Foro de Inteligencia, Espionaje y Servicios Secretos

ArmorGroup International plc escribió:ArmorGroup International plc
Leads evacuation of US missionaries and nurses from Kenya


A retired couple from San Diego are to continue to work as missionaries for the US-based Episcopal Church in Kenya following their recent rescue from one of the worst-hit areas in the current crisis.

The couple, Dr Gerry and Mrs Nan Hardison, and 10 colleagues were evacuated from Kisumu in Western Kenya by ArmorGroup International plc, the leading international provider of protective security services.

The evacuation involved ArmorGroup Kenya providing Close Protection services to the group, in an area of Kenya which has seen around 60 people killed and widespread arson.

ArmorGroup was able to draw on the detailed local knowledge of its Nairobi team to manage and coordinate the rescue of the group over a four- day period.

Despite the ordeal the Hardisons are staying in Kenya while their colleagues, a Young Adult Service Corps missionary and nine American nurses, have been evacuated to the United States.

The Episcopal Church has supported missionaries at Maseno, around 30kms from Kisumu, for some years. The Hardisons have worked there since 2002 with Nan lecturing at St. Philip’s Theological College and helping to coordinate the local mothers’ union orphan programme while Gerry works closely with the local hospital and runs the Comprehensive Care Center for those with HIV/AIDS.

Before violence erupted in the wake of the Kenyan elections their mission was boosted by the additional support of Ms Liz White, a Young Adult Service Corps missionary, and nine nurses from across the United States. But within days the nurses had experienced first-hand the inter-tribal violence gripping the town when their ambulance was stoned and the windshield smashed. The Episcopal Church then asked NYA, ArmorGroup’s international response specialists, to assess the security situation faced by the missionaries and the nurses.

A detailed security appraisal was undertaken using the experience and knowledge of the ArmorGroup Kenya (AGK) team in consultation with NYA specialists in London, who had provided the Episcopal Church with support on a number of previous occasions.

A decision was made on 10 January to evacuate and an AGK Close Protection (CP) team was put on stand-by to effect the evacuation. However as the situation rapidly deteriorated evacuation by air had to be ruled out and it became obvious that group was going to need immediate protection. By the evening of 10 January the AGK CP team had managed to make it to the missionaries’ home in Kisumu to provide reassurance and plan evacuation for the next day.


The missionaries were escorted by the CP team to Kisumu airport where AGK had secured seats for them on a local tour operator’s flight bound for Nairobi. At Nairobi Ms White continued on back to the United States while the Hardisons were escorted to a church house in the centre of Nairobi, where AGK continued to update them with security assessments and recommendations via texts and telephone. The Hardisons returned to their mission at Maseno on the morning of Sunday 27 January.

Due to flight restriction its was not possible to effect the rescue of the nurses so quickly, so AGK kept its CP team in Maseno until the evening of 13 January to provide protection to the nurses and then escort them to safety via a flight out of Kisumu to Nairobi and from their home to the US. Throughout the process AGK made numerous calls to update the nurses’ parents and similarly made sure the US Embassy’s American Citizens Service was kept fully briefed at all times.

Episcopal News Service escribió: Kenya's Episcopal missionaries Nan and Gerry Hardison are steadfastly committed to continuing their ministry as teachers and health care specialists in Maseno, despite tribal and criminal gang violence that has roiled the east African nation since the December 27 contested presidential election.

The Hardisons returned to Maseno in west Kenya January 25 and are back to work, Gerry as the medical director of Maseno Mission Hospital and Nan as a teacher at St. Philip's Theological College.
They had been evacuated to Nairobi January 11 following the post-election conflict that threatened their security and is responsible for the deaths of more than 900 people. Also evacuated were a Young Adult Service Corps (YASC) volunteer, Liz White, who continued home to the U.S., and nine student nurses.

Violent protests between supporters of President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga erupted across the country after Kibaki was declared the winner in the closely contested election.

Parishioners from All Souls' Church, Point Loma, in the Episcopal Diocese of San Diego, the Hardisons said that people in Maseno "are thankful and grateful to have us here -- we are a sign of hope. They are afraid for the future, and we are a signal that they are not abandoned by brothers and sisters in Christ from other parts of the world."

The problems in Maseno and nearby Luanda "are not tribal or revenge issues but criminal gangs that are out to steal what they can," the Hardisons reported in a January 30 email to the Rev. David Copley, mission personnel officer for the Episcopal Church. "They blockade the road to extort money, and loot shops. The police in Maseno are patrolling and protecting the college, the hospital and local businesses."

