The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What They Mean for World Order (32 page)

3
. J. Joseph Hewitt, Jonathan Wilkenfeld, and Ted Robert Gurr,
Peace and Conflict 2010
(College Park, MD: Boulder Center for International Development and Conflict Management, University of Maryland Paradigm, 2010), 31.

4
. Javier Solana, “A Secure Europe in a Better World: European Security Strategy.” In
Civilian Perspective or Security Strategy?
, edited by Klaus Schilder and Tobias Hauschild (Paris: European Union Institute for Security Studies, 2003), 5; Paul Collier et al.,
Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development Policy
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2003), 17. For a critical examination of this common estimation, see Roberts, “Lives and Statistics.”

5
. “Rwanda: How the Genocide Happened,”
BBC News
, May 17, 2011.

6
. Samantha Power,
A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide
(New York: Harper Perennial, 2003), 366.

7
. Rupert Smith,
The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World
(London: Allen Lane, 2005), 1.

8
. Charles F. Wald, “New Thinking at USEUCOM: The Phase Zero Campaign,”
Joint Forces Quarterly
43, no. 1 (2006): 72–75.

9
. “Stability operations are a core U.S. military mission that the Department of Defense shall be prepared to conduct with proficiency equivalent to combat operations.” US Department of Defense Directive 3000.05, November 28, 2005, updated Septemeber 16, 2009.
http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/300005p.pdf
, accessed February 25, 2014; National Security Presidential Directive 44: Management of Interagency Efforts Concerning Reconstruction and Stabilization, December 7, 2005,
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/nspd-44.pdf
, accessed February 25, 2014; US Defense Science Board,
Institutionalizing Stability Operations within DOD: Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force
, September 2005;
Quadrennial Defense Review
, February 6, 2006,
http://www.defense.gov/qdr/report/Report20060203.pdf
, 17.

10
. I omit counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy from this analysis because of its general incoherence as a strategy. Adopted in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007 with much enthusiasm at Washington, DC, it has largely failed to deliver on its early promise of victory. The United States leaves those countries in arguably worse shape than when it arrived, despite many years of well-resourced COIN.

11
. US Department of State, “Civilian Response Corps Reaches 100 Active Members,” April 16, 2010,
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2010/04/140346.htm
, accessed February 25, 2014.

12
. US Army,
FM 3-07: Stability Operations
(Washington, DC: Department of the Army 2008). The author was a reviewer of this field manual, especially chapter 6 on security sector reform, based on experiences gained in the private military sector.

13
. “Remarks by USAID Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah at the Center for Global Development,” USAID.gov, January 19, 2011.

14
. Pratap Chatterjee, “U.S. Dyncorp Oversight in Afghanistan Faulted,” Inter Press Service, February 27, 2010. U.S. Department of Defense, Office of the Inspector General,
DoD obligations and expenditures of funds provided to the Department of State for the Training and Mentoring of the Afghan National Police
(Washington, DC: 2010), i.

15
. T. X. Hammes,
Private Contractors: The Good, the Bad, and the Strategic Impact
(Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 2010), 9; US Department of Defense,
DOD Obligations and Expenditures of Funds Provided to the Department of State for the Training and Mentoring of the Afghan National Police
(Washington, DC: 2010), 8.

16
. Christopher Coker,
Barbarous Philosophers: Reflections on the Nature of War from Heraclitus to Heisenberg
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 150.

17
. Mao Zedong,
Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong
(
The Little Red Book
) (Beijing: Government of the People’s Republic of China, 1964).

18
. The five fastest-growing African economies by real GDP in early 2011 were also ranked among the fastest in the world: the DRC (tenth in world), Zimbabwe (eleventh), Botswana (thirteenth), Nigeria (sixteenth), and Ethiopia (twentieth). International Monetary Fund,
World Economic Outlook Database
(Washington, DC: IMF, 2011).

1
. John Blaney, interview by Ky Luu, Disaster Resilience Leadership Academy, September 11, 2009,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdGGs6QGaCU
.

2
. Quoted in William Reno, “Reinvention of an African Patrimonial State: Charles Taylor’s Liberia,”
Third World Quarterly
16, no. 1 (1995): 109.

