Prosecutors say, Slatten began the massacre by firing at the civilian occupants of a car caught up in traffic at the roundabout in Nisour Square, Baghdad. In the ensuing confusion three armoured vehicles opened fire, strafing the cars and pedestrians in and around the square with heavy machine guns and grenade launchers, causing what the lead prosecutor described as ‘a shocking amount of death, injury and destruction’. The defendants’ claim that they believed they were under attack did not convince the jury, who convicted them in October 2014.

After Nisour Square

In the fallout from the massacre in Nisour Square, Blackwater was blocked from providing diplomatic security in Iraq – the so-called ‘cowboys’ were sent home. Indeed, you might have expected a general cooling off in the relationship between the private security companies and state militaries.

But there’s been nothing of the kind. Between 2008 and 2011 there were more military contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan than soldiers. Compare this to the First Gulf War, when there was one contractor to every hundred soldiers. Most of the contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan were working in logistics: building bases, doing the laundry, cooking the food. But a significant chunk – 18% in 2012 – were involved in providing security, exactly what Slough, Liberty, Heard and Slatten were supposed to be doing on that fateful day in Nisour Square.

Even Blackwater is still involved, albeit under a new – less threatening – name: ‘Academi’. As part of the failed counter-narcotics effort in Afghanistan, Academi has received $309 million from the US government. Erik Prince, Blackwater’s founder, escaped any liability for what happened in Nisour Square and is now gallivanting around Africa for Chinese mining, oil and gas companies as part of his new outfit, Frontier Services Group. In the war against ISIS, Prince has called for the US government to ‘let the private sector finish the job’.

Rotten apples?

The use of private military contractors by governments has increased, not decreased, since the Nisour Square massacre. But does it really matter? After all, weren’t Slatten and co. just a few rotten apples, caught up in the heat of the moment?

It is difficult to know how many ‘rotten apples’ are working for private military companies. In 2012, Faiza Patel, then Head of the UN Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries, claimed that the rot was widespread, alleging that private military contractors had been involved in extrajudicial killings and sex trafficking. A 2008 RAND survey found that 20% of diplomatic personnel who had worked with armed contractors in Iraq found them to be ‘unnecessarily threatening, arrogant or belligerent’. This was echoed by a 2010 New York Times article, which claimed that American troops saw contractors as ‘amateurish, overpaid and, often, trigger-happy’.

Regulating the cowboys

It is difficult to control what goes on in the shadows. Since the fifteenth century and despite Machiavelli’s warnings about the ‘undisciplined and treacherous’ nature of mercenaries, states have failed to effectively regulate the role of private companies in war. Even today, there is no effective system of legal accountability to check the behaviour of private military contractors; they typically operate beyond the jurisdiction of both national and international law.

For a long time it looked like Slough, Liberty, Heard and Slatten would evade justice too. It took over seven years before they were found guilty of the killings in Nisour Square, so long that the statute of limitations kicked in and prosecutors had to drop manslaughter charges against Slatten. In fact, the case only made it to trial after a personal intervention by Vice-President Joe Biden. Blackwater/Academi itself never got anywhere near the courtroom. If a case as high-profile and horrifying as Nisour Square proved so fragile, it is little wonder that private contractors rarely end up in court.

But even if there were effective regulation, even if we did live in a world where international law meant something and international institutions worked; even then it would still be better to reject the turn towards using private contractors instead of the regular state militaries.

More wars, bigger wars

This is because private contractors make war easier. With the support of private contractors, states can engage in more wars, and on a far grander scale than would otherwise be possible. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan would not have gone ahead without the support of private contractors: there just weren’t enough soldiers.

In particular, private contractors make unilateral wars easier. There’s a good reason that unilateral wars are unilateral: no one else supports them. If states could only entertain the possibility of going to war if that war had multilateral support, then both the legitimacy of the war and its prospects of success would be greatly increased.

Private contractors make war easier, and they also try damn hard to make it desirable. We should not kid ourselves into believing that these contractors are sitting quietly, twiddling their thumbs, waiting for the government to pick up the phone and call on their services. On the contrary, they are incentivised to lobby the hawks in government to make war. For the contractors, war equals money. It is no surprise that from 1998 Kevin Prince became a steady contributor to the Republican right – one of his recipients was, of course, George W. Bush.

Disturbingly, the more the government outsources its military needs, the more pervasive the war incentive becomes. Intelligence analysts working for companies like Blackwater are now judging security threats. Strategy experts working for these companies are now being asked their advice about the risk of prosecuting such-and-such a war. Those who stand to make money from war are gaining more and more influence in the corridors of power.

While we should welcome the weighty sentences handed down to the ‘cowboys’ responsible for the massacre in Nisour Square; it is no cause for celebration. There has been precious little change since the massacre. The state is still in thrall to the private contractors, and the contractors still operate in the shadows, beyond the eyes of the media and beyond the reach of the law. This matters. We have so far failed to tame the cowboys, we must not let them make violence an easy option.

By: Charlie de Rivaz is an MA student on the Conflict, Security and Development programme at King’s College London. For three years he worked in Argentina and Colombia as an English teacher and journalist. His main interests include the political economy of war, international human rights law, conflict resolution, and state-building. Charlie is the Managing Editor of Strife blog.

