Jeremy Scahill | The Nation

When Erik Prince, founder of the infamous mercenary company Blackwater, claimed in early 2010 he was leaving the soldier of fortune business, he said he'd decided to pursue a less dangerous and controversial line of work. “I’m going to teach high school,” he said, straight-faced, in an interview with Vanity Fair. “History and economics. I may even coach wrestling. Hey, Indiana Jones taught school, too.” It was an interesting comment. As fans of Indiana Jones will recall, the whip-wielding archaeologist was indeed a professor. But what he did on the side—traveling the globe in search of potentially history-altering artifacts—was his real passion. In one confrontation with his arch-nemesis, archaeologist René Emile Belloq, who is working for the Nazis, Jones threatens to blow up the Ark of the Covenant with an RPG. "You're going to give mercenaries a bad name," Belloq tells him.

Erik Prince did leave the US, but he isn't teaching high school and is certainly not out of the mercenary business. In fact, far from emerging as a neo-Indiana Jones, the antithesis of a mercenary, Prince is more like Belloq, offering his services to the highest bidder. Over the weekend, The New York Times revealed that Prince was leading an effort to build an army of mercenaries, 800 strong—including scores from Colombia—in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. They would be trained by US, European and South African Special Forces veterans. Prince's new company, Reflex Responses, also known as R2, was bankrolled to the tune of $529 million from "the oil-soaked sheikdom," according to the Times, adding that Prince was "hired by the crown prince of Abu Dhabi" Sheik Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan. Erik Prince is not mentioned by name in corporate documents outlining the deal, but is instead referred to as "Kingfish."

The contract between R2 and the UAE kicked in last June and is slated to run through May 2015. According to corporate documents on the private army Prince is building in the UAE, its potential roles include "crowd-control operations," defending oil pipelines from potential terrorist attacks and special operations missions inside and outside the UAE “to destroy enemy personnel and equipment.” Other sources said the Emiratis wanted to potentially use the force to quell potential rebellions in the country's massive labor camps that house the Filipinos, Pakistanis and other imported laborers that fuel the country's work force. Prince also has plans to build a massive training base, modeled after the 7,000 acre private military base Blackwater built in Moyock, North Carolina. 

The US government is aware of the arrangement. “The gulf countries, and the UAE in particular, don’t have a lot of military experience. It would make sense if they looked outside their borders for help,” one Obama administration official "who knew of the operation" told the Times. “They might want to show that they are not to be messed with.” 

Rep. Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat who serves on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence told The Nation she is launching an investigation into Prince's work in the UAE. "The man who brought us Blackwater, a company whose name has become synonymous with the worst of contractor abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been hired to put together a mercenary army that could be used to suppress a revolt or attack pro-democracy protesters," Schakowsky said. "I will be pursuing the question of whether Mr. Prince obtained the necessary licenses to conduct the training of foreign troops and whether his actions in UAE have broken any U.S. laws.  Regardless, I do not believe private US citizens should be providing mercenary forces for foreign governments." 

While much of the focus on R2's arrangement with the UAE has detailed its work within the Emirates, an official statement from General Juma Ali Khalaf Al Hamiri, of the UAE military, suggested that the services of R2 and other Western firms have helped the UAE "to make meaningful and significant contributions in theatres of operations such as Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan and most recently Libya."

The Times reports that part of the UAE's motivation in getting into bed with Prince was the hope that his "troops could blunt the regional aggression of Iran," adding: "Some security consultants believe that Mr. Prince’s efforts to bolster the Emirates’ defenses against an Iranian threat might yield some benefits for the American government, which shares the U.A.E.’s concern about creeping Iranian influence in the region. 'As much as Erik Prince is a pariah in the United States, he may be just what the doctor ordered in the U.A.E.,' said an American security consultant with knowledge of R2’s work."

