More and more, covert operations are carried out by private murder-for-hire

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12 Socialist Action September 2010 In view of the increasingly undeniable failure of its “counterinsurgency” campaign in Afghanistan—that is, the U.S. attempt to secure political and military control of all of Afghanistan on behalf of its client Afghan government—journalists have begun to pick up signals that the U.S. is shifting toward a policy of “counterterrorism”—that is, a policy of covert war against target groups by killer drones, assassinations, and commando raids.

There is an argument of political expediency for such a shift, since the polls now show a majority of Americans oppose continuing occupation of Afghanistan. Thus, a “counterterrorist” policy could seem to be less costly and more focused in suppressing concrete threats to the United States. However, a covert war without borders would threaten to lead to far wider entanglements and political conflicts than conventional counterinsurgency warfare.

Among other things, once the U.S. military and CIA build such operations, there is no reason to think that they will remain limited to al-Qaida and allied fanatical terrorist groups. They would be likely to be expanded to include any activists and leaders that the U.S. ruling circles think threaten their interests.

For example, in an article in the Aug. 24 on-line journal Alternet, Fred Branfman noted that one person assassinated in this covert war was an “armed robber” in Paraguay. Branfman also pointed to the appearance of assassination squads in Latin America subsequent to the CIA-aided overthrow of the Arbenz regime in Guatemala at the outset of the Cold War, which murdered thousands.

Bransfman summed the new turn as follows: “The U.S. has conducted assassination programs in the Third World for decades, but the actual killing— though directed and financed by the C.I.A.—has been largely left to local paramilitary and police forces. This has now has changed dramatically.

“What is unprecedented today is the vast number of Americans directly assassinating Muslims—through greatly expanded U.S. military Special Operations teams, U.S. drone strikes and private espionage networks run by former CIA assassins and torturers. Most significant is the expanding geographic scope of their killing. While CENTCOM Commander from October 2008 until July 2010, General Petraeus received secret and unprecedented permission to unilaterally engage in operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Iran, former Russian Republics, Yemen, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, the Horn of Africa, and wherever else he deems necessary.”

There is abundant evidence that this program is not effective and even strengthening anti-American forces in Pakistan. Barnfman wrote: “Bruce Reidel, a counterinsurgency expert who coordinated the Afghan review for President Obama, said: ‘The pressure we’ve put on … in the past year has also drawn them together, meaning that the network of alliances is growing stronger not weaker.’

“Reidel’s striking conclusion that jihadi forces in Pakistan are stronger after six years of drone airstrikes the CIA claims are weakening them, is echoed by numerous other reports indicating that General Petraeus’ strategy of using military force against Al Qaeda, Afghan and local insurgent forces in Pakistan has pushed them further east from isolated northwest areas into major cities like Karachi, where they operate freely and work together far more closely than before. The general’s miscalculations regarding Pakistan are reason enough for him to be replaced.”

Barnfman cited General McCrystal as saying that every innocent person killed in these strikes meant 10 more enemies for the U.S. And according to the testimony of at least one military expert before Congress, the U.S. has made a lot of enemies. Barnfman reported: “A particularly significant indication of the drone strikes’ military ineffectiveness has come from Colonel David Kilcullen, a key Petraeus advisor in Iraq, who testified to the House Foreign Affairs Committee on May 23, 2009, that ‘since 2006, we’ve killed 14 senior Al Qaeda leaders using drone strikes; in the same time period, we’ve killed 700 Pakistani civilians in the same area. We need to call off the drones.’”

The same article noted a poll that showed only 9 percent of Pakistanis approved of the drone attacks. That amounts to 91 percent of 160 million people who are hostile to the United States, although the Islamist radicals have been a relatively marginal force in Pakistan as a whole.

Politically, the effect of these targeted strikes can be compared to kicking a hornet’s nest. Eventually, the kickers are liable to be badly stung. The regular Army soldiers have always hated the covert operators because they learned that they mainly created messes that the regular forces had to clean up. Eventually, the targeted strikes can lead to wider wars in which the cost in money and lives will be much greater than the disasters suffered up until now in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the social and political blowback cannot be confined to areas where the targeted strikes are carried out.

More and more, the covert operations are being carried out by private murder-for-hire corporations. The mercenary groups offer advantages for this type of warfare. They are not under any direct political supervision and thus provide deniability. Their operatives are life-long case-hardened professionals untroubled by any stirrings of conscience—ruthless killers.

But they also have corresponding disadvantages. They tend to be adventurers and thus reckless and arrogant, provocative. They arouse virulent hatred among the populations in which they work. They are not inhibited by political control but they are also not harnessed to political objectives.

Eric Prince, the founder of the most notorious of these groups, Blackwater (now renamed Xe), has decided to move to Dubai to be even more out of control of the U.S. government. The mercenary forces have been a major part of the U.S. military effort in both