The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What They Mean for World Order (20 page)

As with the
condottieri
, contemporary contractors serve only their paymasters, at the expense of other relevant considerations, such as process ownership. Ownership has become a mantra of the international community vested in developing fragile and failed states; it refers to local political and popular support for foreign assistance programs such as the one in Liberia, and there is a growing consensus among scholars that early local ownership is crucial to program sustainability and legitimacy. The concept is simple enough: a foreign power that wields a heavy hand in transforming another country will likely alienate the very people it aspires to benefit, negating the purpose of the program.

Because the program to recreate the AFL was driven by the United States and its contractors, some scholars assert that it lacks ownership, sustainability, and legitimacy. Morten Bøås and Karianne Stig sum up this collective critique
when they claim that the lack of transparency, accountability, and participation of Liberians in the program’s decisions led to a paucity of local ownership.
³¹
Even the US government’s own Congressional Research Service questions the balance between foreign support for and national ownership of security in Liberia, and worries that lack of adequate public input has created an AFL where “political legitimacy might be called into question.”
³²

Contractors compound the quandary of ownership, because, as Adedeji Ebo reasons, “there is no direct contractual obligation between the security contractor and the institutions and people of the reforming state.”
³³
Not even the Liberian minister of defense had a copy of DynCorp’s contract to transform the AFL that he was to lead, demonstrating a lack of transparency in the process. This created a problematic situation. Liberians were neither an employer nor a signatory to the contract, even though they were the intended beneficiaries of the program. Consequently, the Liberian government had only limited ability to direct DynCorp; the company, in essence, was not accountable to Liberia, even as it was rebuilding its armed forces. For Bøås and Stig, “this clearly represents a democratic deficit in the SSR.”
³⁴

Critics’ conclusions may be somewhat overstated. Few Liberians seemed concerned about the US role in transforming the AFL, especially given the urgent need for military reform and the strong historical ties between the two countries. Nor were Liberians troubled by the presence of contractors: there were no riots, protests, violence, or other evidence of widespread PMC rejection. DynCorp’s frequent overtures to civil society—almost always through the government of Liberia—were met with general indifference. The Liberian minister of defense had multiple occasions to join DynCorp on its recruitment trips starting in 2006 but chose not to accompany the firm until 2008. Additionally, the government of Liberia—and not DynCorp—determined who was eligible for demobilization benefits and who would be admitted into the new military. This suggests a lack of worry on the Liberian government’s part rather than a failure of transparency on DynCorp’s, as more recent scholarship confirms: “The Liberian Ministry of Defence, the legislature and civil society have had opportunities to involve themselves more in the reform than they have done, thus suggesting that the reform is not proceeding as such a closed process as previous research on the SSR has argued.”
³⁵

Other problems undermine academic critiques over ownership. Can foreign scholars really speak for Liberians on the question of local ownership? Can outside observers claim that Liberia had no ownership of the AFL program if its government had approved and accepted a gratis program that the United States provided through its contractors? It is self-contradictory to claim that ownership is necessary for program success and that the AFL program lacked it when Liberians have not rejected the AFL and it is a success compared with
the Liberian National Police and other elements of the security sector under UN supervision. The International Crisis Group describes progress in Liberia’s security sector reform as “uneven”: while “the police are still widely considered ineffective and corrupt, … Army reform appears to be a provisional success.”
³⁶

Other researchers are more acerbic about the use of a PMC in Liberia. As Mark Malan writes in a monograph for the US Army War College: “In a country and region where recent history has been shaped by warlords and mercenaries, the US Department of State has shown remarkable insensitivity by sending in contractors to shape the new army.”
³⁷
Comparing DynCorp to Liberian warlords and mercenaries without supporting evidence is absurd and reveals how ingrained the Westphalian taboo against private military functions remains in academic and policy thinking. Even the International Crisis Group—no apologist for the private military industry—agrees that such interpretations are extreme and declares itself “agnostic” on the issue.
³⁸

However, despite exaggerations over ownership and the pro-Westphalian zeal of some observers, the concern remains valid. An example of this lack of ownership is the sensitization and recruiting campaign. The first step in creating a new force, unless it is clandestine, is to alert the public. In Liberia, this was challenging, owing to the grim legacy of the former AFL in the war, and to help prepare the populace for this, DynCorp created a public sensitization and recruitment program. To localize this effort, the company hired Liberians to craft effective messages that would resonate with indigenous audiences. DynCorp’s role was confined mostly to logistical support and coordination with international community representatives in Liberia.

The sensitization and recruitment campaign involved workshops for civil society, staging rallies featuring senior members of the government, producing radio dramas starring the AFL, placing ads in newspapers, displaying large AFL billboards and murals, and doing recruiting tours in Liberia’s hinterlands. DynCorp even commissioned AFL comic books,
Jackie’s Adventure
and
Liberia’s New Armed Forces
, for free distribution to reach less literate audiences. The company also set up two information booths in downtown Monrovia staffed by Liberians to answer any questions passersby had regarding the new AFL and how to enlist.

