HAITI: Private Contractors 'Like Vultures Coming to Grab the Loot'

HAITI: Private Contractors 'Like Vultures Coming to Grab the Loot'

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VANCOUVER, Canada - Critics are concerned that private military contractors are positioning themselves at the centre of an emerging "shock doctrine" for earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

Next month, a prominent umbrella organisation for private military and logistic corporations, the International Peace Operations Association (IPOA), is co-organising a "Haiti summit" which aims to bring together "leading officials" for "private consultations with attending contractors and investors" in Miami, Florida.

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IPOA's director Doug Brooks says, "The first contacts we got were journalists looking for security when they went in." The website of IPOA member company, Hart Security, says they are currently in Haiti "supporting clients from the fields of media, consultancy and medical in their disaster recovery efforts." Several other IPOA members have either bid on or received contracts for work in Haiti.

Likewise, the private military contractor, Raidon Tactics, has at least 30 former U.S. Special Operations soldiers on the ground, where they have been guarding aid convoys and providing security for "news agencies," according to a Raidon employee who told IPS his company received over 1,000 phone calls in response to an ad posting "for open positions for Static Security Positions and Mobile Security Positions" in Haiti.

Just over a week following the earthquake, the IPOA teamed up with Global Investment Summits (GIS), a UK-based private company that specialises in bringing private contractors and government officials from "emerging post-conflict countries" together, to host an "Afghanistan Reconstruction Summit", in Istanbul, Turkey. It was there, says IPOA's director Doug Brooks, that the idea for the Haiti summit was hatched "over beers".

GIS's CEO, Kevin Lumb, told IPS that the key feature of the Haiti summit will be "what we call roundtables, [where] we put the ministers and their procurement people, and arrange appointments with contractors." Lumb added that his company "specialise[s] in putting governments together [with private contractors]."

IPOA was "so pleased" with the Afghanistan summit, says Lumb, they asked GIS to do "all the organising, all the selling" for the Haiti summit. Lumb pointed out that all of the profits from the event will be donated to the Clinton-Bush Haiti relief fund.

The acknowledgment that there will be a "a commercial angle" to the event and that "major companies, major players in the world" have committed to attend. If private corporations are going to contribute to Haiti's restoration, they have to be held accountable, not to their own standards, but to those of the people but the ground fact is these private companies are not liable, you can't take them to the United Nations, you can't take them to The Hague, and they operate in kind of legal limbo. And they are the more dangerous for it.

In other words they are not accountable for standards and quality. These profit oriented companies are dangerous and should not be allowed for rebuilding. The kickbacks the Politicians will be receiving will be enormous for the contracts.



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I think Haiti needs to not allow a single foreign contractor in for rebuilding...
Want to get massive employment, hire locally.

If they must breakdown and hire from outside, then make sure that they are obligated to use local labor pools for all but the most advanced trades.