In a speech Prince delivered in late 2009, a copy of which was obtained by The Nation, Prince spoke of the need to confront Iranian influence in the Middle East, charging that Iran has a "master plan to stir up and organize a Shia revolt through the whole region." At the time, Prince proposed that armed private soldiers from companies like Blackwater be deployed in countries throughout the region to target Iranian influence. "The Iranians have a very sinister hand in these places," Prince said. "You're not going to solve it by putting a lot of uniformed soldiers in all these countries. It's way too politically sensitive. The private sector can operate there with a very, very small, very light footprint." In addition to concerns of political expediency, Prince suggested that using private contractors to conduct such operations would be cost-effective. "The overall defense budget is going to have to be cut and they're going to look for ways, they're going to have to have ways to become more efficient," he said.

Former employees of R2 "said that in recruiting the Colombians and others from halfway around the world, Mr. Prince’s subordinates were following his strict rule: hire no Muslims," according to the Times. "Muslim soldiers, Mr. Prince warned, could not be counted on to kill fellow Muslims." One of the Colombians who worked for Prince in the UAE told the Times, “We were practically an army for the Emirates,” adding: “They wanted people who had a lot of experience in countries with conflicts, like Colombia.”

This particular choice is interesting given the past treatment of Colombians by Prince's companies. In 2006, thirty-five former Colombian troops on contract in Iraq with Blackwater claimed that the firm had defrauded them and was paying them just $34 a day for a job that earned exponentially more for their US and European counterparts. The Colombians said they were originally promised $4000 a month but learned of their greatly reduced pay only after arriving in Iraq. When they protested and demanded to leave Baghdad, Blackwater officials reportedly “threatened to remove us from the base and leave us in the street in Baghdad, where one is vulnerable to being killed, or, at best, kidnapped.” Eventually the Colombians were repatriated. In 2007, one of the Colombian recruiters who had hired the men for Blackwater, was gunned down in Bogotá. This time around, the Colombians were reportedly paid about $150 a day and were recruited by a Caribbean-based company called Thor Global Enterprises. The Colombians were issued visas by the UAE's military intelligence branch, allowing them to breeze through customs without being questioned.

An American who runs another security company in the UAE told The Nation that news of Prince's company is "a fricking PR disaster" for the UAE, adding that it will mean "some of the other Sheikhs will want answers about what a private Christian army was intended for." Prince's name has also surfaced in connection with another mercenary company, Saracen, in Somalia. The United Nations has suggested that the company violated a UN arms embargo.

Among the other Americans working closely with Prince on building the private army in the UAE is a former FBI Agent named Ricky "CT" Chambers. He recently ran Blackwater's training program in Afghanistan that was registered under the shell company name of Paravant. That arrangement remains the subject of multiple Congressional and federal investigations in the US and two former Paravant operatives were convicted in March of the manslaughter of two Afghan civilians. Chambers is being paid about $300,000 a year, while US contractors, with experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, are being offered pay packages worth up to $200,000 a year to work for Prince in the UAE.

When Prince moved to the UAE last summer, he said he chose Abu Dhabi because of its "great proximity to potential opportunities across the entire Middle East, and great logistics," adding that it has "a friendly business climate, low to no taxes, free trade and no out of control trial lawyers or labor unions. It's pro-business and opportunity." 

The timing of Prince's move was auspicious to say the least. It came just month after five of Prince's top deputies were hit with a fifteen-count indictment by a federal grand jury on conspiracy, weapons and obstruction of justice charges. Among those indicted were Prince's longtime number-two man, former Blackwater president Gary Jackson, former vice presidents William Matthews and Ana Bundy, and Prince's former legal counsel, Andrew Howell.  The UAE does not have an extradition treaty with the United States. "If Prince were not living in the US, it would be far more complicated for US prosecutors to commence an action against him," said Scott Horton, a Columbia University Law lecturer and international law expert who has long tracked Blackwater. "There is a long history of people thwarting prosecutors simply by living overseas." The UAE, Horton told me when I first learned Prince was moving to the UAE last summer, is "definitely a jurisdiction where Prince could count on it not being simple for the US to pursue him legally." The UAE is made up of seven states, the most powerful among them being Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Since 9/11, they have emerged as hubs for the US war industry. "Global service providers" account for some three-quarters of Dubai's GDP, while oil represents only 3 percent. "They have established themselves as the premiere location in the Middle East for offshore banking and professional services," said Horton, who has legal experience in the UAE. "If you have connections to the royal families, then the law doesn't really apply to you."

