Emerging Role of Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) in Contemporary International Politics: A Case Study of Afghanistan

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1 Emerging Role of Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) in Contemporary International Politics: A Case Study of Afghanistan Introduction Privatisation of Security is not a recent phenomenon of international politics. It has existed since time immemorial. In the recent times, individuals, states, corporations and international organisations depend profoundly on services provided by Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs). As a result, the demand for PMSCs has been multiplying with the aim to counter the various threats that emanate from local warlords, terrorist networks, international criminals, and drug smugglers. Thus, the private security forces have played a significant role in stopping or ending prolonged conflicts and civil wars prevailing in weak states. For Peter Singer (2005, 2001), there are three factors that motivate the emergence of Private Security Companies (PMCs): the security vacuum that was created in the post-cold War era; the transformation of traditional warfare, the effect of globalization and contracting out the government tasks and the threats posed at the international level by terrorists, smugglers, criminals etc., which soar the uncertain environment of security leading to the emergence of private market. Sarah Percy (2012) argues that the emergence of private military companies could be explained in three phases. First, in the 1990s, companies such as Executive Outcomes (EO) and Sandline International (SI) played a significant role in fighting against the violent rebel groups in some African countries. The second phase starts in 2001, post-september 11, which led to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, after which the number of Private Security Companies (PSCs) has increased massively. The US government reduced its military strength and supplemented from the private sector. Since then, the companies have been providing military services for defence. And, the third phase is that post-iraq and Afghanistan war. Thus, a new security paradigm has emerged in global politics (Chakrabarti 2009) where both state and non-state actors operate together in security-related tasks in weak states, and to transform the national and global governance in world politics. The private security forces, in addition to state forces, lend a hand in the state-building process in third world countries. The Pentagon Officials also acknowledge they could no longer fight any war without the

2 help of the private forces (Yeoman 2004). State forces, on the other hand, become predators rather than protectors especially in the third world (Abrahamsen and Williams 2011: 85) as they are unable to reach the safety and security of citizens. This new security paradigm has motivated the policy makers, war strategists and researchers to do an in-depth study, to try to understand its complex phenomena and how it continues to exist despite the ambiguous nature of PMSCs. The private military forces have contributed significantly to modern warfare in the name of providing security and to stabilise weak or failed states. Therefore, the private security forces have become the backbone of modern warfare. However, the international community faces many problems regarding the ambiguous nature of mercenaries and PMSCs. There is no absolute definition defining both of the terms. They neither belong to combatants nor civilians. This further causes complexity in offering the status of Prisoners of War (POW) in any conflict by International Humanitarian Law (IHL). Another problem is regarding the legitimacy of the monopolistic use of force by the private forces. According to Weber (1918), the state has the monopoly to use force within its territory, but in the contemporary era, his notion of force has been transferred to the hands of Private Military Companies (PMCs). This has caused human rights violations to take place. Since PMCs do not have any military code of conduct, they violate the laws of war during conflict. There is problem of accountability, lack of transparency and the dilution of the sovereignty of states. Furthermore, the legal status of PMCs presents another problem. Because they are not under the mandate of international legal authority, private contractors are not brought to court on charges. Examples include the employees of Blackwater in Iraq or those employees of Executive Outcomes (E.O) in Africa where they enjoy impunity. Sometimes the private company might operate under the Customary International Law of any nation, but it becomes problematic as they are not confined to a single state, they keep moving from state to state for their financial gain. Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) Historical overview nature of PMSCs The use of private forces in wars is not a recent trend. It has been there since the time of Ancient Greece but they were referred to as mercenaries. Mercenaries played a greater role even in the Dark and Middle Ages. The first private military companies called Free

