How the Use of Private military Contractors is Affecting the US Policy

According to a 2016 survey, 1 in 4 United States armed personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan was a private contractor, meaning these wars are being outsources and the public is receiving little to no information about it. Because contractors operate without effective public oversight, they allow for the appearance of withdrawal of US troops while physically maintaining proxy forces in the region. This raises several questions on who these contractors are and how reliable they are in executing American foreign policy.

Currently, there is little reliable data about private military firms as an industry, mainly because of the proprietary business secrets. Despite the fact that those companies act as proxies of the state, they are not legally obligated to share information with the public on their actions, organization, or labor force. This makes it extremely difficult to determine the cost-benefit analysis of using military contractors for each state. This also implies that American policymakers are not operating from a detailed understanding of the contractor workforce and it if these forces are actually upholding American ideals and goals abroad.

Security contractors currently comprise 10 to 20 percent of Department of Defense contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq. The rest provide mission-essential functions, such as engineering, communication, and transportation, and many others. Those roles take place in conflict areas and place those contractors at similar risk level as the soldiers. According to a small study conducted on contractor deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, most contractors are not Westerners, but rather third country nationals, recruits from Iraq and Afghanistan. Many others are veterans from other countries, such as Peru, Colombia, Fiji, and Uganda. Some bring less institutional experience, as the industry recruits former child soldiers from Sierra Leone and ex-guerrilla fighters from the FARC.

This information does little to shed light on the utility of contractors, but rather further highlights the ambiguity of these services and calls into question how beneficial they are to US policy interests. Similarly, the US also needs to consider what the unintended consequences are of reliance on contractors in terms of human rights, legal complication, mismanagement, and accountability. Private military and security companies do not have real incentive to share this data, but the public deserves to have this information.