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DynCorp International
DynCorp began in 1946 as the employee-owned air cargo
business California Eastern Airways, flying in supplies for
the Korean War.
One of
DynCorp's earliest "police" contracts involved the protection of Haitian
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and, after he was ousted, providing the
"technical advice" that brought military officers involved in that coup into
Haiti's National Police.
High-ranking members of the Haitian National
Intelligence Service (SIN), which had been set up and financed in the 1980s by
the US CIA as part of the war on drugs, were involved in the coup, and were
reportedly still receiving funding and training from the CIA for
intelligence-gathering activities at the time of the coup.
Representative John Conyers (D-Michigan) expressed concern that the
only US government agency to publicly recognize the Haitian junta's role in
drug trafficking was the DEA, and that, despite a wealth of evidence provided
by the DEA proving the junta's drug connections, the Clinton administration
downplayed this factor rather than use it as a hedge against the junta (as
the US government had done against Manuel Noriega).
DynCorp grew up
as part of the paramilitary drug eradictaion efforts in Columbia. Aerial
spraying of glyphosate herbicide, one of the most controversial methods of coca
eradication, has taken place in Colombia exclusively because of that
government's willingness to cooperate with the US in the militarized
eradication of coca after signing Plan Colombia in 2000.
In most cases
the spraying was, and is, carried out by American contractors, including
DynCorp, using planes and helicopters to spray
glyphosate on coca
plantations.
Recently, Boliviana negra, a glyphosate resistant type of
genetically engineered coca plant has been introduced, which was found to
resist glyphosate
herbicides as well as have an increased yield.
By 2001 DynCorp oversaw
an aerial fleet of forty-six helicopters and twenty-three fixed-wing aircraft
which operated from twenty-three locations spread out over Colombia, Bolivia
and Peru. Representative Janice D. "Jan" Schakowsky, Subcommittee on Oversight
and Investigations, claimed that American taxpayers have been funding a secret
war that has the potential to slowly but surely draw America further into a
poorly understood counterinsurgency conflict in South America. According to
investigative reporter Jason Vest, DynCorp employees were also implicated in
narcotics trafficking.
DynCorp's day-to-day operations in South America
were overseen by State Department officials, including the Narcotic Affairs
Section and the Air Wing, the latter a clique of unreformed cold warriors and
leftovers from 80s operations in Central America. It was essentially the State
Department's private air force in the Andes, with access to satellite-based
recording and mapping systems.
In September 2001, Ecuadorian Indians
filed a class action lawsuit, charging that DynCorp recklessly sprayed their
homes and farms, causing illnesses and
deaths
and destroying crops. After this Dyncorp developed military logistics centers
and coordinated "anti-terror" police training. According to a November 2003
exposé in Quito's El Comercio, the arrangement, hidden from the National
Defense Council, made DynCorp's people part of the
US diplomatic mission. The exposure
of a secret covenant signed with the Aeronautics Industries Directorate of the
Ecuadorian Air Force eventually resulted in the election of Juan Evo Morales
Ayma.
In Colombia, DynCorp's coca eradication and search-and-rescue
missions led to controversial pitched battles with rebels.
US contract pilots flew Black Hawk
helicopters carrying Colombian police officers who raked the countryside with
machine gun fire to protect the missions against attacks. DynCorp's "trainers"
simply ignored congressional rules, including those that restrict the US from
aiding military units linked to human rights abuses.
Over
forty years
an estimated 40,000 have been killed and 2 million displaced as a result of the
fighting in Columbia between government forces and the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC). In 1985 the FARC laid down its arms and entered into
a peace process with the government of Belisario Betancur. The Patriotic Union
was founded to participate in electoral activities but within several years as
many as 5,000 Patriotic Union elected officials, candidates, trade unionists,
community organizers and other activists were murdered by Colombian security
forces and government-linked right-wing
death
squads, especially the notorious United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC)
and its late leader Carlos Castano. Eight congressmen, 70 councilmen, dozens of
deputies and mayors and hundreds of trade unionists and peasant leaders were
slain and in 1989-1990 two of its presidential candidates were murdered within
seven months. Faced with complete extermination, the FARC rearmed and sought
refuge in the southeast of the country.
