How Former African Child Soldiers Ended Up Fighting in the Iraq War
May 16th, 2017
Charlie Hoylehttps://muftah.org/former-african-child-soldiers-ended-fighting-iraq-war/#.Wi5u83lRXIU
Former child soldiers from the civil war in Sierra Leone were used as cheap military labor by private American and British companies in the 2003 Iraq war, part of a devastating race to the bottom for front-line mercenaries in a multi-billion dollar industry.The phenomenon of private military companies operating in modern conflict zones is well-established, but a new documentary from Al-Jazeera sheds light on the privatization of global conflicts and the exploitation of poverty-stricken young men already traumatized by violence.
Child Soldiers Reloaded interviews former child soldiers who found themselves on the battlefields of Iraq. Most were recruited by private British military firm Aegis, which signed a $293 million deal with the U.S. Department of Defense in 2004 to conduct operations in the U.S.-led invasion.
According to the documentary, initially, there was a “gold rush” in private military firms working in Iraq, with companies like Blackwater emerging out of nowhere to profit from the devastation. Described as “cowboy” operations employing American “gunslingers” for hire, private military firms were effectively in charge of the second-largest armed force in Iraq, after the U.S. military.
But budgets decreased after an end to the U.S. military mission, and firms were soon seeking out more cost-efficient ways to recruit military personnel. At first, Peruvian and Colombian guards were hired, the documentary explains, followed by Ugandans. Soon, however, they were replaced by the cheapest option of all: traumatized former child soldiers from Sierra Leone. Most received a daily wage of only $16 per day from Aegis, a private British military company, which recruited them into a war machine driven by billion dollar profits by exploiting their desperate poverty.
Unlike dead U.S. soldiers or marines, nobody asks questions about dead African contractors.
“The white man came from Iraq. He said he needed Sierra Leonean fighters… only those who know basics about weapons,” Osman Sesay, a former child soldier, told Al-Jazeera. As they were training and drilling for war in Iraq, many child soldiers began reliving the psychological trauma they had experienced during Sierra Leone’s brutal civil war.
“My memories came back from the past and I started weeping,” one former child soldier said, as he recounted the first time a gun was put in his hands after the civil war. “I was crying,” another said. “I wasn’t supposed to hold [a] weapon again.” For most, however, joining private security firms was the only way to survive.
In 2010, the U.S. Congress appointed a bipartisan commission to investigate private military companies, concluding that between 30 to 60 billion dollars had vanished, as a result of waste and fraud. Though the recruitment of child soldiers was not discussed, commission head, Michael Thibault, lambasted the race to the bottom strategy of exploiting poverty and desperation in the developing world.
“Can we go a little lower? Could we find someone that would do it for board and room? It sounds facetious, but it’s real,” he said.
The number of former child soldiers recruited by private Western military companies is unknown. As long as war is driven by profit, however, private companies will continue to exploit global inequality to put the poorest bodies on the front lines – with zero accountability.
Child Soldiers Reloaded: The Privatisation of War
How private companies recruit former child soldiers for military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
01 May 2017
Filmmaker: Mads Ellesoe
From opportunistic guns for hire on the fringe of domestic conflicts to a global force operating within a multibillion-dollar industry - the private military sector seems to be flourishing.
As armies and war increasingly become 'outsourced', private military
companies have taken on a wider increasing range of responsibilities,
from security and intelligence analysis to training and combat roles.
"The private military industry is a part of how the countries fight wars today ... The US government doesn't track the number of contractors used in places like Iraq or Afghanistan. We know it's a lot, we don't know exactly how many," says Sean McFate, a professor at Georgetown University who used to work for a private military company.
The employees of these contractors can come from anywhere, and sometimes those leading the missions don't know exactly who is working for them.
"They [the companies] hire and they sometimes create what they call 'subs', subcontractors. There's been commanders in Afghanistan who just simply say, 'We don't know who the subs of the subs of the subs are.' So you've all these, like, layers of a contract.
"It's the complete opposite of the private military world. You look at the budget first," says McFate. "Company self-interest is different than national self-interest. Companies are profit-maximisers, that's what they do, that's natural."
As the military trade grows and private military companies try to find the cheapest available soldiers around the world, who are the mercenaries? And what are the consequences of the privatisation of war?
Child Soldiers Reloaded looks at the changing nature of war, the business of warfare and the issues behind it.
Aegis Defence Services is a British private military company founded
in 2002 by former British Army officer Tim Spicer. Spicer was involved
in the 1998 "arms to Africa" scandal, in which his previous company,
Sandline International, was found to be breaching UN sanctions by
importing weapons to Sierra Leone.
But according to journalist and author Stephen Armstrong, "He's a dashing and charming, public school-educated guards' officer. And that really wasn't massively a feature of the industry before then. It changed the global agenda of what a private military company was."
During the US invasion of Iraq, Aegis was contracted to oversee the communication and coordination for all the private security companies on the ground providing guards to protect US military bases.
"In effect, it meant that they were the general in charge of all of the private contractors. Now, at that point, the US military was the largest military presence in Iraq. But if you added together all of the private military contractors, Spicer was effectively in charge of the second-largest armed force in Iraq," says Armstrong.
However, when the US decided to end its military mission in Iraq, budgets decreased and the private military industry had to start offering different types of deals. As a result, they started to hire cheaper soldiers, many of them from the developing world.
Aegis employed many mercenaries from Sierra Leone and Uganda to work in Iraq because they were cheaper than other options.
"The Sierra Leonean war has been fought mainly by young combatants. If you're looking for young men to perform military jobs, the chances are quite good that they have also been child soldiers," says Maya Mynster Christensen, anthropologist, Royal Danish Defence College.
