IPOA president: Private military contractors are efficient, ethical

Private military contractors (PMCs) are efficient and specialized and have high ethical standards, Doug Brooks, founder and president of the International Peace Operations Association (IPOA), emphasized yesterday in the face of audience criticism regarding controversial PMC conduct in Iraq.

PMCs’ greatest appeal to governments is their surge capacity — the ability to provide a large number of contractors extremely quickly, Brooks said in his lecture “Stability Operations for Dummies: The Role of the Private Sector in Iraq” in Robertson.

“When the military realizes they don’t have enough of something and needs to gear up very quickly, they go to the private sector, which has unlimited resources,” Brooks explained. “The contractors are masters of the ad hoc.”

Brooks strongly refuted the assertion that such firms are greedy corporations, specifically stating that the press has over-reported profit margins, salaries and the total number of contractors employed.

Governments actually have more control over PMCs than they do over the military itself because the government can fire contractors if they do not meet expectations, Brooks said. Likewise, contractors stationed abroad, such as in Iraq, employ local workers, helping the local economy and decreasing costs, Brooks explained. Of the 180,000 contractors currently in Iraq, 120,000 are actually Iraqis employed by foreign firms.

“Faster, cheaper, better — these are the three things the private sector brings to any operation,” Brooks said.

Brooks believes PMCs are integral to future military operations because they create a division of labor between conventional military forces and contractors.

“I would argue that the U.S. military is more focused than it’s ever been,” Brooks explained. “The way it does that is by focusing military in combat arms and letting the private sector take care of ancillary responsibilities,” he said.

Brooks cited Darfur as a specific case in which such a division could be advantageous if the United States or its allies decided to get involved.

Many audience members faulted Brooks for not discussing the violence with which contractors in Iraq have been charged.

“I’m disturbed by the rosy picture he tried to paint about the contractors,” Marian Messing ’11 said. “It’s just very hard for me to believe The New York Times and [The] Washington Post are totally off the mark.”

Yet Brooks stressed that 90 percent of the private industry that operates in combat zones is support personnel, not combat soldiers. These non-combat personnel provide medical services, construction, maintenance and engineering. Security companies constitute only the remaining 10 percent, Brooks said.

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“When you see numbers like 50,000 private-sector companies in Iraq, your little BS warning lights should come up,” Brooks added. “The numbers are a lot smaller than what you see.”

Likewise, PMCs are subject to an ethical code and legal limits that restrict contractors’ actions, Brooks said, responding to audience criticism of PMCs. Private companies are not permitted to fight offensively, and all combat must be defensive, he explained.

IPOA, which represents 43 PMCs, has also created its own code of conduct, and Brooks said the organization is very open to criticism and suggestions. “The better the regulation, the better the oversight, the more comfortable the client is,” Brooks said.

Brooks is a specialist in African security issues and has extensively researched private-sector operation in Sierra Leone. He was an adjunct faculty member at American University and an academic fellow and research associate with the South African Institute of International Affairs. He founded IPOA in 2001.