Note: Read Jeremy Scahill’s in-depth cover story on “The Dangerous US Game in Yemen.”
 
Over the weekend of April 2–3 in Yemen, the death toll of anti-government protesters continued to rise as security forces loyal to President Ali Abdullah Saleh reportedly shot dead twelve people and injured hundreds of others in the southern city of Taiz. Amid the violence, news broke late Sunday night that the Obama administration has quietly begun to withdraw its support for Saleh’s regime. Over the past two months of violence in Yemen, the United States has continued to back Saleh despite his violent response to widespread nonviolent protests against his regime.

Citing US and Yemeni officials, the New York Times reports: “The United States, which long supported Yemen’s president, even in the face of recent widespread protests, has now quietly shifted positions and has concluded that he is unlikely to bring about the required reforms and must be eased out of office.” The report adds, “For Washington, the key to his departure would be arranging a transfer of power that would enable the counterterrorism operation in Yemen to continue.”

The US counterterrorism operation in Yemen was launched under the Bush administration and then greatly expanded by President Obama, as I reported last week in my article “The Dangerous US Game in Yemen.” The US military presence, composed of special forces troops who not only conduct counterterrorism training for Yemeni forces but engage in their own unilateral “kinetic” actions against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), have operated with great freedom in the country with President Saleh’s blessing.

The current negotiations in Yemen between the Saleh government and a bloc of opposition forces, known as the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP), center around a proposal to temporarily hand power to Saleh’s vice president, Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi. According to the JMP’s five-point plan released over the weekend, Hadi would then preside over a restructuring of Yemen’s security and military forces, including a purge of Saleh’s relatives. A transitional council would also be formed and parliamentary and presidential elections would eventually take place.

Washington’s counterterrorism campaign in Yemen, which is responsible for the deaths of dozens of civilians, may encounter vocal popular opposition if democratization proceeds. A March 2011 Glevum Stability Assessment found that an “overwhelming majority of Yemenis disapprove of President Saleh’s cooperation with the U.S.,” with only four percent approving strongly or somewhat of the cooperation. Meanwhile, the study found that 96 percent of Yemenis believe the “West is at war against Islam” and a majority view AQAP’s violence as “self-defense.” However, the overwhelming majority of Yemenis, according to the study, do not view AQAP as the “true defender of Islam.”

“It is unfortunate that the Obama administration’s policy only began ‘to shift in the past week.’ Saleh’s demise has been self-evident for much longer than that, and consistent US refusals to see that and the resulting dithering and calls for negotiations (asking protesters to give up the only leverage they have) has only put US security interests more at risk,” observed Yemen expert Gregory Johnsen, adding: “We should be clear, both scenarios—Saleh leaving or staying—are potentially dangerous for US national security, which is one of the reasons the Obama administration is so hesitant to withdraw its support from Saleh.”

If it weren’t for Al Jazeera, much of the unfolding Egyptian revolution would never have been televised. Its Arabic- and English-language channels have provided the most comprehensive coverage of any network in any language hands-down. Despite the Mubarak regime’s attempts to shut it down, Al Jazeera’s brave reporters and camera crews have persevered. Six Al Jazeera journalists were detained briefly on Monday, their equipment seized. The United States responded swiftly to their detention, with the State Department calling for their release. “We are concerned by the shutdown of Al Jazeera in Egypt and arrest of its correspondents,” State Department spokesperson PJ Crowley tweeted. “Egypt must be open and the reporters released.”

The Obama White House has been intently monitoring al Jazeera’s coverage of the Egyptian revolt. The network, already famous worldwide, is now a household name in the United States. Thousands of Americans—many of whom likely had never watched the network before—are livestreaming Al Jazeera on the Internet and over their phones. With a handful of exceptions, most US cities and states have no channel that broadcasts Al Jazeera. That’s because cowardly US cable providers refuse to grant the channel a distribution platform, largely for fear of being perceived as supporting or enabling a network that for years has been portrayed negatively by US officials.