3 Companies had emerged in the middle ages which were independent of state authority. The oldest documents, the Magna Carta that signed in 1215, also contains some clauses of mercenaries which talks about the Flemish Mercenaries used by King John (Kiernan 1957). In 13 th and 14 th century, Italian private armies called condottiere were very famous. The history of condottiere reflects the Renaissance Italy (Mockler 1969). Fred Schreier and Marina Caparina (2005) term the mercenary as a professional soldier hired to serve in a foreign army. The essence of the modern form of mercenary which is money oriented could be said to be derived from the employer and mercenary company relationship found during Renaissance Italy. The Egyptian Empire in order to fight wars hired the warriors from its neighbouring territory. Pharaohs Sesostris III ( BC) and Ramses II ( BC) hired Nubians, Palestinians and Syrian mercenaries to expand their empire (Varin 2012). In early and medieval warfare, the private forces had contributed a greater role to win the battles that fought among the kings and lords. For example, the story of private forces deployed by European countries, the hired Hessian soldiers who took part in the American War of Independence, the story of privateers in American Civil War ( ), and the Spanish- American War (1898) (Chakrabarti 2009) and so on, shows the contribution of mercenaries in waging wars. These private forces, also called mercenaries could be hired at a cheaper price and they did support the huge standing army of states as well. Mockler (1969: 26) categorises four kinds of mercenaries. They are a) state-loaned soldiers, b) state-recruited foreigners, c) corporate actors, d) soldiers of fortune. The significant of private forces became very prominent since the post-cold War period (Singer 2005), yet their involvement was there even during the Cold War where Michael McBride (2003: 3) in the Business Week describes the war against Vietnam by the US could be termed as contractor war. Authors such as Chakrabarti (2009), Thomas Adams (2002) consider PMSCs as non-state firms which can provide security by enforcing violence in the hands of private military forces and they differentiate the private military forces from mercenaries. Legality and Regulation of PMSCs One of the most important aspects of PMSCs is regarding its legal standing. The regulation of PMSCs is less accountable as they operate outside the realm of international legal frameworks (Chakrabarti 2009). There are some international conventions which discuss the regulation of mercenary forces such as The Hague Conventions (1907), the Geneva

4 Conventions (1949), the UN Charter and related Resolutions; Article 47 of Protocol 1, additional to the Geneva Convention of 1949 (1977), Declarations and Convention of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), and the UN International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing, and Training of Mercenaries adopted in 1989 (Chakrabarti 2009). In modern warfare, the role of private forces is very significant. Most of the conflicts in the third world show the active participation of private military forces. But when it comes to the legal status, it remains a hot and debatable issue in the academic circles. No international institutions or organisations have legalised the regulation of the involvement of PMSCs in overseas engagements even as legitimacy remains an important issue. Different thinkers have written about it. For Linsey Cameron (2006), the first and foremost thing is the status of the employees of those private companies. For her, the problems of PMSCs will get it solved once the issue of the legal status has resolved and it will be easier to regulate the PMSCs effectively, with transparency. As a result, the problem of lack of accountability and the violation of the human rights will be reduced. The employees of PMSCs and the contractors are two different entities and for her, it is not necessary to conclude that all PMSCs employees are mercenaries. She argues that mercenaries can be punished under international laws and detained under Additional Protocol I and the mercenary conventions also can apply in non-international armed conflicts. But there is no proper legal framework regarding PMSCs to operate legally in any conflict. Scholars like P.R. Khalidass (2014) claims the urgent need is to offer legal status to PMSCs. As the international law does not have any mechanism to punish private forces for their crimes committed during the conflict, the state who hires those forces should be responsible for their actions according to Khalidass. Heather Elms and Robert Phillips (2009) pay attention to the behaviour of private companies and their stakeholders. For them, the moral legitimacy of the private companies is very important. Nevertheless, they don t see the larger picture which is immediately necessary for private security companies to survive in the international arena. For Lene Bomann-Lanser (2004), issues such as accountability problems and inability to prosecute the private forces could be solved if the armed contractors are given the legal recognition under the international legal framework. The problem is the lack of a permanent legal framework of the private military contractors.

5 Role of PMSCs in Afghanistan A state is responsible for the security in its territory and to provide the basic services to the public. The strength of a state solely depends not only on its military capability but its ability to command loyalty. The state should have the right to rule, extract resources and provide services, and maintain the essential elements of sovereignty and a monopoly over the legitimate use of force within defined limits operating in a political community (Holsti 1996). On the contrary, the weak state does not have the resources to create legitimacy by providing security and other services. The economic vulnerability has worn down the state s capability for their survival. Many weak states depend on private security partially or completely for their internal security or to end the civil wars or stabilise domestic sphere. However, the complexity arises when the PMSCs use physical force, which is strictly under the domain of state power till recent decades since Westphalian Treaty, 1648, (Weber 1918). Moreover, as Clausewitz indicates that the state is the best institution to use force or violence to serve political processes and promote social norms within a territory as the state has the authority to control power, sanctioning and the use of violence (Avant 2005). Simply put, the state is the most secular institution of social control in modern society. It has the monopoly use of violence, political will, financial and human resources and popular support. However, this belief remains unclear in the case of weak states where they have already lost the legitimacy in the eyes of the citizens. Aradhana Sharma and Akhil Gupta (2006) also argue that rather than seeing the state as a preconstituted institution that carries out the given tasks, but they are fabricated through everyday practices and encounters through cultural representations and performances. Hence, the Weberian notion of state is very subjective and it cannot be applicable in weak states. Nowadays, issues such as terrorism, organized crime, and climate change cannot be tackled only by state actors alone, but with the help of non-state actors as well. As a result, the conventional notion that the only state has a legitimate monopoly on the use of force appears outdated (Wulf 2005: 130). For Herbert Wulf, the activities of PMSCs in some cases might enhance the authority of the states. Mandel (2001) talks about two forms of privatized security. Warlords, organized crime, militias, rebels, and even youth gangs and child soldiers have increasingly taken part in wars and violent conflicts these days. This bottom-up privatization of violence is due to the states unable to guarantee law and order. Whereas top-