The Hardisons reported an 18-hour blackout in Maseno January 29. "Looters broke up the market in Luanda on Monday, the traders all scattered, and our administrative assistant and driver were able to get out safely. They were getting food for the college," they said, adding that the shops, bank and post office are now all closed.

Speaking of the Hardisons' desire to return to Maseno, Copley said: "We decided that the instability in the country may continue for some time. We had to make the decision whether to evacuate them from the country, in which case they may not be able to return for some considerable time, or to allow them to return to Maseno on the understanding that the situation remains uncertain."



ArmorGroup, a private protective security group in Kenya, recommended by the insurance broker with whom the Mission Personnel Office works, issued a report naming Kisumu -- some 19 miles from Maseno -- as one the areas worst hit by the post-election violence.

The relationship between the university and the hospital, the ArmorGroup report says, "was the reason for the well-planned deployment, just after the election but before the violence erupted, of nine young American nurses to Kisumu," who were on short-term assignment with Nan Hardison.

After the nurses' ambulance was stoned and the windshield smashed, Copley contacted the London-based global crisis consultant Neil Young Associates (NYA), ArmorGroup's international response specialists, to assess the security situation faced by the missionaries and the nurses.

"We believe your willingness to take ownership of the problem demonstrates exactly the correct approach to addressing the 'duty of care' responsibilities that all organizations face," said NYA country manager Neil Hellings in an email to Copley. "Your pro-active planning is a useful case study for other clients."

On January 10, a pre-emptive evacuation was carried out after it became clear that political unrest was likely to reignite tribal tensions.

"The situation deteriorated rapidly that day and, as such, evacuation by air was not immediately achievable," ArmorGroup's report states. "However, by that evening the evacuation team had managed to make it to the missionaries' home in Kisumu to provide reassurance and, using their detailed local knowledge, plan the extraction for the next day."

The missionaries were escorted January 11 to Kisumu airport where seats had been secured onboard a local tour operator's flight bound for Nairobi.

YASC volunteer White caught an onward flight to the U.S. the following day.

The Hardisons were escorted to the Anglican Guest House in the center of Nairobi, where ArmorGroup Kenya (AGK) continued to update them with security assessments and recommendations via text message and telephone.

AGK kept its team in Kisumu until the evening of January 13, it reported, "to provide protection to the nurses and then escort them to safety via a flight out of Kisumu.

"Throughout the process AGK made numerous calls to update the nurses' parents and similarly made sure the U.S. Embassy's American Citizens Service was kept fully briefed at all times."

Meanwhile, Ndungu and Rose Ikenye, Episcopal missionaries based in Thika, are reported to be safe, and Canon Percia Hutcherson, a former Episcopal missionary to the Diocese of Eldoret, Kenya, returned to the United States on January 9.

Hutcherson, 86, is a physical therapist who works with crippled children and adults at a clinic she established at the bishop's compound in Eldoret.

Reached at her Los Angeles home, Hutcherson said that the facilities there have not been directly affected by the violence. "In the past, churches were respected," she commented. The deliberate torching on January 2 of a nearby Assemblies of God church where some 35 women, children and elderly persons had sought shelter was a terrible shock to Kenyans, she said.

Hutcherson left Eldoret a few days after the massacre in the church, and took a chartered plane to Nairobi. "Things were calmer there," she said, adding that she was able to get a ticket home to Los Angeles a day or two after her arrival in Nairobi.

Hutcherson hopes to return soon to her work, but says that her plans are "totally up in the air" until conditions improve in Eldoret. "I'm just holding tight, not knowing what the next step will be."

"David Copley has done a tremendous job in the past few weeks, staying in touch with the missionaries, and responding quickly to their increasing concerns, while simultaneously checking with denominational counterparts on their responses and also exploring our evacuation options, insurance coverage, expenses, and other issues," said Canon Margaret Larom, director of the Episcopal Church's Office of Anglican and Global Relations. "I've been very impressed by the immediate, professional and pastoral actions taken by Neil Hellings, country manager for ArmorGroup, the provider of protective security contracted by Willis Insurance, and his close protection team."

The World Council of Churches (WCC) announced January 29 that it is sending a fact-finding and support team to Kenya.

WCC general secretary the Rev. Samuel Kobia, himself a Kenyan, said he hoped Kenya "will overcome the prevailing situation and that the churches will play an important part in speeding up that time."

The WCC said the January 30-February 3 visit aimed "to express the solidarity of churches worldwide with the Kenyan churches at a particularly challenging time." The visiting team will investigate how the world's largest grouping of churches can support Kenyan Christians in their quest for "peace and reconciliation."