She explains that "from a Sierra Leone government perspective, the Iraq recruitment was considered a quite good deal, in the sense that they could actually take local troublemakers, sending them away to Iraq for a couple of years, and then returning them after two years with money earned from their overseas deployment. This could serve to stabilise security in Sierra Leone."
In 2010, the US Congress appointed a commission to investigate outsourcing to private military companies, but the recruitment of former child soldiers was not part of the investigation.
The commission concluded that the US government has been too dependent on private military companies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that between $30bn and $60bn disappeared to waste and fraud.
The number of former child soldiers recruited by private companies to take part in active combat is unknown, as is the total number of employees from the developing world is also unknown.
"On the one hand, Western countries have pumped large sums of money into the reintegration of former child soldiers, but now we have governments like the US supporting these so-called security companies that recruit people and continue their exposure to violence and cement their identities as perpetrators of violence as soldiers, that make it impossible to ever reintegrate into civilian life," says Michael Wessels, a psychologist and adviser to the UN and NGOs.
"We pride ourselves on being a moral people, trying to do the right thing. What we're doing is, we're exploiting people, using young people who've been child soldiers, deliberately sinking them into the jaws of combat and further violence. Nothing could be worse for these young people, nothing could be worse for security."
From opportunistic guns for hire on the fringe of domestic conflicts to a global force operating within a multibillion-dollar industry - the private military sector seems to be flourishing.
| When we think of war and the warrior who fights it, we have this
image in our mind of a man in uniform. And uniform means they are
fighting as part of a military, serving a nation. The cause that they
fight for therefore is political, patriotism. And yet, when you look at
the wars of the 21st century, they don't match those assumptions any
more. |
"The private military industry is a part of how the countries fight wars today ... The US government doesn't track the number of contractors used in places like Iraq or Afghanistan. We know it's a lot, we don't know exactly how many," says Sean McFate, a professor at Georgetown University who used to work for a private military company.
The employees of these contractors can come from anywhere, and sometimes those leading the missions don't know exactly who is working for them.
"They [the companies] hire and they sometimes create what they call 'subs', subcontractors. There's been commanders in Afghanistan who just simply say, 'We don't know who the subs of the subs of the subs are.' So you've all these, like, layers of a contract.
"It's the complete opposite of the private military world. You look at the budget first," says McFate. "Company self-interest is different than national self-interest. Companies are profit-maximisers, that's what they do, that's natural."
As the military trade grows and private military companies try to find the cheapest available soldiers around the world, who are the mercenaries? And what are the consequences of the privatisation of war?
Child Soldiers Reloaded looks at the changing nature of war, the business of warfare and the issues behind it.
 |
| Private military companies have become significant players in conflicts around the world [Al Jazeera] |
The business of warfare: Aegis Defence Services
In 2004, the US Department of Defense signed a deal estimated at $293m with the private military company Aegis to execute operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.| So in the early days of Iraq, it was a gold rush. You had companies
coming out of nowhere ... It was really like a cowboy wild, wild west,
where nobody had any control. Anybody doing anything with firearms in
this country could say they're a private military company. It was an ATM
for these companies. |
But according to journalist and author Stephen Armstrong, "He's a dashing and charming, public school-educated guards' officer. And that really wasn't massively a feature of the industry before then. It changed the global agenda of what a private military company was."
During the US invasion of Iraq, Aegis was contracted to oversee the communication and coordination for all the private security companies on the ground providing guards to protect US military bases.
"In effect, it meant that they were the general in charge of all of the private contractors. Now, at that point, the US military was the largest military presence in Iraq. But if you added together all of the private military contractors, Spicer was effectively in charge of the second-largest armed force in Iraq," says Armstrong.
However, when the US decided to end its military mission in Iraq, budgets decreased and the private military industry had to start offering different types of deals. As a result, they started to hire cheaper soldiers, many of them from the developing world.
Aegis employed many mercenaries from Sierra Leone and Uganda to work in Iraq because they were cheaper than other options.
"The Sierra Leonean war has been fought mainly by young combatants. If you're looking for young men to perform military jobs, the chances are quite good that they have also been child soldiers," says Maya Mynster Christensen, anthropologist, Royal Danish Defence College.
She explains that "from a Sierra Leone government perspective, the Iraq recruitment was considered a quite good deal, in the sense that they could actually take local troublemakers, sending them away to Iraq for a couple of years, and then returning them after two years with money earned from their overseas deployment. This could serve to stabilise security in Sierra Leone."
In 2010, the US Congress appointed a commission to investigate outsourcing to private military companies, but the recruitment of former child soldiers was not part of the investigation.
The commission concluded that the US government has been too dependent on private military companies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that between $30bn and $60bn disappeared to waste and fraud.
The number of former child soldiers recruited by private companies to take part in active combat is unknown, as is the total number of employees from the developing world is also unknown.
"On the one hand, Western countries have pumped large sums of money into the reintegration of former child soldiers, but now we have governments like the US supporting these so-called security companies that recruit people and continue their exposure to violence and cement their identities as perpetrators of violence as soldiers, that make it impossible to ever reintegrate into civilian life," says Michael Wessels, a psychologist and adviser to the UN and NGOs.
"We pride ourselves on being a moral people, trying to do the right thing. What we're doing is, we're exploiting people, using young people who've been child soldiers, deliberately sinking them into the jaws of combat and further violence. Nothing could be worse for these young people, nothing could be worse for security."
 |
| The number of former child soldiers recruited by private companies for war zone is unknown [Al Jazeera] |
Source: Al Jazeera News
