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| Arabia |
| Blackwater founder builds foreign force in UAE |
| 2011-05-15 |
| The crown prince of Abu Dhabi has hired the founder of private security firm Blackwater Worldwide to set up an 800-member battalion of foreign troops for the United Arab Emirates, The New York Times reported on Sunday. The Times said it obtained documents that showed the unit being formed by Erik Prince's new company Reflex Responses with $529 million from the UAE would be used to thwart internal revolt, conduct special operations and defend oil pipelines and skyscrapers from attack. The newspaper said the decision to hire the contingent of foreign troops was taken before a wave of popular unrest spread across the Arab world in recent months, including to the UAE's Gulf neighbours Bahrain, Oman and Saudi Arabia. The UAE itself has seen no serious unrest. Most of its population is made up of foreign workers. Blackwater, which once had lucrative contracts to protect U.S. officials in Iraq, became notorious in the region in 2007 when its guards opened fire in Baghdad traffic, killing at least 14 people in what the Iraqi government called a "massacre". One former Blackwater guard pleaded guilty to manslaughter charges in those killings, and a U.S. court reinstated charges against five others last month. Prince has since sold the firm, which changed its name to Xe. The firm denies wrongdoing. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #5 Ah, the World of Tomorrow.(Movie) Mercenaries for hire. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2011-05-15 15:26 |
| #4 The mercenary captains are either capable men or they are not |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2011-05-15 14:54 |
| #3 One former Blackwater guard pleaded guilty to manslaughter charges in those killings, and a U.S. court reinstated charges against five others last month. Prince has since sold the firm, which changed its name to Xe. The firm denies wrongdoing. The way things are going, maybe we're moving towards civilian trials for GI's in firefights involving enemy fatalities. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2011-05-15 13:16 |
| #2 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/world/middleeast/15prince.html_r=2&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2&pagewanted=all Lots of interesting details from the NYSlimes's, who repeatedly questions the legality of US trainers without State Dept permission: Late one night last November, a plane carrying dozens of Colombian men touched down in this glittering seaside capital. Whisked through customs by an Emirati intelligence officer...The Colombians had entered the United Arab Emirates posing as construction workers. In fact, they were soldiers for a secret American-led mercenary army being built by Erik Prince, the billionaire founder of Blackwater Worldwide, with $529 million from the oil-soaked sheikdom... The Colombians, along with South African and other foreign troops, are trained by retired American soldiers and veterans of the German and British special operations units and the French Foreign Legion, according to the former employees and American officials... To help fulfill his ambitions, Mr. Prince’s new company, Reflex Responses, obtained another multimillion-dollar contract to protect a string of planned nuclear power plants and to provide cybersecurity...Savvy and pro-Western, the prince( Sheik Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan) was educated at the Sandhurst military academy in Britain and formed close ties with American military officials. He is also one of the region’s staunchest hawks on Iran...“He sees the logic of war dominating the region, and this thinking explains his near-obsessive efforts to build up his armed forces,” said a November 2009 cable from the American Embassy in Abu Dhabi that was obtained by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks... Although there was no expectation that the mercenary troops would be used for a stealth attack on Iran, Emirati officials talked of using them for a possible maritime and air assault to reclaim a chain of islands, mostly uninhabited, in the Persian Gulf that are the subject of a dispute between Iran and the U.A.E., the former employees said. Iran has sent military forces to at least one of the islands, Abu Musa, and Emirati officials have long been eager to retake the islands and tap their potential oil reserves...Corporate documents describe the battalion’s possible tasks: intelligence gathering, urban combat, the securing of nuclear and radioactive materials, humanitarian missions and special operations “to destroy enemy personnel and equipment.”... In recent years, the Emirati government has showered American defense companies with billions of dollars to help strengthen the country’s security. A company run by Richard A. Clarke, a former counterterrorism adviser during the Clinton and Bush administrations, has won several lucrative contracts to advise the U.A.E. on how to protect its infrastructure... To bolster the force, R2 recruited a platoon of South African mercenaries, including some veterans of Executive Outcomes, a South African company notorious for staging coup attempts or suppressing rebellions against African strongmen in the 1990s. The platoon was to function as a quick-reaction force, American officials and former employees said, and began training for a practice mission: a terrorist attack on the Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai, the world’s tallest building. They would secure the situation before quietly handing over control to Emirati troops. Glad someone has our backs in the region. |
| Posted by: Lumpy Elmoluck5091 2011-05-15 13:01 |
| #1 Corporate mercenary armies like this are the wave of the future. They are cheaper and better than relying on the whims of foreign politicians to help protect your nation, and they generally have better training and experience than the army of your enemy. If nothing else, they can create very painful delaying actions for a foreign aggressor, buying time for other arrangements. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2011-05-15 13:01 |