Private securityPrivate security community find lucrative opportunities in Haiti
Debate intensifies over the deployment of private security companies to earthquake-ravaged Haiti; some see these companies as a welcome alternative to the traditionally brutal, corrupt, and ineffective local security forces; others argue that aid money should not be spent on hiring outside contractors but on building a better local security force
Haiti security conference was held in Miami last month for private military and security companies to showcase their services to governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in the earthquake devastated country of Haiti (see “Private Security Firms Eyeing Haiti Contracts,” 22 February 2010 HSNW). Some see the deployment of private security personnel to Haiti as welcome alternative to local security forces. Haiti, since shortly after it became independent, has served as a model of what academics call the “predatory state”: government security forces in Haiti never saw their role as serving and protecting the people. Rather, they were deployed to keep the people in line, often with extreme brutality, so as to allow a succession of rulers more effectively to exploit the country and its people. Luckily for some, the security forces of Haiti have always been thoroughly corrupt, so if you had the means you could buy the police or military off.
Others argue that the Haiti earthquake and the massive aid pouring into the country should be the occasion to reform the local security forces, and that money spent on foreign security companies is money not spent on creating better local forces.
On their Web site for the Haiti conference, the trade group IPOA (International Peace Operations Association) lists eleven companies advertising security services explicitly for Haiti. Here is a sample.
Herndon, Virginia-based Triple Canopy, a private military company with extensive security operations in Iraq and Israel, is advertising for business in Haiti. According to human rights activist and investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill, Triple Canopy took over the Xe/Blackwater security contract in Iraq in 2009.
Another company seeking work is Lenoir City, Tennessee-based EODT Technology which promises in its ad that its personnel are licensed to carry weapons in Haiti. EODT has worked in Afghanistan since 2004 and provides security for the Canadian Embassy in South Africa. On their Web site they promise a wide range of security services including force protection, guard services, port security, surveillance, and counter IED response services.
A retired CIA officer founded another company, Miami, Florida-based Overseas Security & Strategic Information which also advertises with IPOA for security business in Haiti. The company’s Web site says they have a “cadre of U.S. personnel” who served in Special Forces, Delta Force, and SEALS and they state many of their security personnel are former South African military and police.
Bill Quigley writes in the left-leaning San Francisco Bay Review that Patrick Elie, the former minister of defense in Haiti, told Anthony Fenton of the Inter Press Service that “these guys are like vultures coming to grab the loot over this disaster. And probably money that might have been injected into the Haitian economy is just going to be grabbed by these companies and I’m sure they are not the only these mercenary companies but also other companies like Halliburton or these other ones that always come on the heels of the troops.”
Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine, has criticized what she describes as the militarization of the response to the Haiti earthquake and the presence of “disaster capitalists” swooping into Haiti. The high priority placed on security by the U.S. and NGOs is wrong, she told Newsweek. “Aid should be prioritized over security. Any aid agency that’s afraid of Haitians should get out of Haiti.”
