[NYTr] For a fistful of dollars: Latin Americans in Bush's War

[nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com]

Progreso Weekly - Dec 8, 2005
http://www.progresoweekly.com/index.php?progreso=Emilio_Paz&otherweek=1134021600


For a fistful of dollars

By Emilio Paz

Ten U.S. marines were killed last week in Iraq in one roadside-bomb
explosion near Fallujah. Their deaths were noted and mourned. One
Peruvian mercenary was killed last week in Kabul. His death was less
noted in the media, though not less mourned by his family in Lima.

Martín Alberto Jara Richard, 40, left for Afghanistan in early
November to work as a "security guard" for an unnamed American
company, under a contract with an employment agency called 3D Global
Solutions that hires mercenaries on behalf of the U.S. and British
governments. Jara's body was flown to London last week and will be
returned to Peru via Washington. The circumstances of his death were
not disclosed.

Jara is the first Peruvian casualty in Iraq since October, when more
than 1,000 Latin American guns-for-hire left for the Middle East,
hired under the same conditions as he was. His death focuses attention
on a practice that has been largely ignored in South America and the
Caribbean.

The privatization of war

The Green Zone of Baghdad, a four-square-mile area that houses the
U.S. and British embassies, the U.S. Central Command and Iraqi
government headquarters, is being protected not only by allied troops
but also by more than 1,200 Chilean, Peruvian, Nicaraguan, and
Honduran mercenaries -- euphemistically called "civilian contractors."

Almost 700 of them are Peruvian; about 250 are Chilean; about 320 are
Honduran. Most are former soldiers or former policemen, recruited
through ads placed in local newspapers by 3D Global Solutions. In
Peru, 3D is represented by an outfit called Gestión de Seguridad
(Gesegur), or Security Business. Another hiring company active in Peru
is called Triple Canopy Operations; it has a subsidiary called Gun
Supply.

According to the Peruvian press, which obtained a copy of a Triple
Canopy contract in October, the signatory "exempts the government of
the United States, the hiring company and its subsidiaries from all
responsibility for each of the claims, losses, damages and injuries
that may occur" to him. The contracts run for one year and are
renewable.

What's a life worth?

The mercenaries are paid between $1,000 and $1,200 per month.
Transportation, housing, food, medical care and an insurance policy
are provided in addition. Arrangements can be made for the families to
receive part or all of the mercenary's salary.

According to a Triple Canopy contract disclosed in Lima by television
Channel Two, the insurance payments are: $243,000 for the loss of an
arm; $225,000 for a leg; $190,000 for a hand; $160,000 for a foot;
$125,000 for an eye; $58,000 for a finger, and $12,500 for a toe.
Channel Two could not obtain the figure for the loss of a life.

Altogether, there are 20,000 "private security contractors" in Iraq, a
number revealed by The Washington Post and the PBS program
"Frontline." The admittedly incomplete information on the Iraq
Coalition Casualties website -- http://icasualties.org/oif/Civ.aspx --
showed 286 contractor fatalities as of Dec. 4.

Peruvian Army trains civilian gunmen

The Peruvian newspaper El Comercio in late October revealed that the
Peruvian Army was actively involved in furnishing trained mercenaries
to the United States. A contract between the Army and Triple Canopy,
signed Sept. 23, stated that the Army would set up four training
courses at its base in Huachipa, the newspaper said.

The first course trained 218 "civilian volunteers," for which the Army
was paid 104,640 soles by Triple Canopy -- the equivalent of
US$30,657; the second trained another 218, but the Army charged more:
156,960 soles, or US$45,985. The third course trained 120 men for
86,400 soles, or US$25,313, and the fourth, 122 men for 87,840 soles,
or US$25,734. The total number of mercenaries trained was 678.

When questioned about this by Congress, Defense Minister Marciano
Rengifo acknowledged that the Peruvian Army had agreed to train the
"civilians" for a total payment of 435,840 soles, or US$127,690. The
figure included "130,000 rounds of 5.56-millimeter and 9-mm.
ammunition," according to the contract disclosed by El Comercio.

Ammunition of those calibers is fired only by military weapons.
Peruvian law forbids civilians to use military weapons.

The debate is beginning

Jara's death raises another issue, which is now being debated in Peru.
According to El Comercio, the Secretary of Peruvian Communities
Abroad, Jorge Lázaro, said last week in Lima that "the migration of
this Peruvian was legal and he traveled [to Afghanistan] in full use
of his physical and mental faculties, exercising his civil and
political rights."

Peruvian laws neither cover nor sanction the practice of hiring
Peruvian citizens to fight as mercenaries in foreign countries, he
said. There are legal loopholes, he said. And for the government to
deal with the issue would be a long and costly legal process. He might
as well have said that the government washes its hands of the whole
affair and the U.S. is free to continue hiring cannon fodder in Peru.

However, also last week, the executive director of the Andean
Commission of Jurists, Enrique Bernales Ballesteros, told CPN Radio in
Lima that the contracts used to send Peruvians to Iraq and Afghanistan
"lack all legality because they are contrary to the nation's laws."
There are no loopholes in those laws, he said. Besides, "our country
is a signatory to the Geneva Convention, which prohibits hiring
persons to involve them in foreign conflicts."

No doubt the topic will be debated at the highest levels of the
Peruvian executive and judiciary. It should also be debated here in
the United States. To entice Third World citizens to fight and be
killed in U.S.-engineered wars is not only illegal but also morally
wrong. 

                            ***

Progreso Weekly - Dec 8, 2005
http://www.progresoweekly.com/index.php?progreso=Redaccion&otherweek=1134021600

Honduran 'Guards' were turned into combatants

by Progreso Weekly staff

Two Hondurans who returned from Iraq, where they traveled along with
more than 300 people hired by a U.S. security company, complained that
they were ordered to kill insurgents, Tegucigalpa's El Nuevo Diario
reported, citing reports from Agence France-Presse.

"We ask the government to investigate the situation of our compatriots
[remaining in Iraq] and to investigate the company, because we were
hired to serve as security guards and once we got there we were turned
into mercenaries to kill people, [to kill] whoever attacked U.S.
interests," said Daniel Alvarado Matamoros on Dec. 4.

The Hondurans were taken to that country on Oct. 7 by the American
company Your Solution, whose officials offered them monthly wages of
up to US$1,200 for eight-hour work days, plus medical and life
insurance, El Nuevo Diario reported.

One hundred and sixty-five Hondurans left that day for Baghdad to join
other groups of 36 and 123, who had preceded them. Their
qualifications were military service and experience in explosives and
the protection of dignitaries.

With the Hondurans traveled 105 Chileans, who had been discovered in
September training clandestinely in the outskirts of Tegucigalpa.
Honduran authorities halted the training because the Chileans had
entered Hondurans on tourist visas.

The two complainants, who remained in Iraq 22 days, said the Americans
who supervised them put them through 16-hour work days and sent them
into extremely dangerous areas.

"Every day, the American soldiers brought us together from 11 p.m.
till 1 a.m. We went to bed at 3 a.m.[...] They treated us [...] like
slaves," Saúl Madariaga complained to the AFP.

"We didn't even have medical care. Those of us who got sick were told:
'Drink water,'" said Madariaga, adding that his "paisanos" remaining
in Iraq are "desperate to return."

Alvarado told the French agency that four other Hondurans, eight
Chileans and four Peruvians already have returned to their homelands.