3
. International Monetary Fund,
Liberia: Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper
(Washington, DC: IMF, 2007), x; IDP Advisory Team Policy Development and Evaluation Service,
Real-Time Evaluation of UNHCR’s IDP Operation in Liberia
(Geneva: UN High Commissioner for
Refugees, 2007), 7; UN High Commissioner for Refugees, “Liberia: Regional Operations Profile—West Africa,”
http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/page?page=49e484936#
, accessed February 25, 2014; International Committee of the Red Cross,
Liberia: Opinion Survey and In-Depth Research
(Geneva: ICRC, 2009), 1.

4
. “The World’s Worst: Liberia,”
Economist
, November, 2002.

5
. Stephan Faris, “Charles Taylor Leaves Liberia,”
Time
, August 11, 2003.
http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,474987,00.html
, accessed February 25, 2014.

6
. J. Peter Pham,
Liberia: Portrait of a Failed State
(Georgia: Reed, 2004), 191.

7
. In 2008, the UNDP’s Human Development Index ranked Liberia 176th of 179 states, and it did not rank Liberia at all in 2003 for lack of data. A Liberian’s life expectancy at birth was fifty-six years in 2003 and fifty-nine years in 2010. In 2010, Liberia’s adult literacy rate remained at 46 percent, one of the lowest in the world, and the combined gross enrollment in school was only 57.6 percent. The unemployment rate stood at 85 percent. The 2010 Gallup Global Wellbeing Survey puts the country at 141st out of 155 (Gallup, “Global Wellbeing Surveys Find Nations Worlds Apart,”
http://www.gallup.com/poll/126977/global-wellbeing-surveys-find-nations-worlds-apart.aspx)
. The 2010 Global Hunger Index ranks Liberia 69th out of 84, which makes it the fifteenth most food-insecure country in the world; Klaus von Grebmer et al., “Global Hunger Index, the Challenge of Hunger: Focus on the Crisis of Child Undernutrition” (Bonn, Dublin, and Washington, DC: Welthungerhilfe, International Food Policy Research Institute, Concern Worldwide, 2010), 17. The UN and the World Bank continue to place Liberia in the lowest category of state strength. Other failed-state indices have ranked Liberia in various versions of “the worst of the worst” category from 2008 to 2010 (no data were available on Liberia during or immediately after the war): the Fund for Peace’s Failed State Index; Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index; Brookings’s Index of State Weakness in the Developing World; the World Bank’s Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) and International Development Association (IDA) Resource Allocation Index; and Freedom House’s World’s Most Repressive Societies. See UN Development Program,
National Human Development Report 2006: Liberia
(New York: United Nations, 2006); James Heintz,
A Rapid Impact Assessment of the Global Economic Crisis on Liberia
, (Geneva: International Labour Organization, 2009); Soniya Carvalho,
Engaging with Fragile States
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2006), 5; World Bank, “Indicators: Data,” 2010,
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator
, accessed February 25, 2014

8
. Pham,
Liberia
, 191–192.

9
. World Bank, “Indicators: Data.”

10
. Foreign aid here refers to net official development assistance: World Bank, “Net Official Development Assistance and Official Aid Received (Current US$),”
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/DT.ODA.ALLD.CD?cid=GPD_54
, accessed April 16, 2011. Calculation of percentage of foreign aid to government spending: “Percentage of Foreign Aid to Government Spending,”
Financial Times
,
http://media.ft.com/cms/7398f192-6d99-11df-b5c9-00144feabdc0.swf
, accessed February 25, 2014.

11
. Save the Children Liberia,
http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/en/liberia.htm
, accessed February 25, 2014.

12
. Firestone, “Liberia Statistics,”
http://www.firestonenaturalrubber.com/documents/StatSheetNarrative.pdf
, accessed February 25, 2014.

13
. Greg Mills,
Why Africa Is Poor
(New York: Penguin, 2010), 372.

14
. “U.S. Debating Sending Troops to Help Liberian Civil War,” CNN (transcript), July 2, 2003; UNIS, “Secretary-General Welcomes Resignation of President Charles Taylor; Hopes Event Marks Beginning of End for Liberia’s ‘Long Nightmare,’” UN press release SG/SM/8818 AFR/687, August 12, 2003.

