Movie Review
Movie review: ‘Shadow Company’
The documentary ‘Shadow Company’ investigates the role of mercenaries (known as Private Military Companies, or PMCs) in modern day conflicts, defining mercenaries as people who fight for money rather than ideology, nationality or morality (1). It includes interviews with experts on the topic as well as with mercenaries themselves, and provides an excellent discussion of mercenary involvement in modern conflicts from Sierra Leone to Iraq. The real value in this documentary is that it brings the discussion about mercenaries in modern wars into the public sphere, raising questions of the legitimacy, morality and accountability of mercenary forces. It is not an opinionated piece, it acts to bring these questions into popular dialogue rather than to answer them.
Today’s political world is ordered by nation-states, which are defined by their legitimate monopoly of violence over a given territory. That is to say the state (through the police force and the army) is the only institution we allow to use force over us, and people who illegitimately use force are variously criminals or terrorists. So where do mercenary forces fit into this? Mercenaries, or Private Military Companies (PMCs) are essentially soldiers for hire, they are people who fight for money rather than for their country or for ideology. What gives these groups the legitimacy or justification to use the force they do? Are they in fact illegitimate and their actions criminal or terrorist? Why does a military uniform justify an otherwise immoral action? These are some of the questions raised by ‘Shadow Company’. For me it is clear that PMCs directly challenge the legitimacy of the state, and the only reason they are allowed to continue their actions is because they act in failed or weak states. They attempt to justify their actions by claiming either that they act only defensively (for example Alan Bell’s company), or that their actions are guided by morality and achieve positive change (for example Executive Outcomes’ involvement in Sierra Leone). However as I will go on to prove, neither of these arguments justify the use of violence outside of state legitimacy. As Dr Eike Kluge explains, the fundamental difference between a mercenary (also referred to as security contractors) and a soldier who fights under the flag of a country is that the association with the state provides traditional soldiers with ‘a legitimate use of force allowing that individual to engage in activities which normally would be considered criminal or murderous, whereas a mercenary lacks that immediate social justification’. While of course there are many situations when mercenaries have to use violence in legitimate self-defense, this line becomes blurred in weak states.
The documentary distinguishes two separate types of PMCs, offensive and defensive forces. Executive Outcomes is a clear example of an offensive force, they went into Sierra Leone on a contract from the government to subdue the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), and in 18 months had forced the 15,000 strong rebel force into a peace agreement using only 150 men. Executive Outcomes had no legitimacy to use violence in Sierra Leone, they were not held accountable to any law or moral code, and the only reason they were able to act unchallenged is because the state they were acting in was weak – its police force were weakly institutionalised and prone to corruption. While they were hired by the government and therefore an argument could be made that they were legitimised by their association with the state in the same way a traditional army is, they were distinct from a traditional army because they fought not for their country or for ideology, but for money. While their involvement led to a peace agreement and democratic elections in Sierra Leone, as Phil Lancaster argues, the end does not justify the means and believing so defends a ‘might makes right’ mentality. Challenging Lancaster’s ideas is Cobus Claassens, who was one of the employees of Executive Outcomes deployed in Sierra Leone. Claassens claims that ‘what we achieved here was a tremendous thing for the Sierra Leone people… because of what we did a democratic election was held and the people were set free’. But what if Executive Outcomes had been hired not by the Sierra Leone government, but by the RUF? Simply because their involvement led to a positive outcome does not justify the violence they used to achieve that outcome. Furthermore, if they are driven by money rather than by moral or ideological goals, it is not an unreasonable thought that PMCs might intentionally perpetuate conflict and instability in order to continue making money.
Contrasting this there are defensive PMCs such as Alan Bell’s company Globe Risk, which provides security for individuals and mining, gas and oil facilities. Companies like this pose far less of a challenge to state authority, as theoretically they only use violence defensively. In a lecture about his company, Mr Bell stated that his employees only use violence under two conditions, 1) if they are threatened themselves and 2) if the noun they are protecting is threatened. While this type of PMC is clearly far less dangerous and poses a smaller challenge to state legitimacy than do offensive PMCs like Executive Outcomes, their actions are still restrained only by company policy and individual morality, and they are far less bound buy the laws of the states they act in than they would be in states like Canada. An example of this can be seen in the narration of the documentary, which follows James Ashcroft’s experiences as a private security contractor in Iraq. He makes the comment that working in Iraq as a security contractor is entirely different than working as a bodyguard in Milan and Paris, because in Iraq there is nothing stopping him pointing weapons or driving cars off the road, he can do ‘whatever it takes to protect our principle’. At this point in the documentary it becomes clear that ‘acting in defense’ is a very flexible term, as is what is deemed a ‘threat’. The flexibility of these terms means that they can no longer be used as the only justification of violence: in Canada if you killed someone in ‘self defense’ there would be a court case and an investigation which made sure that your life was actually in danger. However in a war torn or otherwise unstable state like Iraq, it is unlikely that the might of a PMC would be challenged by the right of law.