-- Matthew Davies is editor of Episcopal Life Online and Episcopal Life Media correspondent for the Anglican Communion. Janet Kawamoto is associate editor of Episcopal Life Online.

Mercenary Impulse
Is there an ethics that justifies Blackwater?

Michael Walzer, The New Republic Published: Wednesday, March 12, 2008


The state, Max Weber wrote in his classic essay "Politics as a Vocation," "is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory." Our government is struggling to create such a state in Iraq, one strong enough to monopolize the use of force within its territory. To achieve this, we are using the physical force of the U.S. military against (some of) the private militias that have sprung up since the fall of Saddam Hussein. There can't be an effective Iraqi state until these militias are disarmed or incorporated into the Iraqi army and subjected to its chain of command. It is exceedingly strange, then, that we have brought private militias of our own into Iraq.

In September, one of these private entities--a North Carolina-based company called Blackwater USA--became the subject of scrutiny when its guards fired into a crowd and killed 17 Iraqi civilians. Blackwater, which has a $1.2 billion State Department contract, is the largest of the dozens of private security firms currently operating in Iraq--firms that provide protection for top American officials, reconstruction projects, residents of the Green Zone, convoys of different sorts, and even the U.S. military itself (the Pentagon employs 7,300 private security guards inside the country). Blackwater's employees, of course, are not fighting a private war--Iraq is an American war--but they do get into firefights on their own, for their own reasons; and these firefights are not always approved by the U.S. military. Blackwater and similar firms are private in another sense, too: The U.S. government keeps no record of the security guards who have died or been wounded--nor, needless to say, of the Iraqi civilians the guards have killed.

Mercenaries like Blackwater have a bad reputation. But is that reputation really deserved? Two books published in the last several years have examined the role of private security firms in Iraq--one from the left, one from the right. Jeremy Scahill's Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army is informative but written as if readers already know the argument and so it is necessary only to present Blackwater's history in appropriately indignant tones. Then there is Gerald Schumacher's A Bloody Business: America's War Zone Contractors and the Occupation of Iraq, which defends the contractors but also considers in detail the criticism directed against them. (This happens shamefully often these days: political correctness on the left, intellectual engagement on the right.) I believe Scahill is right; but I also believe that it is important actually to make the argument against mercenaries--and not merely to assume it.



Consider first an example of possible mercenary usefulness. During the wars of the former Yugoslavia, the Clinton administration wanted to help the Croatian army, which was in headlong retreat, badly battered by Serb attacks. But Clinton also thought he had good political reasons to avoid sending U.S. troops into battle. So, instead, his administration permitted a private U.S. firm to conduct training exercises with Croat soldiers--some of which, Schumacher writes, "turned into hostile encounters with the enemy." Thanks partly to this assistance, the Serbs were defeated and driven out of Croatian territory.

A big success, right? Not necessarily. Might it not have been better in the long run--better at deterring future Serb attacks, better at preparing the American people for just interventions (and making unjust interventions harder)--if President Clinton had gone to Congress and laid out the argument for helping the Croats? Using private soldiers makes policy invisible and so reduces (or eliminates entirely) its political costs. But it is a crucial feature of democratic decision-making that politicians should pay the costs of the decisions they make. They should also get credit for the benefits. And then voters can study the balance sheet.

Indeed, the question of accountability--for the highest-ranking politicians, the lowest-ranking fighters, and everyone in between--undergirds most of the arguments against the use of mercenaries. Take the standard claim that mercenaries are cheap, which they often are. Since many security companies compete for these contracts, and since government agencies and aid organizations are looking for inexpensive help, there are strong incentives to skimp on training, equipment, and battlefield support. And, at any given moment, in any given place, despite the number of companies, the demand for private soldiers may exceed the supply, and so the people hiring them won't be able to insist on high standards of competence and provision. The result, writes Schumacher, "has been a ... flood of relatively unskilled and inexperienced contractors on the battlefield." Without sufficient training and without sufficient equipment or support--Schumacher lists what is often missing: Kevlar helmets, body armor, armored cars, trained medics, medical evacuation helicopters, hovering attack planes--"they compensate by asserting a level of aggressiveness that they hope will ward off would-be attackers." There is no question, he says, "that civilian security firms have gotten out of hand at times." Soldiers, of course, get out of hand at times, too; and, in Iraq, training, equipment, and support have often been inadequate, with terrible consequences for both U.S. personnel and Iraqi civilians. But that is the result of political decisions, not market processes. And, for such decisions, we know whom to hold accountable.

