Dismissing private military contractors as mercenaries can be simplistic and misleading, as their deployment in Sierra Leone’s Civil War displayed. That the country is rebounding despite 2014’s Ebola crisis is due in part to the success of contracted firms neutralising destabilising rebel groups. For impoverished Sierra Leone with its history of civil warfare, more unwelcomed […]
Absent on Wednesday in a Washington courtroom, where a federal jury entered guilty verdicts of murder and manslaughter against four Blackwater Worldwide guards in the killings of 14 Iraqi civilians, was a man synonymous with the United States’s infatuation with contractors. He is Erik Prince — billionaire, former Navy Seal, ex-CIA spy — the founder […]
The private security industry is still regarded as a relatively new phenomenon where both International and domestic law have not managed to catch up its rapid development. The emergence of private security in the Kurdistan Region can be seen as a result of the 2003 Iraq War, which is widely considered to be the first privatised […]
Troops deployed by the thousands, adorned with camouflaged combat wear, tough boots ready to tread the ground of conflict territories and hands at one with a military-grade rifle – This is the image we often see when nations instigate war, but do we ever really think about exactly who is fighting it?It seems this vision […]
President Obama announced this week he intends to intensify this country’s military actions against ISIS terrorist forces but with no U.S. boots “on the ground.” This “no boots on the ground” situation has been a political football, with Obama making pledges and promises to have all U.S. troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan by certain […]