“We are living in the decade, where we have seen in a recent scenario that a well equipped national army and air force of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan also surrendered in the petty efforts to the quasi-private military organisation ”.
Private Military Companies (PMC) provide security and military services by taking up certain tasks, usually covered by regular forces supported by governmental and/or private contracts. The picture is clearly more sophisticated, as we will see below. Members of those organizations are usually named mercenaries, but at an equivalent time, their companies call them contractors and/or security experts, meanwhile their business is taken into account as private security sector. Hiring contractors is getting more and more accepted within the international environment, which isn’t without historical background.
If we have a glance at the working methods and workflows of normal forces and with comparison PMCs, we can recognize significant differences, especially in their sizes. In most cases, these companies are ready to provide various basic services and special services also, like boarding facilities, protecting key personnel, and transporting sensitive material. Any quiet service provided by PMCs that have to combat, using attacking force and weaponry is taken into account criminality and therefore the perpetrators are considered illegal combatants. consistent with estimates this market has reached the extent of 100 million US dollars annually.
By the end of the conflict, the old supporting/supporting political and military relations transformed, therefore, more and more Third World countries were left alone without reliable and effective military support, creating serious gaps in their defence and security systems. Most of the powerful western countries decreased their defence budget, and since then tons and plenty of weaponry appeared on the planet’s markets.
Since the illegal markets were involved during this change, weapons that are more sophisticated were made available for nearly anyone who was ready to provide the required financial means to get them. The only question was the know-how to take care of and use such high-tech equipment. In this transformation, few western countries changed their approach towards regular armies, security services and outsourced some activities. The first step has been already taken during the Vietnam War in the 70s by using civilian transportations to deploy troops to the sector and military contractors to supply various.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF HIRING PRIVATE MILITARY COMPANIES?
There are benefits that are relevant to the security provided by private firms. The foremost obvious benefit is flexibility; without the political and bureaucratic time interval required for deciding processes to mobilize forces (police, and/or military), PMCs are ready to move forces and conduct a good sort of task as needed. Deployment and repatriation can happen with an equivalent timing, just after the choice is formed to deploy and right after the task is completed. The other easy to acknowledge benefit is the ability to supply specialized forces. These companies collect from a database of mostly retired military and police personnel, already trained and experienced, but mainly not eligible for state service anymore. That makes it easier for them to hire people with a particular experience. So, as an example, a PSC can specifically recruit retired MPs, civil affairs officers and Special Forces personnel. The PSC tends to recruit personnel with particular skills (in language or area expertise) or particular experience (establishing order after the civil war). it’s much harder for national military organizations to seek out those sorts of specific skills,
• Change in the international security situation after the Cold War;
• increase in liberal international trading methods and policies;
• Outsourced classic State roles in various fields, including privatization experience, and deployed them to a particular arena.
HOW DO PRIVATE MILITARY COMPANIES WORK?
The overwhelming majority of PMC’s are contractors who provide personnel to support government missions. the government puts out a requirement for personnel who can perform a specific task and thus the PMC recruits folks that fit that profile. Most of them are former military members anyway. They also provide technical specialists who can train or operate pieces of kit.
The ones you’re probably most interested in are guys like Blackwater. These are private security companies. They receive a contract to provide security to a specific site (eg. a foreign military base or a State Department office) which they supply however many guards the contract requested. Security guards operate a scale with the unarmed ‘Paul Blarts’ of the earth at one end, and paramilitary forces at the other. The Blackwater-style PMCs are within the latter category. They hire ex-military personnel (preferably, ex-Special Forces or Rangers) then offer their services as elite paramilitary security forces. Within the case of Blackwater, they were employed by the State Department to provide security to visiting officials.
ARE PMCS AS EFFECTIVE AS REGULAR MILITARY?
PMCs provide operational advantages over regular military forces, such as:
• being rapidly deployable;
• lessening public concerns about the utilization of force;
• counterweight to the local military in states with weak political institutions.
Whether or not these represent real advantages, most analysts hold that PMCs have a variety of operational disadvantages relative to regular military forces:
• motivated by profit instead of duty, their commitment is generally considered to be more limited than that of normal military personnel;
• employees outside the military chain of command;
• contracts cannot cover every possible contingency beforehand, thus reducing their combat flexibility and possibly compromising their ability to affect the unexpected;
• their non-combat personnel lack the cross-training which will augment military capacity in times of need.
Please read concluding on thedailyguardian.com
ARE PMCS LESS EXPENSIVE THAN THE MILITARY?
Data on the cost-effectiveness of PMCs is inconclusive. PMC employees are often quite expensive; typical salaries range from the USA $ 400 to 1000 each day. Claims that PMCs are less expensive than maintaining standing armies are usually supported by the subsequent arguments:
• PMCs employ individuals that paid significantly less;
• governments shall not have to provide PMCs with “hidden” benefits like pensions, health care, living facilities, etc., since these are usually included within the contract;
• PMCs provide the power to quickly increase force size, without the prices involved in the long-term maintenance of military capacity or the “buyouts” that always occur when the military is subject to rapid reductions;
• By fulfilling essential non-combat operations, PMCs allow soldiers to consider core missions.