Who's Fighting Our Wars?

By Onnesha Roychoudhuri, AlterNet. Posted January 9, 2006.

During the first Gulf War, there was one private military contract (PMC) employee for every 100 soldiers. In today's Iraq war, that ratio has risen dramatically to one PMC for every 10 soldiers.

It's figures like this that make Nick Bicanic's new documentary, "Shadow Company," such an eye-opener. Nation-states are paying private companies to provide armed civilians, in lieu of soldiers, on an unprecedented scale. Yet, aside from a handful of allegations about contract workers firing on innocent civilians, little is known about PMCs.

In January 2004, Bicanic, of Purpose Films, began a correspondence with a friend who had joined a private military company and was stationed in Baghdad. Through the pseudonymous "James," who provides narration throughout "Shadow Company," and hundreds of hours of interviews, Bicanic became aware of how much of the war effort was being run by PMCs. "I realized that this film really had to be made because the rules of war had changed, and there was a relevant message about modern warfare that wasn't coming across in other media," he says.

Currently in negotiations for release, the film has already attracted attention from media outlets and Hollywood producers. Bicanic joined AlterNet via telephone to discuss the film.

What do you try to convey through the film?

The film is about the modern-day mercenary, or the private military contractor. They are vital in modern warfare today because the U.S. Army can't go to war without them. They're so overstretched in Iraq that they literally can't have dinner without PMCs. The film tells the story of the men that do this kind of work. It looks at what do they do, where they come from, and what motivates them to put their lives in harm's way on a daily basis. We wanted to chronicle what exactly is going on in the state of modern warfare and modern conflict resolution today. In order to do that, we also had to tell the history of privatization and warfare -- where it originated, historical precedents and where this happens today.

How far back can the concept of the mercenary be traced?

For as long as there has been war, there has been the outsourcing of war. One of the reasons why we wanted to make the film is to point this out. People look at what's happening in Iraq and think it's new. In actual fact, what's different is there's just a lot more of them and we're hearing about them more. Historically, it hasn't been 20,000 contractors in the same space as the U.S. Army. It might be 100 guys flying planes in Colombia or 50 guys doing executive protection in the Philippines. But, the idea of using private armed civilians to in some way affect the result of a conflict has been around for a long time.

Why has there been an upsurge in PMCs?

The upsurges throughout history have always occurred in a similar setup: where there's been a drastic reduction in the number of armed forces yet at the same time a conflict that requires armed forces. This is when people are culled from private environments. In this particular case, the U.S. government decided to enter a conflict that it did not have the ability to fully service with its own military. They had to create all these private roles because there weren't enough soldiers to fill them.

If PMCs have been around for so many years, why are we only getting a documentary made about them now?

It was difficult to find some of this information. The industry is not as transparent and accountable as it should be, and that's one of the points we try to make in the film. Back in the day, even if you tried to look for information on this stuff, it would have been much more difficult to find. In a sense, we started looking for it is just as it started to become more available. This is simply because, for the first time ever, the firms were forced to go on recruiting drives because so many people were needed.

What was the result of this urgency?

In the early stages in Iraq, so many people were needed so quickly that companies came out of nowhere. There was the infamous case of the company Custer Battles. This was a massive scandal because they appeared to be doing a good job for the better part of nine to 12 months. But that's because nobody was looking. And when they started looking, they realized that Custer Battles was charging the U.S. for employees that didn't exist. This kind of thing happened a lot in the beginning. But, as more people started paying attention, things stabilized more. Hopefully, enough stuff has been shaken out that the major bad apples like Custer Battles have gone away. However, unless we look more closely and educate both the government and the general public, people just aren't going to know what's going on.

From your interviews and research, what did you learn about the recruiting process?

Onnesha Roychoudhuri is an editorial fellow at AlterNet.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »