Child Soldiers Reloaded: The Privatisation of War
How private companies recruit former child soldiers for military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
Child Soldiers Reloaded: The Privatisation of War | Iraq | Al Jazeera
