The Hazards of Going to War for Profit – Our World.
For every US soldier in Iraq, there was roughly one private contractor. In Afghanistan, the ratio was even higher, peaking at 1.6 US-employed contractors per soldier. The total number of Department of Defense contractors reached approximately 163,000 in Iraq and 117,000 in Afghanistan.
The media has focused on British and American armed security contractors, but they form a small part of the sector. In Afghanistan, 95 percent of the security contractors were local nationals. In Iraq, 85 percent were ‘third-county nationals’ —‘TCNs’ in industry language — from countries such as Nepal, the Philippines and Uganda.
What do these firms do? Amongst other things, they guard infrastructure and personnel, interrogate, provide intelligence, train troops and security forces, and provide logistical services.
In Iraq, even the coordination of private military and security companies was outsourced (to Aegis, who established a Reconstruction Operations Center). Vinnell was hired to train the police. CACI provided interrogators to work in detention centres, including at Abu Ghraib — where their employees (and those of Titan who provided translators) were alleged to have been involved in the torture of Iraqi civilians.
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