For people who have followed Al Jazeera’s history with the United States, the fact that it is now perceived by the White House and the American public as a force for democracy and freedom is an ironic, some would say hypocritical, development. The contrast between Washington’s posture toward Al Jazeera from the Bush era to the Obama presidency could not be more stark.

During the Bush administration, nothing contradicted the absurd claim that the United States invaded Iraq to spread democracy throughout the Middle East more decisively than Washington’s ceaseless attacks on Al Jazeera, the institution that did more than any other to break the stranglehold over information previously held by authoritarian forces, whether monarchs, military strongmen, occupiers or ayatollahs. Yet, far from calling for its journalists to be respected and freed from imprisonment and unlawful detention, the Bush administration waged war against Al Jazeera and its journalists.

The United States bombed its offices in Afghanistan in 2001. In March 2003, two of its financial correspondents were kicked off the trading floor of NASDAQ and the NY Stock Exchange. “In light of Al-Jazeera’s recent conduct during the war, in which they have broadcast footage of US POWs in alleged violation of the Geneva Convention, they are not welcome to broadcast from our facility at this time,” said NASDAQ’s spokesperson. Later NASDAQ backed off from that claim and said the network’s accreditation had been revoked for “security reasons.”

In April 2003, US forces shelled the Basra hotel where Al Jazeera journalists were the only guests and killed Jazeera’s Iraq correspondent Tareq Ayoub a few days later in Baghdad. The United States also imprisoned several Al Jazeera reporters (including at Guantánamo), some of whom say they were tortured. Among these was Sami al-Haj, an Al Jazeera cameraman who spent seven years at Guantánamo and was repeatedly interrogated by US operatives attempting to falsely link Al Jazeera to Al Qaeda. In addition to the military attacks, the US-backed Iraqi government periodically banned Al Jazeera from reporting in Iraq. Indeed, Al Jazeera was shut down in Iraq under both Saddam Hussein and the US-backed government.

Then in late November 2005 Britain’s Daily Mirror reported that during an April 2004 White House meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, George W. Bush floated the idea of bombing Al Jazeera’s international headquarters in Qatar. This allegation was based on leaked “Top Secret” minutes of the Bush-Blair summit. At the time of Bush’s meeting with Blair, the Administration was in the throes of a very public, high-level temper tantrum directed against Al Jazeera. The meeting took place on April 16, at the peak of the first US siege of Falluja, and Al Jazeera was one of the few news outlets broadcasting from inside the city. Its exclusive footage was being broadcast by every network from CNN to the BBC.

The Falluja offensive, one of the bloodiest assaults of the US occupation, was a turning point. In two weeks that April, thirty marines were killed as local guerrillas resisted US attempts to capture the city. Some 600 Iraqis died, many of them women and children. Al Jazeera broadcast from inside the besieged city, beaming images to the world. On live TV the network gave graphic documentary evidence disproving US denials that it was killing civilians. It was a public relations disaster, and the United States responded by attacking the messenger.

Just a few days before Bush allegedly proposed bombing the network, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Falluja, Ahmed Mansour, reported live on the air, “Last night we were targeted by some tanks, twice…but we escaped. The US wants us out of Falluja, but we will stay.” On April 9 Washington demanded that Al Jazeera leave the city as a condition for a cease-fire. The network refused. Mansour wrote that the next day “American fighter jets fired around our new location, and they bombed the house where we had spent the night before, causing the death of the house owner Mr. Hussein Samir. Due to the serious threats we had to stop broadcasting for few days because every time we tried to broadcast the fighter jets spotted us we became under their fire.”

On April 11 senior military spokesperson Mark Kimmitt declared, “The stations that are showing Americans intentionally killing women and children are not legitimate news sources. That is propaganda, and that is lies.” On April 15 Donald Rumsfeld echoed those remarks in distinctly undiplomatic terms, calling Al Jazeera’s reporting “vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable…. It’s disgraceful what that station is doing.” It was the very next day, according to the Daily Mirror, that Bush told Blair of his plan. “He made clear he wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere,” a source told the Mirror. “There’s no doubt what Bush wanted to do—and no doubt Blair didn’t want him to do it.”