"Are we
outsourcing order to avoid public scrutiny, controversy or embarrassment? If
there is a potential for a privatized
Gulf of Tonkin
incident, then the American people deserve to have a full and open debate
before this policy goes any further." - Rep. Schakowsky upon submitting
legislation to prohibit US funding for private military corporations in the
Andean region
Dyncorp then became a leading private military
corporation, hiring former soldiers and police officers to implement US foreign
policy without having to report to Congress.
The push to privatize war began
under the Nixon Administration and gained traction during the first Bush
administration. After the first Gulf War, the Pentagon, then headed by Defense
Secretary Richard Bruce Cheney, paid
a Halliburton subsidiary nearly $9 million to study how private military
corporation's could support US soldiers in combat zones, according to a Mother
Jones investigation.
Richard
Bruce Cheney, CEO of
Halliburton, and Brown & Root, later known as Halliburton KBR, won billions
to construct and run military bases, some in secret locations.
2002 DynCorp, headquartered in Reston, Virginia, is
the nation's 13th largest military
contractor with $2.3 billion in revenue when it is acquired by
Computer Sciences. Dyncorp
"wins the contract" to protect Afghanistan's
Hamid Karzai.
DynCorp contract is a prime example of how the executive branch is
unilaterally projecting power and implementing policy by taking shortcuts to
the rule of law. No one knows what DynCorp specifically is contracted to do
because of claims that disclosure would compromise information proprietary to
DynCorp - protected by the "trade secrets exemption" in the Freedom of
Information Act.
"The kind of
routine oversight that official military activities would be subjected to are
evaded by contractors as a matter of course. This highlights how the whole
phenomenon of privatizing military functions has enabled the government to
evade oversight to a shocking degree." - Steven Aftergood
2003 DynCorp won a multimillion-dollar contract to build a
private police force in post-Saddam Iraq, with some of the funding diverted
from an anti-drug program for Afghanistan.
2004
State Department further expanded DynCorp's role as a global US surrogate with
a $1.75 billion, five year contract to provide
law enforcement personnel for civilian policing operations in
"post-conflict areas" around the world.
2006
Remnants of the
Taliban, with
the support of the Afghan people, begin staging more effective guerilla
attacks.
With DynCorp overwhelmed, the American military gets back into
the business of opium poppy
eradication.
"This new push will destroy the livelihood of poor Afghani
people. The killing of Afghans civilians marked as mujahideen will only cause
the Afghans to resist the occupation more intensely. Many empires have invaded
and conquered Afghanistan throughout history and all have eventually been
defeated. Western civilization has an opportunity to create
prosperity in Afghanistan.
On Earth there is a shortage of painkillers and
the Afghans are producing more opium
than ever. Although different factions will always struggle for control of
Afghanistan, just as they do everywhere else on Earth, control is less
important if all prosper. Civil unrest always occurs when living conditions are
harsh. Spraying opium poppy crops
with 2-4,D (Agent Orange) is not the answer to the Afghan problem.
Prosperity for common
Afghans could bring a peace to Afghanistan that could endure for centuries.
Unfortunately
those in power can not see that attempts to control Afghanistan with a foreign
occupation have failed throughout history." - Athbhreith Athbheochan
11/06
"Afghan peasants grow opium because it is the only crop they can
sell for a decent price. Will we win their hearts and minds by burning their
fields or bombing them with toxic chemicals? Not likely. How then to deal with
this dangerous crop in a way that also will advance our larger objectives? Buy
it - all of it. Offer a price equal to or slightly above what the drug lords
pay. Offer the peasants protection against drug lords who object. We are the
toughest gang in town, after all. Refine our purchases into opium to sell (or
better, give) to hospitals. If we have any left over, destroy it. Keep doing
this year after year until we can help the growers find an equally lucrative
crop to sustain their meager lifestyles. " - Charles Bell
2007 Washington transferred its ambassador to Colombia,
William Wood, to Afghanistan to oversee the
application of the Colombian model of counterinsurgency under the guise of
combating drug cultivation.
"In 2007 private security guards working
for Blackwater and Dyncorp
were earning up to $1,222 a day or $445,000 a year. An Army sergeant earned
$140 to $190 a day in pay and benefits, a total of $51,100 to $69,350 a year."
- Joseph
Stiglitz
Two years later
Afghanistan was
estimated to account for over 90% of the illegal
opium production in the
world.
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