Send private-security contractors into Gaza? That’s a terrible idea

In “Bad Ideas Jeans,” a classic Saturday Night Live sketch from the 1980s, a group of oblivious guys sit around and talk about enacting their terrible plans, from doing home renovations on a rental apartment to inviting a crack cocaine addict for a stay-over. Now it seems a new version is being filmed in Abu Dhabi—by Israeli, U.S., and UAE leaders talking up the bad idea of using private military contractors into Gaza, in contradiction of every lesson learned in Iraq, Afghanistan, and beyond.

According to the Washington Post’s uber-connected David Ignatius, these leaders want to hire and deploy U.S.-based armed contractors, after a ceasefire, to help the wartorn enclave find its footing in the post-war future. In his July 23 column, Ignatius generously describes the idea as “potentially controversial.”

This is an understatement, given the decades of scandals that surround the private military industry. You may recall the sex-worker abuse perpetrated by Dyncorp employees in the Balkans, in which the company’s site supervisor videotaped himself raping two young women and the whistleblower was punished. Or the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq by CACI contractors. Or Blackwater’s Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad that left 17 dead. And these are the well-known ones. There are scores of lesser-remembered incidents, like the time Aegis contractors shot at civilians, made a “trophy” video, and put it on the Internet; or the time a Blackwater contractor drunkenly shot and killed a guard of the Iraqi prime minister on Christmas Eve.

If hiring armed contractors for Gaza is actually being planned, then the people behind it should answer some basic questions before it moves from a mere bad idea to a policy failure. These fall into several categories:

Money. The history of private military contractors is rife with mismanaged contracts and corruption—$31 billion to $60 billion of American taxpayer dollars was wasted or stolen in Iraq and Afghanistan alone, according to the U.S. government’s own Commission of Wartime Contracting. Who will hire the Gaza force and how will it be paid? Will U.S. taxpayer funds be used in any direct or indirect way? What will the contracting competition process be? How will contract management and supervision needs be handled? What will be acceptable costs, and, even more, the profit margins allowed? (As example of how problematic this can get, a $20.1 billion logistics contract in Iraq paid the Pakistani subcontractors 50 cents an hour.) Bonus question: Will anyone who proposed this idea or is involved in the negotiations be allowed to profit?

Screening. The long history of contractors who overpromise and underdeliver stretches at least from the age of Machiavelli to Blackwater’s Erik Prince. Indeed, Prince, who has since made a cottage industry of proposing contracting out nearly every international crisis, has at the same time violated arms embargoes, engaged in “shady” arms deals, and accepted a contract to train a security force in China. What will be the background checks for whichever company is hired, its owners, and its employees? What kind of record will disqualify them from receiving contracts, even through subcontractors, cut-outs, and shell companies?

Training and doctrine. The proposed peacekeeping and governing role in Gaza will differ from either a standard military mission or past contractor roles, which have focused on escorting dignitaries and convoys. The contract force will not just be operational virgins, but also geographic ones, with no experience in the location to which they would be deploying (unless the contractor is planning on hiring former IDF or Hamas fighters). How will the individual armed contractors be hired, trained, and equipped? How will they then be organized and prepared into a viable force? What doctrine will guide them and how will they learn it?

Legal accountability. Contractors are not subject to military law, and both international and U.S. public law on the issue remains lacking. Indeed, the questions of criminal and even civil punishment for the contractors involved in Abu Ghraib and the killings at Nisour Square took over a decade to work their way through the courts and are still effectively unresolved. What will be legal accountability mechanisms for the proposed contractor force: U.S. criminal law? U.S. civil law? The Israeli legal system? The Palestinian Authority judicial system (from the West Bank)? The parallel Hamas system legal system? None of the above? 

Command and control. Contractors are not bound by military command and control nor even personal or patriotic bonds, but simply an easily breakable contract. There are multiple examples of PMC employees refusing to follow commands, including from U.S. officers. Some even refused simply to give their name to U.S. Army officers arriving at the scene of the massacre in Nisour Square. More recently, the refusal of contractors to stay in Afghanistan after U.S. forces withdrew became “a turning point” in the government’s collapse to the Taliban. Under whose command and control will the contractors operate and how will that entity have any actual authority beyond threatening paychecks?

Misaligned interests. Contractor operations have suffered from what are known as “principal agent dilemmas,” in which their goals and the goals of those who hire them can never be in perfect alignment. In Iraq, for example, contractors’ focus on force protection and their financial bottom line worked in opposition to U.S. strategic goals, such as winning local hearts and minds. What are your plans for managing this unresolvable tension? 

Perception. In outsourced operations across Latin America, Iraq, and Afghanistan, neither local citizens nor the international public made much distinction between the U.S. government and its private security contractors. Why do you think that this time will be different? How will using contractors inside Gaza avoid policy complications, especially if one of them engages in violence (as they are being armed to do) or, even worse, harms a local civilian through intent or accident?

Response. After U.S. contractors were killed or captured in Iraq, policymakers felt obliged to respond with military action, due to the political outcry and pressure, perceived harm to the operation, and larger reputational concerns. These reprisals ranged from limited air strikes on Iranian-linked militias to massive operations like the one that culminated in the 2004 Battle of Falluja and left 27 U.S. soldiers dead. If an American contractor inside Gaza is wounded, killed, or even captured, will the U.S. government respond with military force? If yes, how will leaders explain why a policy of outsourcing is now putting U.S. troops in harm’s way? If no, how will leaders explain why they abandoned American citizens in a war zone?

Post-conflict operations are complex and messy and not the place for repeatedly debunked ideas. If whoever is pushing for deploying armed American contractors to Gaza can’t answer these questions credibly, then they should be taken as seriously as that SNL sketch. 

P.W. Singer is Strategist at New America and the author of multiple books on national security, including Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry (Cornell University Press, 2003).