6 down privatization, which brings about the outsourcing of police and military functions to private companies, is the governmental plan (Bryden and Caparina 2006, Wulf 2005, Singer 2003, Avant 2005). The privatisation of security becomes an alternative option for weak states in order to instill peace as the existing governments cannot perform the public sector security institutions effectively. Thus, they seek help from outsiders. Examples could be the role of Executive Outcomes (EO) in Angola and Sierra Leone in and Sandline International in Sierra Leone in (Holmqvist 2005: 3). They were hired by national governments to assist for their military backing and to take part in combat against rebel forces. Afghanistan is a weak state which depends on revenues from outside powers, and the national government exercising little control outside its capital, Kabul (Wulf 2011: 127). Three main fought in Afghanistan: the insurgents; autonomous militias often on the government side; coalition (including private forces) and government forces (Kaldor 2003). In Afghanistan, the majority of the insurgents are Taliban. They were initially concentrated in the South and South East but now they are increasingly spreading throughout the North. Seema Habib (2014) addresses some serious issues in Afghanistan such as the failure of the Afghan government to provide security to its citizens; the unequal economic opportunities; lack of state capacity to control over its territory; the growth of criminal violence and state s unable to perform the fundamental jobs of a nation-state in the modern world (Rotberg 2003). External actors initiated to build and establish Afghan Government, but those attempts failed because of lack of central government s efficiency and the abovementioned factors (Habib 2014). Thus, they sought help from PMSCs. Private forces are being used in Afghanistan for two main reasons: to substitute the weak public security forces and to supplement them in the unstable environment (Dunigan and Petersohn 2015). Actually, political elites whose objectives seem completely opposed to those of the international community run Afghanistan. It is fiscally unsustainable and the government functions only in cities (Morgan 2010). State-building efforts and privatization of military and police functions are the two dominant developments for coping with insecurity in Afghanistan. The privatization trend in the country is a combination of the bottom-up and top-down approaches, which illustrates a dilemma in other countries. The worsening security situation, as a result of insurgencies, is countered by deploying more military and police forces and by hiring private security actors

7 in the tens of thousands (Wulf 2011: ). Not only this, there is a lack of public trust on Afghanistan s police due to ineffectiveness, rampant corruption, and unable to protect them from insurgents attacks due to inadequate leadership, lack of training and equipment (Dunigan and Petersohn 2015: 107). The question of sending more troops to stabilize Afghanistan and build a stable state institution remains a difficult task. When military actions take place, new insurgencies emerge. Efforts to disarm non-state actors as a prerequisite for establishing a state monopoly of the use of force had failed earlier. The security machinery of Afghanistanis privatized by Mujahedin leaders, warlords, and other local leaders. They try to play a role by infusing their powers to the central government.their income comes from the war economy, warlords and even the Taliban profit and the drug trade (Wulf 2011: 127). Afghanistan faces constant corruption and the national income derives from war and drugs. The PMSCs in Afghanistan regulate without an inclusive national legislation and almost all conflicts had a direct or indirect impact on civilians, violating human rights and impacting on human security (Loverdos 2011). PMSCs and the Afghan government are also unable to convince the local population. Scholars argue that it will be better for the country if PMSCs employed there are run and regulated and controlled by the government of Afghanistan (Dunigan and Petersohn 2015). Conclusion This paper is trying to see how the emerging role of PMSCs has played an important role in contemporary international politics despite its ambiguous nature. Most of the states sometimes have to compromise their sovereignty in order to prevent their nations from chaos and violence for their survival by hiring private forces. In the contemporary society, states cannot wage wars without private forces, as they become the backbone of modern warfare. Nevertheless, their subsequent results are different in different states (weak or strong). The roles of private forces are very prominent in states like Afghanistan. Moreover, war is not going to disappear overnight, so does the task of the private military forces in the contemporary warfare. To have proper mechanisms for the regulation of private forces has been an ongoing debate among the scholars, war strategists, policy makers and political analysts in order to bring them under the international legal framework.

