Jeremy Scahill - Blackwater

After Black’s remarks in Jordan, Blackwater vice president Chris Taylor expanded on his firm’s vision for a Sudan deployment. “Of course we could provide security at refugee camps, defensive security,” Taylor said. “What we seek to do first is to be the best deterrent that we can possibly be.” 26He boasted that Blackwater could mobilize faster than the UN or NATO. “In the time that it takes to put an internationally recognized body unit on the ground, I can be there in a third of that time and I will be 60 percent cheaper,” Taylor told National Public Radio. 27But independent experts disputed Blackwater’s claims. “It’s comparing real apples with fictional oranges,” said P. W. Singer of the Brookings Institution. “NATO or UN operations represent a full array of political commitment and activities, not simply a small set of guys with guns and a CASA 212. That’s why they are expensive and completely different.” 28

Blackwater wasn’t just talking about Darfur. Taylor also broadened the private-army-for-hire theme, floating the idea of the Iraqi government hiring Blackwater’s men to quell attacks by resistance groups. “We clearly couldn’t go into the whole country of Iraq,” Taylor told the Virginian-Pilot . “But we might be able to go into a region or a city.” Cofer Black and other company officials spun their vision for “peacekeeping,” “stabilization,” and “humanitarian” operations as being born of moralistic outrage over human suffering. The international community, they argued, is slow to respond and ineffective, while, as Black said in Jordan, “Blackwater spends a lot of time thinking, How can we contribute to the common good?” What Blackwater executives rarely, if ever, discuss in public is the tremendous profit to be made in servicing disasters, crises, and wars. In Jordan Blackwater and other mercenary firms aggressively promoted an internationalization of the rapid privatization of military and security the benefits of which they now enjoy in the United States. Under the soft banner of “humanitarianism,” these companies hoped to take “business” away from international governmental bodies like the UN, NATO, and the African and European Unions. For Blackwater, such a transformation would mean permanent profit opportunity, limited only by the number of international crises, disasters, and conflicts. “World stability and peacemaking/-keeping operations have been criminally cost-ineffective and operationally failed,” said Blackwater’s Taylor. “Send 10,000 UN troops to Darfur? A colossal waste of money. You do not create security and peace by throwing more mediocre, uncommitted people into the fray.” 29

Singer, who has extensively studied the role of private military firms in international conflicts, observed the following about Blackwater’s Sudan pitch:

The firms go about talking about how they would save kittens in trees if only the big bad international community would let them, but the situation is just far more complex than that. This kind of lobbying often attempts to confuse folks…. The issue preventing effective action in Darfur is not simply a matter of financial costs. That is, there is not some imaginary price point that only if such firms could come in under, it would solve things. The real problem is that it is a political mess on the ground, there is no effective UN mandate, no outside political will to engage for real, plus a Sudanese government that is obstructionist and effectively one of the sides (meaning if you go in without a mandate, you gotta be willing to kick the doors down, destroy air bases, etc. which no firm has the capacity to do, and sends the issue back to US/NATO/UN), thus far preventing a useful deployment. So even if you got firms willing, you still have to solve those problems. 30

But Sudan’s value to Blackwater stretched beyond a single peacekeeping contract or purported humanitarian concerns for the victims in Darfur. It was Blackwater’s ticket into a whole new world of potential growth—Darfur became the rallying cry for a rebranding operation aimed at winning massive international contracts for mercenary firms. Unlike the invasion and occupation of Iraq, which was overwhelmingly opposed by a majority of the world, calls for intervention in Darfur are much more widespread and, therefore, an easier sell for Blackwater and its allies for increasing the use of private soldiers. Indeed, even at antiwar rallies, scores of protesters held signs reading, “Out of Iraq, Into Darfur.”

A quick survey of Sudan’s vast natural resources dispels any notion that U.S./corporate desires to move into Sudan derive from purely humanitarian motives. First off, because of Sudan’s designation by the State Department as a sponsor of terrorism, U.S. corporations are prohibited from investing in Sudan. As a result, China has become the major player in exploiting Sudan’s tremendous oil supplies. 31While Sudan is not a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, it was granted observer status in August 2001, a distinction reserved for significant global oil producers. 32Four years later, its proven oil reserves had expanded sixfold to 1.6 billion barrels, the thirty-fifth-largest in the world 33—all inaccessible to U.S. oil corporations. The China National Petroleum Corporation owns 40 percent—the largest single share—of the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company, the consortium that dominates Sudan’s oilfields. 34Sudan also has a significant natural gas reserve, one of the three largest deposits of high-purity uranium in the world, and the fourth-largest deposits of copper. 35Regime change in Sudan would open up extremely lucrative investment opportunities to U.S. corporations, potentially capturing them from Chinese companies. It would also mean the end of a strong Islamic government that has continued to modernize, despite tough U.S.-led sanctions. Sending in private U.S. forces, under the guise of an international humanitarian mission, could give Washington a major foothold in Sudan for future action.

At the time of Cofer Black’s trip to Jordan, Darfur was very much in the headlines. Black himself had spent a significant amount of time in the country as part of his work for the CIA. “Cofer and I have been speaking about our ability to help in Darfur ad infinitum, and that just pisses off the humanitarian world,” said Chris Taylor. “They have problems with private security companies, not because of performance but because they think that in some cases it removes their ability to cross borders, to talk to both sides, to be neutral. And that’s great, but the age-old question—is neutrality greater than saving one more life? What’s the marginal utility on one more life?” 36In February 2005, the month Black joined Blackwater, Erik Prince publicly raised for the first time the prospect of private peacekeepers at a symposium of the National Defense Industrial Association. “In areas where the UN is, where there’s a lot of instability, sending a big, large-footprint conventional force is politically unpalatable; it’s expensive, diplomatically difficult as well,” Prince told the military gathering. “We could put together a multinational, professional force, supply it, manage it, lead it, put it under UN or NATO or U.S. control, however it would best be done. We can help stabilize the situation.” 37Prince suggested that Blackwater could deploy a “Quick Reaction Force” to protect nongovernmental organizations in Darfur or other conflict areas. “You talk about Darfur: I don’t think you need an 8,000-peacekeeper force,” he said. “If there’s an atrocity in progress, it’s the Janjaweed [militia] that has to be stopped, and we have to move and stop the problem, and solve the immediate threat. Not bring an 8,000- or 10,000-man force.” 38

Similar to the company’s use of the Columbine “massacre” to win new business, Blackwater was taking advantage of a global crisis that found parties spanning the political spectrum calling for intervention and decrying the perceived indifference of the UN and other international bodies. Sudan has become a pet cause of many of the right-wing Christian forces Blackwater is in bed with, not the least of which is Christian Freedom International—on whose small nine-member board both Erik Prince and his lobbyist Paul Behrends sit. Christian Freedom, founded by a consortium of well-connected Republican evangelicals, has been accused of using its “humanitarian aid” designation as a cover for missionary activities. Despite operating largely in Muslim countries, the group publicly states, “We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.” 39