Scahill Talks about Blackwater's Interest in Latin America for Growth Opportunities

[magbana]

http://noticias.notiemail.com/noticia.asp?nt=12360496&cty=200

World - Politics
EFE: 05/05/2008-18:21:00
Blackwater said looking at LatAm for growth opportunities
By Fernando Puchol.
Madrid, May 5 (EFE).- Blackwater, the U.S. firm that has made a fortune providing paramilitary services in Iraq, has its sights fixed on Latin America as a future market, according to U.S. journalist Jeremy Scahill, author of the book "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army."

Scahill presented on Monday in Spain, along with the Paidos publishing house, his story of the rise of Blackwater after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and he discusses its transformation into one of the most influential actors in the U.S. military-industrial complex.
In remarks to Efe, the reporter commented that Blackwater has achieved record profits in the last two quarters, but he said that its aim is to diversify its business to adapt to new realities and that those circumstances are drawing it toward Latin America.

"Blackwater could end up in Latin America," said Scahill, who emphasized that the Pentagon had urged the company headed by Erik Prince, a former soldier from a rich and very conservative family, to apply to join a plan to fight drugs, mainly in Mexico and Colombia, that has a $15 billion budget.

It is through these private firms that Washington wants to guarantee its presence in the region without "leaving a military footprint," the journalist said, adding that the billions of dollars that the United States has invested over the past 15 years in the anti-drug fight in the region has been for "the counterinsurgency struggle."

Scahill cites the example of Colombia, which receives from Washington roughly $500 million per year to fight drug trafficking, of which, in turn, Bogota allocates a good part to pay for the services of firms with the same characteristics as Blackwater, like DynCorp.

"The future is in the training and preparation of Latin American troops, with the objective of having small paramilitary teams working for these companies in Latin America. We will see an increase in the presence of these firms that decide to set up in the region," Scahill predicted.

The logic is that of business and the free market, the same thing that motivated Blackwater and other firms that hire out mercenaries to establish themselves in the cheap labor markets of countries like Chile, Honduras, El Salvador, Peru and Bolivia.

Compared with the $10,000 per month that a U.S. mercenary or one from another first-world country can earn for offering his services in Iraq, the Latin Americans accept the same risk and offer the same expertise for monthly pay of $1,000.

Most of the personnel working for such firms are former soldiers who got their training during the "dirty wars" that several Latin American military dictatorships waged against their own peoples in the 1970s and '80s, and who have experience in counterinsurgency techniques, military espionage and interrogation tactics.

Scahill says in the book that "one of the largest contingents of non-U.S. soldiers imported to Iraq by Blackwater was made up of former Chilean commandos, some of whom had been trained or had served during the brutal military dictatorship of Gen Augusto Pinochet." EFE
fpb/bp

[EFerrari]

1. Locusts.

:grr: