Civilian Warriors

Title: Civilian Warriors

Author: Erik Prince

Publisher: Portfolio/Penguin, 2014 (First published 2013)

ISBN: 9781591847458

Pages: 404

We know that war is a nasty thing where two states and their troops fight against each other, causing extensive damage to themselves and the countryside in which they fight. In spite of this, the fighting man is the cornerstone of patriotism and sense of duty to one’s country that it might be difficult for some to digest the idea that in the last few decades, the private sector has borne a major share of the military effort, if not actual fighting, from the military’s shoulders. They have their advantages too, when traditional forces can inflame a situation instead of pacifying it. Moreover, nimbleness and fiscal efficiency of contracted Special Forces are so appealing for the government to let the opportunity pass. All the major armed forces use private contractors to outsource many of the ancillary services connected to the military. Blackwater is the most famous among them, whose workers accompanied the US military effort in the Middle East in a big way. As the years rolled by, the company piled notoriety up for its supposedly highhanded misdemeanors towards the locals and was subject to extensive investigations. Erik Prince, a former Navy man, founded Blackwater in 1997 and served as its CEO until 2009, and its chairman till 2010, when the company was sold. A native of Michigan, he now splits his time between homes in Virginia and Abu Dhabi where he pursues a variety of business ventures. This book is the story of the company, its progress, fall from grace and an honest reply to the string of wild allegations against it.

Use of private individuals in war had been going on for a long time, and Prince affirms that they were employed in the US War of Independence against the British. These smart individuals contributed a great deal to secure America’s freedom. By the end of the war, they had captured 2283 British ships, as compared to fewer than 200 by the standing Continental Navy. They have been in operation in all wars since, including the two world wars. Private Military Contractors, or PMCs for short, can be employed for a wide range of activities that includes transportation and engineering services, working laundry details, staffing of dining halls in forward operating bases, provision of security and even fighting for the CIA. Another boon for the military is that these contractors can be used to fudge the number of soldiery present in a foreign land. The quantity of fighting troops can be surreptitiously driven upward by employing more contractors as non-combatants. In the First Gulf War, PMCs hardly comprised 2% of the military manpower engaged. In Iraq a decade later, that number skyrocketed to a whopping 54%. Blackwater protected the Defence department first, but later landed up lucrative contracts with the State department to provide security to its personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places. Prince claims that without Blackwater, US diplomacy didn’t run. If their motorcades didn’t run, the State department didn’t run.

Born in a very rich family which even had its own aircrafts, it’s amazing that the author opted for the hardships of the military in enrolling in the navy as a SEAL (Sea, Air and Land team). However, he didn’t continue for long in that career and retired. He and a few of his friends thought up a training facility to impart training to military and law-enforcement agencies. He employed military-trained ex-employees in Blackwater and plunged headlong into the highly remunerative service of providing security to the government staff in Iraq. They are claimed to be instrumental in providing the CIA with a direct link to the Afghan warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum in the fight against the Taliban after 9/11. Max Boot, who provided the Afterword of the book, claims that Blackwater had been a front partner to many of the CIA’s operations. However, this is not mentioned in Prince’s narrative, who claims that the manuscript of the book was vetted by the CIA and that he is constrained by several no-disclosure agreements.

Within a few years of Blackwater’s excellent track record in Iraq, the floodgates of opposition opened. They were accused as mercenaries and flayed in the press and cyberspace as immoral killers and profiteers of misery and war. When four of its workers got killed in an ambush in Fallujah, the critics blamed the company for not providing enough ammunition to protect them. But when its operatives used excessive force in Nisour Square in which seventeen innocent Iraqi civilians were killed in a gun battle, public opinion decisively tilted against Blackwater. Prince admits that his guards had indeed used some intimidating tactics like throwing water bottles at Iraqi drivers or shooting at the car’s hood when it came very near to Blackwater’s motorcade. The author justifies it on the need to protect the person under their charge. Suicide bombings were fairly common in Iraq, and how can you ascertain beforehand whether the car approaching you is not a suicide bomber, but an ordinary Iraqi going about his daily business? But it is equally true that no self-respecting nation or a society could allow a bunch of foreign armed personnel meting out such rebuke to its own citizens. When the pressure mounted on the company, Prince sold it out in 2010, but claims that his company enjoyed a 100 percent success rate in protection duty. Although many of their guards were killed in attacks, none of the persons they were protecting did suffer any major injury. Critics doubted its tactics, but never its results. It is also noted that when President Bush faced a shoe thrown against him by an Iraqi journalist in 2008, it was Blackwater’s men who pounced upon the man and prevented him from throwing a second one.

Prince gallantly defends the allegations leveled against him, with a wide array of convincing arguments and statistics. There’s indeed a limit to the accusations that can be directed against a man for the deeds of his employees stationed thousands of miles away in a war zone on another continent. Even with this concession, his finding fault with the NTSB investigation that followed a Blackwater plane crash in Afghanistan exceeds the limits of propriety. As is common with other American evaluations of Asian capability, Prince lambasts the operational facilities and motivation of Asian soldiers. After the untimely exit from the company he had founded, the author now works for a private equity start-up, financing agriculture, energy and mining projects in Africa, the Middle East and other difficult parts of the world.

The book is basically the owner’s response to the flood of allegations heaped on his company. The language is crisp, witty and sharp. He doesn’t mince words when elaborating the pointlessness of many dumb Congress investigators in which the members had no idea of what was going on. The book includes a few photographs, a comprehensive section of Notes, but strangely, no index.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star