According to the Congressional Budget Office, about 190,000 private contractors work in support of the U.S. mission in Iraq. They outnumber U.S. troops by 30,000, and have cost taxpayers $85 billion — or one-fifth of the overall spending on the war. The number is certain to surpass $100 billion next year, or nearly seven times the size of the recently announced bailout of U.S. automakers.
The niche market that I cover in Big Boy Rules, my book on America's mercenaries in Iraq, encompasses at least 25,000 hired guns and perhaps as many as 50,000 or more. No one knows for sure, because the government has never bothered to count them, alive or dead. The widespread use of mercenaries — the most in the history of American warfare — has hidden the true cost of the war.
Now it threatens to hide the true cost of peace — if, in fact, that returns to Iraq.
President-elect Obama has vowed to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq over the next 16 months. But what will happen to the mercs — and thousands of other American contractors — remains unclear. Some have argued that the hundreds of private security firms in Iraq need the cover of the U.S. military to continue to operate. Already we have seen the mercenaries' officially sanctioned impunity begin to evaporate, with the lifting of their long-standing exemption from Iraqi law and the prosecution of five Blackwater mercs for their role in the Baghdad massacre of at least 14 people in September 2007.
But although violence is down in Iraq, it remains a very dangerous place. The market for privatized security — in the oil services industry, at strategic locations such as warehouses and government buildings, as Iraq continues to rebuild its infrastructure — is certain to continue and may actually grow as the United States withdraws. As long as there is money to be made, the willingness of companies to provide security — in the form of thousands of loosely regulated hired guns — will be as certain as the arrival of the Mesopotamian sun.
As one industry representative told me last year: "It's just going to get better and better."
And it's not limited to Iraq. Fueled by the war, now in its sixth year, private security has grown to a $100 billion global industry spanning some 100 countries. This week, even as the Blackwater shooters were facing indictment and the industry was debating the loss of its immunity, the U.S. military was extending contracts for private soldiers to protect key bases in Afghanistan.