It is not just accountability for politicians that matters; equally important is the question of accountability for individual fighters. And soldiers who get out of hand are accountable in ways that mercenaries are not. At least in the best cases, soldiers are trained to fight in accordance with a code of conduct enforced by military courts, which in turn are overseen by civilian courts. By contrast, though a voluntary code of conduct has been accepted by many of the security companies operating in Iraq, the code doesn't provide any enforcement mechanism. Under Order 17 of the Transitional Administrative Law, approved by Paul Bremer in 2004, private security guards are immune from prosecution in Iraqi courts. American soldiers are also immune, but they can be prosecuted in military courts. By contrast, it remains unclear whether contractors can be tried by the military. There has been some talk about applying military law to contractors working for the Pentagon and the State Department--or, at least, to the American citizens among them; many private soldiers are not American--but the Supreme Court may not allow this.

American mercenaries can, theoretically, be brought home and tried in federal courts. But then witnesses would also have to be brought over--and the evidence, too, with guarantees that it had not been tampered with en route. In practice, it would be very difficult to secure crime scenes in a war zone and produce evidence that would stand up in a U.S. court. Nor, until the September killings by Blackwater guards, have American officials shown any interest in doing this. Mercenaries suspected of crimes are sometimes sent home (but not for trial) or dismissed from one security company and hired by another. As Columbia professor Scott Horton told The New York Times in October, there are some 100,000 American contractors in Iraq, yet not one has been prosecuted for an act of violence. He then invited us to "magine a town of 100,000, and there hasn't been a prosecution in three years." But that comparison doesn't tell the whole story, for the town's population would include children and old people, while the combatant contractor population is almost entirely young men (and a few women), for whom rates of violence, even in zones of peace, are much higher than the U.S. average. Not a single prosecution. That means mercenaries in Iraq are radically unaccountable; their fire is free.

The new regulations for such contractors adopted by the Pentagon and State Department in early December do little to fix the problem. True, they specify minimal standards for training and set limits on the use of force; but, if one tries to imagine how these standards and limits could be enforced, and how many monitors and military police would be necessary, it gets harder and harder to envision a realistic scenario in which mercenaries are actually held accountable.

If we want to maintain accountability in war, then, we had best take a statist view of military activity. I don't want to argue that private armies run by commercial companies, political parties, religious organizations, or governmentson-the-sly are everywhere and always a bad idea; but they are mostly a bad idea. The state is the only reliable agent of public responsibility that we have. Of course, it often isn't reliable, and it often doesn't represent a democratic public. One might plausibly argue that the army of a tyrannical state is a private army. Still, there isn't any agency other than the state in the contemporary world that can authorize and then control the use of force--and whose officials are (sometimes) accountable to the rest of us.

Weber's definition suggests that the state is constituted by its monopoly on the use of force. It is also, and perhaps more importantly, justified by its monopoly. This is what states are for; this is what they have to do before they do anything else--shut down the private wars, disarm the private armies, lock up the warlords. It is a very dangerous business to loosen the state's grip on the use of violence, to allow war to become anything other than a public responsibility.



There are, of course, exceptions to every rule. Speaking at a conference of arms merchants and war contractors in Amman, Jordan, in March 2006, Blackwater vice chairman J. Cofer Black offered to stop the killing in Darfur. "We've war-gamed this with professionals," he said. "We can do this." Back in the United States, another Blackwater official, Chris Taylor, reiterated the offer.

Since neither the United Nations nor nato has any intention of deploying a military force that would actually be capable of stopping the Darfur genocide, should we send in mercenaries? Scahill quotes Max Boot, the leading neoconservative writer on military affairs, arguing forcefully that there is nothing else to do. Allowing private contractors to secure Darfur "is deemed unacceptable by the moral giants who run the United Nations," Boot writes. "They claim that it is objectionable to employ--sniff--mercenaries. More objectionable, it seems, than passing empty resolutions, sending ineffectual peace-keeping forces and letting genocide continue."

Some of us might prefer something like the International Brigade that fought in Spain over a force of Blackwater mercenaries. But the International Brigade was also a private militia, organized by the Comintern and never under the control of the Spanish republic. Does it matter that most of its members fought for ideological rather than commercial reasons? Scahill tells us that Blackwater is run by far-right Christian nationalists--for me, as for him, that doesn't make things better.

Whatever Blackwater's motives, I won't join the "moral giants" who would rather do nothing at all than send mercenaries to Darfur. If the Comintern could field an army and stop the killing, that would be all right with me, too. But we should acknowledge that making this exception would also be a radical indictment of the states that could do what has to be done and, instead, do nothing at all. There should always be public accountability for military action--and sometimes for military inaction as well.

Michael Walzer is a contributing editor at The New Republic.