Special Report
May, 2002

Box 4: Outsourcing: Private Military Companies (PMCs)

One of the ways the U.S. government has been able to carry out its rapid growth in military and police training around the globe over the past decade has been to outsource many training operations to private contractors. This practice reduces pressures on the deployment schedule of U.S. forces. It also permits U.S. involvement in certain situations without risking the deaths of U.S. soldiers—a high political cost since the deaths of U.S. Rangers in Somalia in 1993.

Post-cold war reductions in the size of U.S. military forces led to a glut of out-of-work military personnel. Many of them were absorbed into long-established private military companies (PMCs) that expanded their operations in the 1990s; others created their own start-up firms. Among the American companies providing training to foreign forces in the 1990s were Cubic, DynCorp, Logicon, Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI), Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), and Vinnell Corp.a

In some cases contractors conduct training programs directly for the U.S. government. For example, the State Department has hired MPRI and Logicon to run the African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI). In other cases, foreign governments contract directly with private companies to train their security forces. To do so, firms must apply for and be granted an export license by the State Department’s Office of Defense Trade Controls—as would any other industry directly selling weapons or military services.b Numerous foreign militaries have hired private U.S. firms in the 1990s and early 2000s, among them Bosnia, Colombia, Croatia, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, Liberia, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, and Uganda.c

The accidental downing of a civilian plane in Peru in early 2001, killing an American missionary and her infant daughter, served to reveal the deep, multifaceted, and controversial involvement of private military companies in U.S. antinarcotics operations. In this incident, a CIA surveillance plane, flown by American pilots from an Alabama company called Aviation Development Corporation (ADC), had mistakenly identified the missionary plane as belonging to drug traffickers, and a Peruvian military plane responded by shooting it down.

In the wake of this incident, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) introduced a bill in April 2001, the Andean Region Contractor Accountability Act (H.R. 1591), which would prohibit funding of private contractors for military or police work in the Andean region. By early 2002, it had only 14 cosponsors and was stalled in committee.

Private military contractors are currently conducting major portions of the U.S. military operations in the Andes, including crop fumigation and military training. Two Virginia-based companies, DynCorp and MPRI, have had contracts to provide logistical support and training to Colombian police and counterinsurgency forces. In 2001, MPRI completed a $6 million contract with the Pentagon under which a 14-man team advised the Colombian military and police on logistics, planning, and organization.

Under Plan Colombia, the number of private military contractors was capped at 300; in December 2001, Congress increased this number to 400 (while lowering the number of U.S. military personnel authorized to be in country from 500 to 400). However, private military companies get around this cap by employing non-U.S. citizens. In Colombia, for instance, private companies have hired Peruvians, Guatemalans, and other Latin American nationals.

Some of the harshest critics of these companies are members of the U.S. military. In a 1998 essay for the Army War College, Col. Bruce Grant wrote: “Privatization is a way of going around Congress and not telling the public. Foreign policy is made by default by private military consultants motivated by bottom-line profits.”d Rep. Schakowsky agrees, explaining: “There is little or no accountability in this process of outsourcing. This is a way of funding secret wars with taxpayers’ money that could get us into a Vietnam-like conflict.”

Information on private transactions is scarce and oversight is nonexistent. There is no requirement that the State Department publish a specific annual list of whom it has authorized to provide private military or security training, where, with which security unit, or for what purpose. Nor does Congress know who is training whom at any given moment. The State Department is only required to notify lawmakers of contracts valued at $50 million or more—a threshold so high that very few, if any, training operations are likely to be reported. The annual consolidated report on military assistance and sales, which the State and Defense departments are required to produce (see Appendix 1, pages 37-40), should include information on private military training, but it does not currently disaggregate this information.

As with covert operations, there are no legal or regulatory requirements for the inclusion of any human rights or humanitarian law content in military, security, or police force training contracted privately. In addition, the Leahy Law requirement that trainees be vetted for prior human rights abuses does not apply to training purchased with the buyer’s own money. It does apply to U.S. taxpayer-funded programs employing private military companies, such as the African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI).

Notes

a Deborah Avant, private communication, February 25, 2002. The list is compiled from news articles, journal articles, personal interviews, and web searches. Avant cautions that there are undoubtedly missing companies, and some included companies may have since gone out of business.

b Section 38 of the Arms Export Control Act.

c Deborah Avant, personal communication, February 25, 2002.

d Juan O. Tamayo, “Private Firms Take on U.S. Military Role in Drug War,” Miami Herald, May 22, 2001.