From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Sun Nov 22 2009 - 16:24:22 EST
East Africans Working for U.S. Security Firms in War Zone
Ugandans, Kenyans Work as 'Mercenaries' in Iraq
23 November 2009
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Nairobi - Thousands of Ugandans and Kenyans are working in Iraq and
Afghanistan as contractors for US-based security companies.
They are paid wages far greater than they could earn at home -- but far
lower than those that Americans and Europeans receive for doing similar
work.
Critics refer to the security contractors as mercenaries. Some campaigners
seeking an end to the Pentagon's outsourcing of such operations in war zones
say it amounts to human trafficking.
Private security contractors also work in African countries under the aegis
of some of the same US companies that employ East Africans in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
At a recent protest in Washington against US security contracting operations
in Africa, author Jeremy Scahill called for shutting down of "this whole
privatised war apparatus... and to raise awareness of this Bush regime
policy that the Obama administration is continuing."
The US military increasingly relies on private contractors to carry out a
wide variety of tasks in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the world,
including Africa, because it lacks the requisite number of uniformed
personnel.
With US armed forces entirely dependent on volunteers, the Pentagon would
have to scale back its global commitments drastically if it were not able to
contract with private security companies.
Emira Woods, the head of a foreign-policy project at a progressive think
tank in Washington, says the main objection to private security contracting
is that these workers cannot be held accountable for human-rights violations
in the same way that soldiers can.
"Security should be the purview of the government exclusively," Woods says.
"Then there are mechanisms for accountability that are absent with private
companies."
On their part, the companies defend their recruitment activities in East
Africa as offering significant benefits to those who sign up, their families
and society as a whole.
They also reject the "mercenary" label. Douglas Ebner, a spokesman for
US-based DynCorp International, which is active in Africa, says critics
"misuse the term for political purposes."
James Mwangemi, a retired lieutenant-colonel in the Kenya Army and now an
independent security consultant, told CNSNews.com in 2007 that the
successful use of armed ex-soldiers as rearguards in Iraq has caused
observers to rethink stereotypes.
"Previously, people who performed such tasks were seen as mercenaries,"
Mwangemi told the news service. "This is changing, and Iraq has fired up
that change."
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