Al Jazeera’s real transgression during the “war on terror” was a simple one: being there. That is what Al Jazeera is doing today in Egypt and why it is so dangerous to the Mubarak regime. While critical of US policy, Al Jazeera is not anti-American—it is independent. In fact, it has angered almost every Arab government at one point or another and has been kicked out of or sanctioned by many Arab countries (the one country which Al Jazeera arguably does not cover independently is its host nation of Qatar). It was the first Arab station to broadcast interviews with Israeli officials and is hardly the Al Qaeda mouthpiece the Bush Administration wanted us to believe it was. Now that is abundantly clear to Americans who over the past week have come to depend on Al Jazeera for accurate news on the developments in Egypt.

The real threat Al Jazeera poses to authoritarian regimes is in its unembedded journalism. That is why the Bush Administration viewed Al Jazeera as a threat, it is why Mubarak’s regime is trying to shut it down and that is why the network is so important to the unfolding revolutions in the Middle East. It is the same role the network plays in reporting on the disastrous US war in Afghanistan.

Part of why Al Jazeera has become acceptable is that, unlike throughout much of the Bush era, it now has a full twenty-four-hour English language news channel filled with veteran reporters who came to the network from CNN, the BBC and other Western news outlets. When it was an Arabic language–only network, it was a lot easier to demonize and malign because fact-checking US officials’ fabrications and pronouncements required a real effort.

At the end of the day, the real test of whether there is a substantive change in Washington’s stance toward independent, unembedded journalists and journalism will likely not involve Al Jazeera but some other news outlet or journalist. And that test will be real only when that journalist or media outlets’ rights are in direct conflict with Washington’s agenda.

Despite sustained denials by US officials spanning more than a year, US military Special Operations Forces have been conducting offensive operations inside Pakistan, helping direct US drone strikes and conducting joint operations with Pakistani forces against Al Qaeda and Taliban forces in north and south Waziristan and elsewhere in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, according to secret cables released as part of the Wikileaks document dump. According to an October 9, 2009 cable classified by Anne Patterson, the US ambassador to Pakistan, the operations were "almost certainly [conducted] with the personal consent of [Pakistan's] Chief of Army Staff General Kayani." The operations were coordinated with the US Office of the Defense Representative in Pakistan. A US special operations source told The Nation that the US forces described in the cable as "SOC(FWD)-PAK" were "forward operating troops" from the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the most elite force within the US military made up of Navy SEALs, Delta Force and Army Rangers.

The cables also confirm aspects of a Nation story from November 2009, "The Secret US War in Pakistan," which detailed offensive combat operations by JSOC in Pakistan. In response to the Nation story, Pentagon spokesperson Geoff Morrell called it "conspiratorial" and explicitly denied that US special operations forces were doing anything other than "training" in Pakistan. More than a month after the October 2009 cable from the US embassy in Pakistan confirming JSOC combat missions, Morrell told reporters: "We have basically, I think, a few dozen forces on the ground in Pakistan who are involved in a train-the-trainer mission.  These are Special Operations Forces.  We've been very candid about this.  They are—they have been for months, if not years now, training Pakistani forces so that they can in turn train other Pakistani military on how to—on certain skills and operational techniques.  And that's the extent of our—our, you know, military boots on the ground in Pakistan." According to the October 2009 cable, Morrell's statement was false.

In one operation in September 2009, four US special operations forces personnel "embedded with the [Pakistani] Frontier Corps (FC)…in the FATA," where the Americans are described as providing "ISR": intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. The support from the US forces, according to the cable, "was highly successful, enabling the FC to execute a precise and effective artillery strike on an enemy location." A month later, according to the cable, the Pakistan Army again "approved deployment of US special operation elements to support Pakistani military operations." To the embassy staff, this was documented in the cable as a "sea change" in Pakistan's military leaders' thinking, saying they had previously been "adamantly opposed [to] letting us embed" US special ops forces with Pakistani forces. According to the cable, "US special operation elements have been in Pakistan for more than a year, but were largely limited to a training role," adding that the Pakistani units that received training from US special operations forces "appear to have recognized the potential benefits of bringing US SOF personnel into the field with them."