He has worked in Abu Dhabi and now focuses his efforts on Africa, with ties to the Chinese government, which is eager for access to some of the continent’s natural resources. Mr. Prince’s current firm, Frontier Services Group, provides what it describes as “expeditionary logistics” for mining, oil and natural gas operations in Africa, and has the backing of Citic Group, a large state-owned Chinese investment company.

American trainers spoke with Iraqi Army recruits at a military base on Sunday in Taji, Iraq.U.S. Soldiers, Back in Iraq, Find Security Forces in DisrepairAPRIL 14, 2015
The private security industry that Mr. Prince helped bring to worldwide attention has fallen from public view since the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the two conflicts sped the maturation of security firms from bit players on the edge of global conflicts to multinational companies that guard oil fields in Libya, analyze intelligence for United States forces in Afghanistan, help fight insurgents in parts of Africa and train American-backed militaries in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

“This industry is now truly global,” said Sean McFate, author of “The Modern Mercenary,” a book on the private security industry. “That’s the legacy of Blackwater — they didn’t really make the business, but they’ve symbolized it. They’ve become the hood ornaments for an industry that was for centuries pretty much illegal, and now it’s pretty much re-emerged.”

Security companies say they have taken steps toward ensuring that their guards are well trained and behave professionally. Industry officials say that one of the consequences of the 2007 shooting has been to impose more rigorous controls on contractors handling diplomatic security for the State Department, as Blackwater was doing when its security guards fired into Baghdad’s crowded Nisour Square, killing unarmed Iraqis, enraging the country.

“Those sort of reckless days with contractors running around like cowboys are over,” said one senior industry executive, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “It is 180 degrees different. There is a lot more oversight and regulation.”

Others, including Ryan Crocker, the former American ambassador to Iraq, agree that there are more controls over contractors. Still, there are calls for greater transparency.

Just tracking the growth of the industry as it has expanded beyond work for the United States government has proved exceptionally difficult. In Africa and the Middle East, most governments do not publicize the companies they hire, and private businesses are similarly tight-lipped. As a result, there are no solid numbers on how many armed contractors are currently working around the world, and estimates of industry revenues range from a few billion dollars to $100 billion.

Even determining how many private security contractors are employed by the United States government is nearly impossible because the contracts are often opaque, subcontractors do much of the work on the ground and some of the business is classified. State Department officials refused on Tuesday to provide statistics on how many contractors it uses today.

The United States Central Command, which is in charge of military forces in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan, reported in January that 54,700 private contractors worked for the Defense Department in its areas of responsibility.

In Afghanistan alone, where about 9,800 American troops are deployed, the Pentagon is paying for almost 40,000 private contractors, more than a third of whom are American, according to the Centcom report. Only a few hundred, though, are involved directly in security, with others doing everything from serving food to conducting intelligence work.

Last year, the United States also sought to hire private military contractors in Iraq to buttress the small number of American troops there to help stop the advance of the Islamic State. The contractors’ tasks would involve assisting the Iraqi military, including administrative tasks, public affairs and operational planning, according to the Pentagon.

Experts believe that private security contractors are likely to remain a permanent part of the American presence overseas. “You are going to keep having contractors for security,” said Mr. Crocker, the former ambassador. “You can’t do things in Iraq or Afghanistan without them. You just can’t.”

Ann Hagedorn, the author of “The Invisible Soldiers,” a 2014 book about security contractors, agreed that contractors would have plenty of work. “Iraq has been called the first contractors’ war,” she said. “With an increasing dependence on these companies worldwide, we could easily be going into another contingency operation that will be another contractors’ war.”

Blackwater, the company Mr. Prince built into a corporate symbol of the American war in Iraq, never really recovered from the Nisour Square shootings and its many other controversies and legal woes. In addition to the prosecution of the guards in the 2007 shooting, five top Blackwater executives were indicted on weapons-related charges, the company was forced to pay millions of dollars in fines to the State Department for export law violations, and it faced costly civil lawsuits from the families of the victims of Nisour Square and the families of four guards killed in Falluja, Iraq, in 2004.

Blackwater was eventually blocked from providing diplomatic security in Iraq. Meanwhile, Afghanistan banned private security companies in 2012 after years of allegations of guards killing civilians and other abuses. Foreign military and diplomatic missions were exempted, however.

In response to the controversies surrounding Blackwater, Mr. Prince first renamed the company and then sold it in 2010. Now known as Academi, it has since been resold and merged, along with one of its main competitors, Triple Canopy, into the Constellis Group. The consolidated company is still a major player in security contracting for the American government and other customers, while Blackwater’s sprawling facility in Moyock, N.C., is now one of Academi’s major assets as a training center.

Mr. Prince emerged from the wreckage of Blackwater relatively unscathed, never facing any criminal charges from the multiple government investigations into the company. But he was embittered by the legal scrutiny and negative publicity, all part of what he believed were unfair political attacks on him and his firm. He moved his family to Abu Dhabi in 2010, when one former colleague told The New York Times that Mr. Prince “needs a break from America.”

In his 2013 memoir, “Civilian Warriors,” Mr. Prince defended the actions of Blackwater as well as the guards who fired in Nisour Square, protesting that “shifting political tectonic plates crushed my company as an act of partisan theatrics.”

By: JAMES RISEN and MATTHEW ROSENBERG of the NEW YORK TIMES