15
. The concept of the CNN effect holds that globalized media have the power to shape popular opinion in representative governments, which, in turn, influence a state’s foreign policy, such as whether to stage a humanitarian intervention. It is named for the popular twenty-four-hour international television news channel Cable News Network, or CNN. For more information on the CNN effect, see Steven Livingston, “Clarifying the CNN Effect: An Examination of Media Effects according to Type of Military Intervention,” Research Paper R-18 (Cambridge, MA: Joan Shorenstein Center on Press and Politics, 1997); Eytan Gilboa,
“The CNN Effect: The Search for a Communication Theory of International Relations,”
Political Communication
22, no. 1 (2005): 27–44; Hamid Mowlana,
Global Information and World Communication: New Frontiers in International Relations
(London: Sage, 1997); Michael C. Williams, “Words, Images, Enemies: Securitization and International Politics,”
International Studies Quarterly
47, no. 4 (2003): 511–531; Piers Robinson,
The CNN Effect: The Myth of News, Foreign Policy and Intervention
(London: Routledge, 2002).

16
. Based on OECD DAC (constant 2008 prices) and UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Financial Tracking Service (FTS) data for 2009–2010. See “Liberia Overview,”
http://www.globalhumanitarianassistance.org/countryprofile/liberia
, accessed February 25, 2014.

17
. This is still a far cry from prewar levels of $136.2 million in 1986. World Bank, “Liberia—Workers’ Remittances and Compensation of Employees,”
http://www.indexmundi.com/facts/liberia/workers’-remittances-and-compensation-of-employees
, accessed February 25, 2014.

18
. It may also have something to do with the DOD’s general aversion to all things African following the 1993 Somalia disaster.

19
. The legal origin of IDIQ contracts comes from the US Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR), section 16.501(a). There are typically three types of contracts that an IDIQ contract authorizes: fixed-price contracts, time-and-materials contracts, and cost-reimbursement contracts. In a fixed-price contract, the price is not subject to adjustment based on costs incurred, which can favorably or adversely affect the firm’s profitability, depending on its execution in performing the contracted service. Fixed-price contracts include firm fixed-price, fixed-price with economic adjustment, and fixed-price incentive. Time-and-materials contracts provide for acquiring supplies or services on the basis of direct labor hours at fixed hourly/daily rates plus materials at cost. Cost-reimbursement contracts provide for payment of allowable incurred costs, to the extent prescribed in the contract, plus a fixed fee, award fee, or incentive fee. Award fees or incentive fees are generally based on various objective and subjective criteria, such as aircraft mission capability rates and meeting cost targets.

20
. This US government money was mostly drawn from a mix of fiscal years 2004–2007 international disaster and famine assistance, regional peacekeeping, and foreign military assistance funds. Nicholas Cook,
Liberia’s Post-War Recovery: Key Issues and Developments
(Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2005), 6, 18; Nicholas Cook,
Liberia’s Post-War Development: Key Issues and US Assistance
(Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2010), 22.

21
. AFL mission statement taken from the CPA: Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the Government of Liberia and the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) and the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) and Political Parties, (August 18, 2003), Part Four, Article VII, para. 2.c.

22
. Klein suggested that Liberia could make do with a decent police force and a well-trained border security force of six hundred to seven hundred men. Statement made November 5, 2003. “Liberia: US Hires Private Company to Train 4,000-Man Army,”
IRIN Africa
, February 15, 2005,
http://www.irinnews.org/report/53038/liberia-us-hires-private-company-to-train-4-000-man-army
, accessed February 25, 2014. His opinion may have also been informed by UNMIL’s civilian police (CIVPOL) commissioner, Mark Kroeker, who told US State Department personnel that Liberia needed a robust police force and not a military. US State Department, “USG Pre-Assessment Trip to Liberia on Security Sector Reform,” January 2004.

23
. International Crisis Group, “Liberia: Uneven Progress in Security Sector Reform,” Africa Report 148 (2009). For more information on this vetting technique, see Sean McFate, “The Art and Aggravation of Vetting in Post-Conflict Environments,”
Military Review
(July–August 2007): 79–97.