Despite DynCorp’s efforts to localize the campaign by hiring locals to help design it, many Liberians found it bumbling and even insulting. The use of well-dressed and healthy-looking children on some of the AFL recruiting posters was not well received by a population traumatized by child soldiers. Many asked whether the children on the posters were American, given their health. This demonstrated a lack of cultural sensitivity on the part of the campaign designers, partly because the messages were not thoroughly tested on Liberian focus groups before they went public. Similarly, the comic books received mixed reactions; they were an effective tool for illiterate audiences but repelled some educated Liberians, who found them infantilizing.

Figure 10.3
A military policeman stands watch before the Armed Forces of Liberia, a private sector creation. (Photo: U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Marine Sgt. Lydia M. Davey).

Figure 10.4
Liberian soldiers practice anti-riot skills. (Photo: U.S. Department of Defense, 1st Lt. Mark Lazane).

Worse, DynCorp’s attempt to combine sensitization and recruitment into a single campaign to conserve resources and time muddled messages and hampered the efficacy of both. In many ways, these two information campaigns are incompatible. The objective of the sensitization program is to alert the public to the new military’s formation in the most transparent and neutral manner possible. In contrast, the purpose of recruitment is advocacy by framing information in a highly positive way to encourage enlistment. DynCorp chose to prioritize recruitment over sensitization, which should not be a surprise. After all, it was hired to raise an army, not to facilitate a civil discourse on the role of the new AFL. Too much indigenous criticism of what it was doing could have resulted in the State Department canceling its contract.

Like the
condottieri
, DynCorp sought primarily to please its client—the United States—and not Liberia, whose military it was building. This created incentive structures that explain some of the PMC’s behavior in country, such as the weak sensitization campaign. That this program was contracted to the private sector fundamentally altered the relationships among the three main actors: the United States, Liberia, and DynCorp. This distorted the strategic outcome of the program caused by principal-agent challenges.

Akin to the medieval market for force, conducting this operation as a business transaction changed its focus to the entity with the power of the purse, the United States. The United States demanded that the PMC brief it first on all major program decisions, often without the Liberian government’s knowledge, allowing it to make important decisions about Liberia’s security and influence plans before the Liberian government was even consulted. The State Department finalized and approved DynCorp’s plans for demobilization, training, force structure, recruiting, and vetting before they were formally presented to the Liberian minister of defense, often as a fait accompli. This gave the United States a significant—and perhaps undue—advantage in shaping the future of the AFL for its own strategic interests rather than Liberia’s ownership.

The private military industry alters international outcomes by its very presence, just as the
condottieri
did in the Middle Ages. Contemporary military strategists may be tempted to think of PMCs as second-rate auxiliaries for national army units and deploy them accordingly, but such idealizations are dangerously wrong. These companies are fundamentally different in their composition, nature, and purpose from national armies, and this can influence strategic
consequences in unexpected ways. Private armies are not swappable substitutes for public ones.

Private militaries behave differently from public ones because of profit motive. While this can lead to innovation and efficiencies, it also creates conflicts of interest that can alter events, as was the case in the medieval market for force. Principal-agent issues affected events in Liberia. For example, the original contract only encompassed the building of a new army and not the disbanding of the old AFL, which the government of Liberia agreed to do. However, both client and contractor soon discovered that the Liberian government was incapable of doing this, threatening the whole program, which depended on the old army being demobilized before a new one would take its place. The State Department considered cancelling the contract, and this concerned DynCorp.

In early 2005, the company approached the client and discussed the possibility of it conducting the demobilization instead of the Liberian government. The State Department agreed to the company’s proposal on two conditions: first, that the firm present a detailed demobilization plan for approval by the State Department, and second, that the Liberian government demonstrate clear political will for the demobilization. By late January 2005, the company had sent a small team to Liberia to achieve this.

Demobilizing armies is deeply political, because warlords are often the de facto law in conflict-affected countries, and putting them out of business is dangerous work, because it reorders who has power and who does not. UNMIL successfully demobilized warlords operating under the aegis of the rebellion while the old AFL—warlords to many—was left to the United States. To set the political groundwork for the demobilization of the AFL and achieve some modicum of consensus for a new AFL, it was necessary to win over stakeholders such as the government of Liberia, UNMIL and other members of the international community helping to rebuild the country, the former rebel groups, civil society organizations, and, of course, the old AFL.

Ideally, this sensitive task would have fallen to the US government, but embassy staffing was thin and overburdened in 2005. The job of engaging stakeholders unofficially fell to DynCorp, creating the sorts of conditions that could, at least theoretically, allow a firm to influence outcomes. Over the next few months, the DynCorp team crafted a detailed plan to demobilize the standing army, but a stickier problem was securing a firm commitment from the government for such a politically dangerous move. Most attempts to demobilize standing African armies end in violence, and given Liberia’s past, this seemed probable. Strong shows of commitment are preferable to weak ones, because
they would please the client more, leading to a contract’s initiation and payment. This would require something more substantial than the Liberian minister of defense talking with the US ambassador over lunch. It would necessitate a more serious commitment, one that the Liberian government could not plausibly deny and would have to own.