In another operation cited in the cables, the US teams, led by JSOC, were described as providing support to the Pakistani Army's 11th Corp and included "a live downlink of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) full motion video." Whether the drones were used for surveillance or as part of a joint offensive is unclear from the documents. While the US government will not confirm US drone strikes inside the country and Pakistani officials regularly deride the strikes, the issue of the drones was discussed in another cable from August 2008. That cable describes a meeting between Ambassador Patterson and Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani. When the issue of US drone strikes came up, according to the cable, Gillani said, "I don't care if they do it as long as they get the right people. We'll protest in the National Assembly and then ignore it."

The ability of US special operations forces to operate in Pakistan is clearly viewed as a major development by the US embassy. "Patient relationship-building with the military is the key factor that has brought us to this point," according to the October 2009 cable. It also notes the potential consequences of the activities leaking: "These deployments are highly politically sensitive because of widely-held concerns among the public about Pakistani sovereignty and opposition to allowing foreign military forces to operate in any fashion on Pakistani soil. Should these developments and/or related matters receive any coverage in the Pakistani or US media, the Pakistani military will likely stop making requests for such assistance."

Such statements might help explain why Ambassador Richard Holbrooke lied to the world when he said bluntly in July 2010: "People think that the US has troops in Pakistan, well, we don't."

A US special operations veteran who worked on Pakistan issues in 2009 reviewed the Wikileaks cables for The Nation. He said he was taken aback that the cable was not classified higher than "SECRET" given that it confirms the active involvement of US soldiers from the highly-secretive, elite Joint Special Operations Command engaging in combat—not just training—in Pakistan. And offensive combat at that. JSOC operations are compartmentalized and highly classified.

Pentagon spokespeople have repeatedly insisted that the US military's activities in Pakistan are restricted to training operations. Even after the October 2009 cable and multiple JSOC operations in Pakistan, US and Pakistani officials continued to hold official meetings to discuss "potential" joint operations. In January 2010 in Washington DC, US and Pakistani military officials gathered under the umbrella of the "US-Pakistan Land Forces Military Consultative Committee." According to notes from the meeting, they discussed US military operations in Pakistan aiming to "enhance both US and Pakistan Army COIN [counterinsurgency] capabilities" and "potential US COIN Center/Pakistan Army interactions." Among the participants were representatives of the Special Operations Command, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs' Pakistan-Afghanistan Coordination Cell, the Office of Defense representative-Pakistan and a Pakistan delegation led by Brigadier General Muhammad Azam Agha, Pakistan's director of military training.

A special operations veteran and a former CIA operative with direct experience in Pakistan have told The Nation that JSOC has long engaged in combat in Pakistan—which raises a question: How in-the-loop is the US embassy about the activities of JSOC in Pakistan? Just because Ambassador Anne Patterson approves a cable saying that US special ops forces have only done two operations with Pakistani forces and plays this up as a major-league development doesn't make it true. JSOC has conducted operations across the globe without the direct knowledge of the US ambassador. In 2006, the US military and Pakistan struck a deal that authorized JSOC to enter Pakistan to hunt Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders with the understanding that Pakistan would deny it had given permission. JSOC has struck multiple times inside Pakistan over the years, regardless of what Ambassador Patterson's cables may say.

In 2006, twelve "tactical action operatives" from Blackwater were recruited for a secret JSOC raid inside Pakistan, targeting an Al Qaeda facility. The operation was code-named "Vibrant Fury." Which raises another issue: the activities described in the October 2009 cable very closely align with what a US military intelligence source, a US special forces source and a former Blackwater executive told The Nation in November 2009, namely that JSOC was running an operation in Pakistan where "members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, 'snatch and grabs' of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan.… The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes." The arrangement, which involved a web of subcontractors, allowed the Pakistani Frontier Corps—the force cited in the cable—to work with JSOC operators while simultaneously denying that Americans were involved. From the Nation article, "The Secret US War in Pakistan," in November 2009:

A former senior executive at Blackwater confirmed the military intelligence source's claim that the company is working in Pakistan for the CIA and JSOC, the premier counterterrorism and covert operations force within the military. He said that Blackwater is also working for the Pakistani government on a subcontract with an Islamabad-based security firm that puts US Blackwater operatives on the ground with Pakistani forces in counter-terrorism operations, including house raids and border interdictions, in the North-West Frontier Province and elsewhere in Pakistan. This arrangement, the former executive said, allows the Pakistani government to utilize former US Special Operations forces who now work for Blackwater while denying an official US military presence in the country. He also confirmed that Blackwater has a facility in Karachi and has personnel deployed elsewhere in Pakistan. The former executive spoke on condition of anonymity.