For example, the New York Times reported a case in 2010 where the PMC Blackwater was under investigation by the US Justice Department for attempting to bribe the Iraqi government in the wake of the massacre of 17 people (2). Distressingly, the investigation was not into the unjust murder of 17 people, rather into the bribery attempt which broke US federal law. As the massacre did not happen on US soil the US government did not have the authority to investigate it, while the Iraq state was too weak and susceptible to corruption to properly deal with it. This is just one example of the many where PMCs are not held accountable for the violent methods they employ. Even the PMCs which are entirely defensive forces, equatable to highly armed security guards of very high stake targets, the nature of the environments they work in mean that ‘defensive action’ becomes a lose term, and ultimately PMCs generally act with far more unjustified violence than they would in a strongly institutionalized state. A clear demonstration of this is the point in the documentary where standard protocols for simply driving down the road are explained by Robert Pelton: security contractors in Iraq drive into oncoming traffic, and if vehicles are deemed ‘too close’ (a term which is entirely subjective), they are signaled to retreat first with a hand gesture, then by raising a weapon, then by firing a warning shot, then a shot into the engine, and then shooting the driver. In this example, it is clear to see just how loosely terms like ‘danger’ ‘self-defense’ and ‘defensive action’ are defined in the weak or failed states where PMCs generally work. This example makes it clear that murder could be justified simply because another car was driving too close to a PMC vehicle.
So why is it acceptable when the military uses violence and force, but not when mercenaries do? The answer to this question is simple, it goes back once again to Weber’s definition of the state, which is a political institution characterised by its legitimate monopoly of violence over a territory. Therefore, violence and force by the military is legitimate because it is state-sponsored. Mercenary action is not, and as such would generally be regarded as criminal, murderous or terrorist, but because of the nature of the states they work in (failed or weak, poorly institutionalised, corrupt states), mercenary might almost always goes unchallenged. But what about cases when a government employs a PMC, such as in Sierra Leone? In this case what is the difference between a PMC and a national army? Both are paid by the government, but the difference is that military troops share a national identity with their state, and therefore they uniformly agree in the ideology they are fighting for. Whilst they are getting paid, it is an amount significantly less than mercenary fighters would be paid, and the difference is that mercenaries do not have the same nationality or share a belief in the same ideology, they simply fight for whatever they are paid to fight for. Furthermore while a military or police force are easily identifiable by their uniforms and are consistently associated with the state, mercenary forces are a much more independent, and therefore much less legitimate force.
I conclude that the use of violence and force by mercenaries poses severe challenges to morality and the legitimacy of the state. If the state is defined as legitimate by its monopoly over violence, the use of violence by mercenary forces directly challenges this legitimacy. Though I recognise that PMCs occasionally achieve positive change such as in Sierra Leone, such outcomes do not justify the illegitimate violence which was the means to the end. Furthermore, I recognise that PMCs should be allowed to act in self defense, as should any person. There certainly exist cases where PMCs do act solely as high-risk security guards, and of course with such high risk targets in such war torn areas the probability of violence is high. However the flexibility of the terms ‘self defense’ and ‘danger’ and the weak law enforcement institutions in such states leave PMCs largely unaccountable for the violence they use. While a citizen is accountable to the law of their state and a traditional soldier is accountable to the military laws of their state, PMCs are in theory accountable to the laws of the state they are in, however their sheer military might allows them to break these laws often unchallenged. While this of course does not apply to all PMCs, the challenges that PMC unaccountability poses to morality and state legitimacy are significant.
1 –Shadow Company. USA: Nick Bicanic, Jason Bourque, 2006. film.
2 – Myers, Stephen. ‘U.S. Examines Whether Blackwater Tried Bribery’. New York Timews 2010. Web. 31 Oct. 2014.