8 References (* indicates a primary source) Abrahamsen, Rita and Michael C. Williams (2011), Security Beyond the State: Private Security in International Politics, New York: Cambridge University Press. Adams, K. Thomas (2002), Private Military Companies: Mercenaries for the 21 st Century, Small Wars and Insurgencies, 13(3). Avant, Deborah D. (2005), The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatising Security, New York: Cambridge University Press. Bryden, Alan and Marina Caparini (2006), Private Actors and Security Governance Centre for the Democratic Control of the Armed Forces, Geneva [Online: web] Accessed 18 March 2016, URL: http//: Chakrabarti, Shantanu (2009), Privatisation of Security in the Post-cold War Period: An Overview of its Nature and Implications, Institute of Defense and Strategic Analysis, Monograph Series, 2. Dunigan, Molly and Ulrich Petersohn (ed.) (2015), The Markets for Force: Privatization of Security Across World Regions, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. *Geneva Convention of August 12, 1949, Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, (1950), 75 UNTS 135. Habib, Seema (2014), Is Afghanistan a Failed State? A Brief Overview of Indicators in the Context of Afghanistan, Global Public Policy Watch, [Online: web] Accessed on 4 October 2017, URL: Holmqvist, Caroline (2005), Private Security Companies: The Case for Regulation, SIPRI Policy, 9. Holsti, Kalevi J. (1996), The State, War, and the State of War, UK: Cambridge University Press.

9 *International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries (1989), UNGA, A/RES/44/34. Kalidhass, P.R (2014), Determining the Status of Private Military Companies under International Law: A Quest to Solve Accountability Issues in Armed Conflicts, Amsterdam Law Forum, Spring Issue, 6(2): Kiernan, V.G. (1957), Foreign Mercenaries and Absolute Monarchy, Past and Present, 11: 69. Mandrup, Thomas (ed.) (2012), Privatisation of Security: The Concept, its History and Contemporary Application, Copenhagen: Royal Danish Defence College. Palou-Loverdos, J. and L. Armendariz (2011), The Privatisation of Warfare, Violence and Private Military Companies: A Factual and Legal to Human Rights Abuses by PMSCs in Iraq, Creative Common, [Online: web] Accessed 24 April 2016, URL: http//: Percy Sarah (2012), Regulating the private security industry: a story of regulating the last war, International Review of the Red Cross, Vol. 94, No. 887 [Online: web] Accessed 24 September 2015, URL: Private Security Contractors at War, Ending the Culture of Impunity, Human Rights First, 2008, [Online: web] Accessed 20 August 2015, URL: *Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), 8 June 1977, 1125 UNTS 3. Schreier, Fred and Marina Caparina (2005), Privatising Security: Law, Practice and Governance of Private Military and Security Companies, Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF), No. 6, [Online: web] Accessed 16 September 2016, URL:

10 *Security Management of Initiative (SMI) Geneva (2009), Private Military and Security Companies and Humanitarian Action. Sharma, Aradhana and Akhil Gupta (2006), The Anthropology of the State, Pondicherry, India: SPI Publisher. Singer, Peter W. (2001/02), Corporate Warriors: The Rise and Ramifications of the Privatized Military Industry, International Security, 26(3), [Online: web] Accessed 20 July 2017, URL: (2005), Outsourcing War, Foreign Affairs,84(2): 122. Varin, Caroline (2012), Mercenaries and the State: How the Hybridisation of the Armed Forces is Changing the Face of National Security, [Online: web] Accessed 5 March 2016, URL: etheses.lse.ac.uk/527. Wulf, Herbert (2005), Internationalizing and Privatizing War and Peace, Centre for Democratic Control of the Armed Forces (DCAF) Occasional paper, [Online: web] Accessed 27 August 2015, URL:

Research Report. Leiden Model United Nations 2015 ~ fresh ideas, new solutions ~

Research Report. Leiden Model United Nations 2015 ~ fresh ideas, new solutions ~ Forum: Issue: Student Officer: Position: General Assembly First Committee: Disarmament and International Security Foreign combatants in internal militarised conflicts Ethan Warren Deputy Chair Introduction