Abstract
In March 2004, after two foreign soldiers were found dead, the world learned that the troops deployed by the United States in Iraq did not consist solely of local soldiers. A shadow army, composed by more than 100000 contractors was there, and among them thousands of heavily armed mercenaries belonging to the most powerful private military firm (PMF): Black Water, founded by Erik Prince. The firm recently changed its name to XE, after some of the personnel were involved in the massacre of 17 civilians, among which were children.
PMFs, profit-oriented firms that provide services linked to warfare, apparently help the states that need military support. But we know very little about them. They are not included in the total death count (we suppose that 780 Black Water men died in Iraq but we are not sure), their injuries are not calculated, and their crimes are not punished. It is almost impossible to know exactly what is happening in the field.
In this paper, I am not going to concentrate on PMFs only but on the Private Military Industry (PMI) in general. Because PMI is not only about sending men in the field. PMI is about training, consulting, and logistics as well. It is an industry that runs a business in and outside the battlefield. It actually generates more then $100 billion each year and is present in more than 50 countries (Image 1).
So the world started by privatizing war with mercenaries, first with mercenary companies in Europe at the beginning of the 19th century and then with classic mercenaries in Congo and Angola during the 1960-70s. We are now witnessing international security privatization, with the PMI. How did this happen? And does privatizing security lead to important consequences?
