BLACKWATER: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army

By: Jeremy Scahill

I used to think that the use of mercenaries, or guns for hire, was limited to the distant past and sub-Saharan Africa. I naively expected that western democracies would not hire people who are essentially thugs with guns to do their dirty work, except perhaps in the shadowy intelligence world of black ops.

For me that all changed with the killings of four American ‘contractors’ in Faluja in March 2004. The deaths would have gone relatively unnoticed but for the way in which these men’s bodies were subsequently mutilated and put on display for the world’s television cameras. Then people started asking just who these contractors were and what they were doing in Iraq in the first place. And slowly, bit by bit, the story of Blackwater (the company for which these four men worked) started to come out.

This book covers that occurrence in detail (including Blackwater’s subsequent politically-assisted efforts to silence the families of the men killed who were seeking answers and justice). It also recounts the Nisgour Square shootings in September 2007 where a small group of Blackwater mercenaries reportedly shot and killed16 Iraqi civilians, “without provocation” according to witnesses, and “with no enemy activity involved”  according to a US Army report.

This is all presented in the context of how George W. Bush’s war machine, fuelled as it was by sometimes equal portions of God, greed and gusto, lay down the welcome mat to Keith Prince’s private army and others.  Prince, the founder and CEO of Blackwater, comes from a deeply religious background which opened doors to the highest levels of power within the Bush administration. And once in, Blackwater continued to work those levers of power to operate in theater with impunity, subject to neither the Uniform Code of Military Conduct (UCMJ) or the laws of Iraq, all the while fostering closer and tighter relationships through lobbying and the hiring of ex-government officials from extremely senior and sensitive positions within the administration.

At their peak, private contractors (mercenaries) actually outnumbered US military personnel on the ground in Iraq.  But then, realizing the war (and its lucrative profit margins) wouldn’t go on forever, Blackwater and others set their sights on domestic markets, with Hurricane Katrina providing the impetus to deploy stateside: “[Blackwater] beat the federal government and most aid organizations to the scene as 150 heavily armed Blackwater troops dressed in full battle gear spread out into the chaos of New Orleans.” So now we have guns for hire patrolling a major US city, a law unto themselves, with no clear mandate or chain of command to a higher authority – the very definition of vigilantism.

The book is a real eye-opener, albeit a disturbing one. Recommended.

(Note to Canadian readers: Lest you think this is a US issue, news out of Ottawa today (Feb 7, 2011) claims that Canada has paid $41 million to security companies (i.e. mercenaries) in Afghanistan over the past 4 years.)

TAR SANDS

By Andrew Nikiforuk.

In Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent, Andrew Nikiforuk documents Canada’s and Alberta’s rapid and continuing descent into becoming just another failing petro-state. Clearly both levels of government would argue with the use of the term ‘descent’, but what else could you call it when the exploitation of the tar sands confers Canadian membership in a club that includes such bastions of democracy and human rights as Venezuela, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Angola, among others.

From Alberta’s absence of accountability and failure to implement a reasonable royalty regime (currently among the lowest in the world), to the environmental time bomb represented by the tailings ponds (presently covering 23 square miles at an average height of 270 feet above the forest floor), Nikiforuk shines a much needed light into many very dark corners.

In this well researched indictment, Nikiforuk also provides some sobering insights.

• On the economics of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) Nikiforuk quotes University of Manitoba professor and energy expert Vaclav Smil. “CCS, he argues, is part of the same thinking that gave us the energy spectacle of “a 50-kg female driving a 3,000-kg SUV in order to pick up a 1-kg carton of milk.””
• On the tailing ponds he says, “Within a decade the ponds will cover an area of 85 square miles. Experts now say it might take a thousand years for the clay in the dirty water to settle out.”
• On using natural gas to separate oil from bitumen he quotes one Albertan who recently observed: “Using natural gas to develop oil sands is like using caviar as a fertilizer to grow turnips.”
• And On The First Law of Petropolitics he gives us this: “New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman unveiled the law in a 2006 issue of Foreign Policy Review, and it goes like this: the price of oil and the quality of freedom invariably travel in opposite  directions. As the price of crude oil climbs higher in an oil-dominated country, poor or rich, secular or Muslim, that country’s citizens will, over time, experience less free speech, declining freedom of the press, and a steady erosion of the rule of law.”

If you are concerned at all about Canadian politics, Alberta politics, or the environment, this book is a must-read.

Highly recommended.