Source: U.S. Department of Defense.
In late May 2017, Erik Prince, former Navy SEAL and founder of the private security firm Blackwater, sparked an intense debate when he laid down his proposed plan to restructure the war in Afghanistan by increasing the reliance on private contractors. Critics of his plan feared unaccountable mercenaries reaping benefits of the long-going conflict. Proponents argued that private contractors would be a cheaper alternative and could deliver better results. Trump recently decided to focus on a troop increase instead of the private sector solution. While Prince’s plan will disappear in the archives of the White House – for now – the question of how to deal with private military and security companies remains.
The privatization of security is a complex issue. Some believe that it threatens the monopoly over the use of force and state sovereignty. But to understand this complex industry in general and Prince’s plan in particular, it is essential to question whether private contractors actually qualify as “mercenaries” and whether they are unaccountable, as many claim. It is time to bring the law back into the debate and stop throwing around buzzwords without understanding their legal basis.
There were two parts of Prince’s plan involving private contractors. On the one hand, there was his proposal to have about 5,000 private contractors work as trainers and mentors, embedded with the Afghan army. On the other hand, there were reports about a private air force of about 90 planes.
In the media outcry following Prince’s proposal the private contractors were predominantly labelled as mercenaries. Mercenaries are defined in Art. 47 of the Additional Protocol I (AP I) to the Geneva Conventions. The same definition is also relied on in Art. 1 of the UN Mercenary Convention. To be considered mercenaries, contractors would, among other actions, need to take direct part in hostilities, be motivated essentially by the desire for private gain and be neither a national of a party to the conflict nor a member of the armed forces of this party.
According to Prince’s plan, the contractors working as trainers and mentors should have been embedded with the Afghan military. It is complicated to envision how this would work in practice. The contractors could either enlist with the Afghan armed forces for the duration of the assignment (this was done before in Papua New Guinea) or be declared de facto members of the armed forces. A similar solution might have been sought for the members of the private air force.
In either case the contractors would not fall under the definition of mercenaries, even leaving aside the difficult questions of how to embed them into the Afghan military. Generally, private military and security contractors rarely fall under the narrow mercenary definition because of the definition’s focus on the intent of the contractors. The contractors’ scope of work is simply too broad and their motivations too diverse. Continue reading
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