-Colombian command.

In July 2009, a 10-year accord between Washington and Bogotá allowed the United States to control seven military bases in Colombian. The parties insisted that the pact did not envision the presence of U.S. troops, but almost half the U.S. contingent is formed by mercenaries, including those in civilian organizations and institutions.

Similar deceit occurs in countries targeted for imperial displeasure, with a strategy that turns anti-subversive war into “antiterrorist” war, allegedly a struggle against drug-trafficking or in defense of human rights. Of course, those human rights are the first to be violated.

Elsa Claro is a Cuban journalist who specializes in international topics.