We picked up on this over the weekend, but were glad to see Democracy Now! cover it briefly this morning:
'Activists Protest Mercenary Trade Association Meeting'
Goodman: "And the [Orwellian-named] International Peace Operations Association is holding its annual conference in Washington this week. The trade association represents mercenary groups and private military contractors, including DynCorp and Triple Canopy. A coalition of activist groups, including CODEPINK, Africa Action and the Hip Hop Caucus, are planning to hold a protest and forum today to counter the mercenary conference."
Journalist Jeremy Scahill: “While these merchants of death are meeting in Washington, DC, human
rights activists and other concerned people are going to be gathering
to protest these mercenaries. And we’re not only going to be addressing
the use of mercenaries in Afghanistan and Iraq, which we know well is
continuing unabated, but also the use of mercenary forces on the
African continent, which is a story that basically never makes it into
the corporate media. There are mercenaries that, once again, are
operating in the Congo, in Somalia, in the conflict in Ethiopia and
Eritrea. And so, we’re gathering to try to shut down this whole
privatized war apparatus and to raise awareness of this Bush
administration policy that the Obama administration is continuing and
escalating.” [more at Rebel Reports]
Unfortunately, the Canadian media doesn't bother with such trivial matters as the presence of several Canadian mercenary companies at this event. The list of attendees indicates that Steve Casteel, Pete Dordal, and Brent Wegner of GardaWorld, Mike Garrity and Don MacMillan of Streit Group, Anton Stefov and Sally Stefova of International Armored Group, and Charles Hawk, Rima Saleh, and Mark Thielmann of SkyLink Aviation's wholly-owned US subsidiary, SkyLink USA will all be participating in this years conference, themed 'Afghanistan: Supporting Regional Stability Operations." All of these Canadian mercenary companies were discussed in my recent article, 'Hostile Takeover: Canada's outsourced war for Iraq's oil riches.' An article about their fast-growing presence in Afghanistan is in the works.
- University of Toronto professor Jennifer Catallo is also slated to attend; recently, she authored an interesting article on the re-branding and "corporatization" of the mercenary industry, and the "demise of the anti-mercenary taboo," "Who Is a Mercenary? The Private Security Industry: A Changing Normative Landscape."
- One other observation: note how the conference title is sanitized, terming the neo-colonial AfPak counterinsurgency war/occupation a 'regional stability operation.' And yet, today's agenda was explicitly all about counterinsurgency, featuring COIN-guru David Kilcullen as a keynote speaker, followed by COIN-friendly USIP's Bob Perito on a panel about 'Security Sector Reform,' and another panel, titled, simply, 'Counterinsurgency,' featuring former Blackwater executive Chris Taylor (today with conference sponsor 'Mission Essential Personnel') as the moderator, warrior-anthropologist Larry Katzenstein, neo-con COIN pundit Kimberly Kagan, and King David Petraeus' biographer Gretchen Peters as panelists.
- Potentially, one fly-on-the-wall in attendance is Mother Jones' Dan Schulman; we'll keep checking to see if he provides a recap of the event from the inside.