Iraq Mercenaries

Mercenaries run amok in Iraq

Former spook Bob Baer has a tremendous piece in Vanity Fair about the private military now running amok in Iraq, including Erinys. Just to remind you, the former Russian KGB agent - Alexander Litvinenko - murdered with polonium-210 while living in London was an employee of Erinys. If you remember, Erinys was also one of the radiation sites investigators picked up on their trail of the polonium assassins. While Erinys does not figure into the this piece in any big meaningful way, it still adds an interesting series of questions in the world of private mercenaries.

Now for Baer's piece...

"I knew who [Tim] Spicer was. He'd popped up on the C.I.A.'s radar after he retired from the British Army and went to work, in 1996, as the C.E.O. of Sandline International, a private military company offering "operational support" to "legitimate governments." A year later Spicer was in Papua New Guinea, where he fielded a mercenary army for the government in order to protect a multi-national copper-mining company. After Spicer was expelled, he moved on to Sierra Leone, this time helping to ship arms to coup plotters. Spicer's name resurfaced in 2004 in connection with a putsch aimed at Equatorial Guinea, allegedly led by Simon Mann, his friend, former army colleague, and onetime business associate. Though questioned by British officials, Spicer was not implicated in the incident.

But then, somehow, two months later, Spicer's company, known as Aegis Defence Services, landed a $293 million Pentagon contract to coordinate security for reconstruction projects, as well as support for other private military companies, in Iraq. This effectively put him in command of the second-largest foreign armed force in the country—behind America's but ahead of Britain's. These men aren't officially part of the Coalition of the Willing, because they're all paid contractors—the Coalition of the Billing, you might call it—but they're a crucial part of the coalition's forces nonetheless."

Continued