[…]

According to the executive, Blackwater works on a subcontract for Kestral Logistics, a powerful Pakistani firm, which specializes in military logistical support, private security and intelligence consulting. It is staffed with former high-ranking Pakistani army and government officials. While Kestral's main offices are in Pakistan, it also has branches in several other countries.

[…]

Blackwater operatives also integrate with Kestral's forces in sensitive counterterrorism operations in the North-West Frontier Province, where they work in conjunction with the Pakistani Interior Ministry's paramilitary force, known as the Frontier Corps (alternately referred to as "frontier scouts"). The Blackwater personnel are technically advisers, but the former executive said that the line often gets blurred in the field. Blackwater "is providing the actual guidance on how to do [counterterrorism operations] and Kestral's folks are carrying a lot of them out, but they're having the guidance and the overwatch from some BW guys that will actually go out with the teams when they're executing the job," he said. "You can see how that can lead to other things in the border areas." He said that when Blackwater personnel are out with the Pakistani teams, sometimes its men engage in operations against suspected terrorists. "You've got BW guys that are assisting...and they're all going to want to go on the jobs—so they're going to go with them," he said. "So, the things that you're seeing in the news about how this Pakistani military group came in and raided this house or did this or did that—in some of those cases, you're going to have Western folks that are right there at the house, if not in the house." Blackwater, he said, is paid by the Pakistani government through Kestral for consulting services. "That gives the Pakistani government the cover to say, 'Hey, no, we don't have any Westerners doing this. It's all local and our people are doing it.' But it gets them the expertise that Westerners provide for [counterterrorism]-related work."

The military intelligence source confirmed Blackwater works with the Frontier Corps, saying, "There's no real oversight. It's not really on people's radar screen."

* * *

In November 2009, Capt. John Kirby, the spokesperson for Adm. Michael Mullen, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told The Nation, "We do not discuss current operations one way or the other, regardless of their nature." A defense official, on background, specifically denied that Blackwater performs work on drone strikes or intelligence for JSOC in Pakistan. Captain Kirby told The Nation if it published the story it would "be on thin ice." The US embassy and Pakistan's interior Minister Rehman Malik both denied Blackwater was operating in Pakistan.

In January 2010, on a visit to Pakistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, appeared to contradict that line, telling a Pakistani TV station, "They [Blackwater and another private security firm, DynCorp] are operating as individual companies here in Pakistan," according to a DoD transcript of the interview. As Gates's comments began to make huge news in Pakistan, US defense officials tried to retract his statement. As the Wall Street Journal reported, "Defense officials tried to clarify the comment…telling reporters that Mr. Gates had been speaking about contractor oversight more generally and that the Pentagon didn't employ [Blackwater] in Pakistan." The next day, Pakistan's senior minister for the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), Bashir Bilour, said that Blackwater was operating in Pakistan's frontier areas. Bilour told Pakistan's Express News TV that Blackwater's activities were taking place with the "consent and permission" of the Pakistani government, saying he had discussed the issue with officials at the US Consulate in Peshawar, who told him that Blackwater was training Pakistani forces.

Since the Nation story originally ran, Blackwater has continued to work under the Obama administration. In June, the company won a $100 million global contract with the CIA and continues to operate in Afghanistan, where it protects senior US officials and trains Afghan forces. Earlier this year, Blackwater's owner, Erik Prince, put the company up for sale and moved to the Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. Whether Blackwater or former Blackwater operatives continue to work in Pakistan is not known. What is clear is that there is great reason to believe that the October 2009 cable from Ambassador Anne Patterson describing US special operations forces activities in Pakistan represents only a tiny glimpse into one of the darkest corners of current US policy in Pakistan.

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