By Geraldina Colotti on August 18, 2021
Colombian mercenaries captured in Haiti
Samuel Moncada, Venezuelan ambassador to the UN, condemned before the United Nations Security Council the persistence of “a transnational network of organized crime, made up of Colombian and American mercenaries who have perpetrated acts of terrorism, assassination or attempted assassination, as in Haiti and Venezuela”, highlighting once again a large-scale death industry, an international mercenary machine, which has in Colombia become one of the most abundant sources of of this type of labor, that is exported all over the world.
Today there is a global market linked to the purchase of security that reaches 400 billion dollars and thrives mainly in the United States, Israel, Great Britain and Commonwealth countries, France and French-speaking countries. More recently, China (where, however, private security companies depend on the State) and Russia have entered the market.
Private military and security companies (PMSCs) provide different types of contractors: Legitimate combatant, Civilian following the Armed Forces or Civilian, defined by the type of company that has hired them. From the United States to Europe, the growing weight of the military-industrial complex in the global capitalist economy creates the so-called “revolving door” effect: the intertwining of military and “anti-terrorist” interventions, commercial and political wars, related to the transfer of managerial roles from the armed forces to large companies and public offices, and vice versa. A hybrid that is also reflected in the opacity of these companies.
The main PMSCs, mainly dedicated to the protection of private property and the training of armies in occupied countries, such as Iraq or Afghanistan, are of European or US origin. Mercenary labor, however, is recruited in Latin America or in countries that have experienced long armed conflicts, especially on the African continent, because it is cheaper.
The first place in the field of defense and security in Latin America goes to Brazil, where the sector represents about 4% of GDP, roughly equal to 50 billion euros, and employs more than 60,000 people. Brazil’s military spending, which has grown since Bolsonaro’s arrival, is also the highest in the region (about €30 billion), almost three times more than the second Latin American country, Colombia, which spends about €11 billion.
In Latin America, by 2017, defense and private security companies exceeded 16,000 experiencing an exponential increase employing more than 2.4 million people. A market that in Colombia has grown 126% in 10 years, while in Chile it has increased 50% in 5 years. Moncada recalls that in Colombia there were more than 740 private security companies in 2014. In 2018, the market was worth $11 billion. By 2024, it is expected to reach $47 billion.
Today, in Colombia, Brazil and Mexico, there are 4 private security guards for each member of the police, and in countries such as Guatemala or Honduras, the ratio can be 1 to 7. In addition, it must be calculated that many police officers do double work, both for the state and for private companies.
Colombian mercenaries come from the surplus of trained manpower for Colombia’s never-ending civil war. Every year between 10 and 15,000 soldiers retire, and a large number of them go to feed the international mercenary market, since their pension is $400 a month, while a contractor can earn up to $200,000 a year tax-free.
Mercenaries have always existed but private security companies began to spread after World War II and grew during the decolonization processes that took place in the 1960s and 1970s as a tool used by former colonial powers to safeguard their interests.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, PMSCs have increasingly become a substantial element of the war economy and of the strategy of “controlled chaos”, useful for the processes of “balkanization” of the world established by US imperialism and its allies.
Capitalist globalization has provided the opportunity for many neoliberal governments to increasingly privatize both the law and order and control industry at home and military interventions abroad, in proxy wars that spare imperialist governments from paying a high price in terms of soldiers killed in ground attacks, and public backlash as in the Vietnam War.
PMSCs do not need parliamentary authorization, they can quickly operate anywhere in the world without any bureaucratic problems. The lobbies that support PMSCs within the military-industrial complex present them as a savings for governments and taxpayers, because they have an intermittent cost and provide services at lower prices. Erik Price, former head of Blackwater, which worked for the CIA and State Department in both Afghanistan and Iraq, proposed to Trump to privatize the war in Afghanistan to reduce its costs to $5 billion annually compared to the $50 billion Washington spent on average. Obama’s lower military investment in foreign policy also produced a stellar increase in contractors on foreign missions. A trend destined to grow even in the current situation in Afghanistan.
Today, these companies offer their services to more than 100 countries. Diversified services, ranging from the presence in theaters of war to the protection of large multinationals such as Shell or Coca Cola, through the management of private prisons, the security of embassies or NGOs, and also that of UN personnel. Activities traditionally carried out by the police and the army, but increasingly outsourced because PMSCs remain confined to a legal gray area, which prevents many embarrassments for neoliberal governments accustomed to the rhetoric on “human rights” (but always in someone else’s house). There is no lack of examples, just remember the case of Yair Klein Spearhead Ltd, an Israeli ex-soldier who appears in the investigations as a trainer of Pablo Escobar’s Medellin cartel hit men and of the paramilitaries who will train the Colombian AUC hit men.
The company that hired the mercenaries for assassinating Haitian President Juvenel Moise – according to Senator Gustavo Petro – is one of those that provided the software for the elections in Colombia, including the consultations for the referendum on the peace accords, which gave the No victory in October 2016. It is CTU Security, registered as Unidad Antiterrorista Academia Federal LLC, based in Doral Beach, Miami, and headed by Venezuelan oppositionist Antonio Enmanuel Intriago Valera.
According to Haitian and Colombian investigators, CTU security hired former Colombian soldiers Duberney Capador and German Rivera, who were then in charge of recruiting the rest of the mercenaries. From Miami, Intriago’s lawyers said that their client was “the victim of a plan to take power in Haiti”. The company was allegedly hired to provide security services for a “humanitarian” infrastructure project in Haiti. During the job, he would be informed that the mission had “changed direction” and that the hired mercenaries would have to accompany a judge and police personnel to serve a warrant for President Moise’s arrest. The mercenaries hired in Miami by self-proclaimed interim president Juan Guaidó to invade Venezuela with Operation Gedeon also belonged to U.S. private security firms.
Source: Alainet, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English