Private military company
A private military company (PMC) or private military and security company (PMSC) is a private company providing armed combat or security services for financial gain. PMCs refer to their personnel as "security contractors" or "private military contractors".
Not to be confused with Private security company.
The services and expertise offered by PMCs are typically similar to those of governmental security, military, or police but most often on a smaller scale. PMCs often provide services to train or supplement official armed forces in service of governments, but they can also be employed by private companies to provide bodyguards for key staff or protection of company premises, especially in hostile territories. However, contractors that use armed force in a warzone may be considered unlawful combatants in reference to a concept that is outlined in the Geneva Conventions and explicitly stated by the 2006 American Military Commissions Act.[1]
Private military companies carry out many missions and jobs. Some examples have included military aviation repair in East Africa,[2] close protection for Afghan President Hamid Karzai and piloting reconnaissance airplanes and helicopters as a part of Plan Colombia.[3][4] According to a 2003 study, the industry was then earning over $100 billion a year.[5]
According to a 2008 study by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, private contractors make up 29% of the workforce in the United States Intelligence Community and cost the equivalent of 49% of their personnel budgets.[6]
In December 2009, the , which provides background information to members of the United States Congress, announced that the deployment of 30,000 extra US troops into Afghanistan could be accompanied by a surge of "26,000 to 56,000" contractors. This would expand the presence of personnel from the US private sector in Afghanistan "to anywhere from 130,000 to 160,000." The CRS study said that contractors made up 69 percent of the Pentagon's personnel in Afghanistan in December 2008, a proportion that "apparently represented the highest recorded percentage of contractors used by the Defense Department in any conflict in the history of the United States." In September 2008 their presence had dropped to 62 percent, and the US military troop strength increased modestly.[23][24][25]
Congressional Research Service
Also in December 2009, a oversight subcommittee stated that it had begun a wide-ranging investigation into allegations that American private security companies that were hired to protect Defense Department convoys in Afghanistan would be paying off warlords and the Taliban to ensure safe passage. That would mean that the United States unintentionally and indirectly engaged in a protection racket and might be indirectly funding the very insurgents it is trying to fight. A preliminary inquiry determined that the allegations warranted a deeper inquiry and focused initially on eight trucking companies that share a $2.2 billion Defense Department contract to carry goods and material from main supply points inside Afghanistan (primarily Bagram air base) to more than 100 forward operating bases and other military facilities in the country.[26]
US House of Representatives
List of private military contractors
List of private security companies
Private police
Company police
Private army
Command responsibility
Condottieri
Defense contractor
Law of war
LOGCAP
Mercenary
Military–industrial complex
MultiCam
Personal Security Detachment
Private defense agency
Private intelligence agency
Private security company
Privateer
Arnold, Guy. Mercenaries: The Scourge of the Third World. , 1999. ISBN 978-0-312-22203-1
Palgrave Macmillan
Deborah D. Avant. The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security. George Washington University, August 2005. 0-521-61535-6
ISBN
Deborah D. Avant and Kara Kingma Neu. 2019. "The Private Security Events Database." Journal of Conflict Resolution.
Brillstein, Arik: Antiterrorsystem. Engel Publishing 2005
Brooks, Doug/ Rathgeber, Shawn Lee: The Industry Role in Regulating Private Security Companies, in: Canadian Consortium on Human Security - Security Privatization: Challenges and Opportunities, Vol. 6.3, University of British Columbia, March 2008.
Simon Chesterman & Chia Lehnardt, eds. From Mercenaries to Market: The Rise and Regulation of Private Military Companies. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009.
Amy E. Eckert, Outsourcing War: The Just War Tradition in the Age of Military Privatization, Cornell University Press, 2016.
Robert Mandel. Armies Without States: The Privatization of Security. Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002.
Phelps, Martha Lizabeth (2014). "Doppelgangers of the State: Private Security and Transferable Legitimacy". Politics & Policy. 42 (6): 824–849. :10.1111/polp.12100.
doi
Fred Schreier & Marina Caparini. , DCAF Occasional Paper 6, The Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, March 2005.
"Privatising Security: Law, Practice and Governance of Private Military and Security Companies"
Filipa Guinote. "Private Military Firms and the State: Sharing Responsibility for Violations of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law", Collection Ricerche, "Series E.MA Awarded thesis", vol. 7, Venice: Marsilio Editori, 2006.
. Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry. Cornell University Press, March 2004. ISBN 0-8014-8915-6
P. W. Singer
Stephan Maninger. "Soldiers of Misfortune – Is the Demise of National Armies a Core Contributing Factor in the Rise of Private Security Companies?", Private Security and Military Companies: Chances, Problems, Pitfalls and Prospects, eds. Gerhard Kümmel & Thomas Jäger. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2007. 978-3-531-14901-1
ISBN
Hin-Yan Liu. "Leashing the Corporate Dogs of War: The Legal Implications of the Modern Private Military Company", Journal of Conflict and Security Law 15(1) 2010: 141–168. :10.1093/jcsl/krp025
doi
Petrovic Predrag, Milosevic Marko, Unijat Jelena & Stojanovic Sonja. Private Security Companies – a Friend or a foe? . Centre for Civil-Military Relations, 2008. ISBN 978-86-83543-51-9