Escalation Of Conflict

At the height of the war in 2007, there were about 190,000 armed and unarmed contractors compared to 160,000 US troops. During the war, these contractors served various purposes such as logistical support and the security of convoys and bases. Moreover, “ about 199,783 contractors were employed by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan in fiscal year 2010”, which truly demonstrates how far the contracting business has come in the United States in less than a

We can see that the judiciary branch is not being allowed to do its job which would be to interpret whether or not what the contracting companies are doing is illegal or not. We can also, through the scenes of the senate hearings, see that congress is unable to pass laws preventing the use of private contractors. It is important to understand how the government functions in order to know when that system is being abused as it is now by contracting companies. We have even briefly discussed the shockingly huge control of only a handful of business on the media we see everyday, so we know that companies have a massive influence on what people know about

One of the most significant foreign personnel are exempted from Iraqi jurisdiction , from Iraqi civil and penal laws. This Order applies to all civil and military personnel of the Authority, Foreign Liaison Missions, as well as all non-Iraqi personnel of contractors and sub-contractors supplying goods or services to or on

a state outsources military functions. The public does not equate the death of contractor with that of a national soldier, as contractors are not directly associated with the state’s military (O’Keefe 2009:5). The use of PMCs in the Iraq War allows the state to avoid what is known as the “body-bag syndrome”, where governments are increasingly pressured by domestic constituents as death tolls mount (Kinsey 2006: 96). In addition to the ability of states to avoid the body-bag syndrome, the way in which media report on the involvement of contracted troops further benefits the state as the public disassociates contractors with soldiers. When the media reports of fallen private soldiers, they are often referred to as contractors, which generates another response of the public than to the death of a national soldier (O’Keefe 2009: 6). The next quotation from Thomas Pogue, a former Navy SEAL, who has worked for Blackwater illustrates this point; “These forces can be employed without a lot of publicity—and that’s a very

For roughly 1% of the United States population, the past 10 years have been an ever changing experience serving across the world. On September 11, 2001, the United States was attacked by a terrorist organization residing in Afghanistan. The United States Armed forces were called upon to fight a war against terrorism. In May 2003, this conflict extended to Iraq, which was acting as a safe zone for many of the world’s terrorists. Since that time, more than 70,000 contractors and sub-contractors have been hired by the Department of the Defense, in order to assist the United States military in their mission against terrorism. These individuals known as the TCN’s or ‘third country nationals,’ take part in everything from base security to cooking and laundry. However, since these individuals are not United States citizens and the government has turned its back to them. Personal knowledge, department of defense reports, and official law reviews contain a wide variety of information that give a look inside what has been happening on the United States military bases. Allegations of human trafficking, sexual assault, and indentured servitude are all common issues these TCN’s have endured.

The book details the rise of Blackwater and the growth of security contracting, especially the role it has played in the Iraq war and the War on Terrorism, which Scahill tries to expose the conduct of Blackwater. With the introduction of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States government increased its support on using contractors to assist the military. While other PMCs are used by the government, Blackwater was the company that benefited the most, which has now secured $1 billion dollars in diplomatic security contracts from the government.

Private Military and Security Companies (PMCs) have been in the international interest for the last few years. Their most famously known actions are the actions of the PMC Blackwater (now renamed Xe Services) in Iraq. There are many thoughts regarding each nation about PMCs. Some say that they are a “good thing” and that they help countries to save economic resources. Others argue about the lack of regulation and about the fact that in some occasions they kill innocent people.

The purpose of this discussion is for the Writer to engage doctoral classmates on different approaches, thoughts, and beliefs about how God would want us to engage conflict based on the following: 1) The importance to “take the log out of our own eye” first before pointing out someone else’s?; 2) Why is this difficult for some? and 3) Share a time when you did this well.

Most people view mercenaries as brutish thugs who only fight for money and have no honor. When Bill O’Reilly lauded the use of a mercenary army against ISIS Stephen Colbert responded with;” “You know these mercenaries will be good guys because only the best people kill whoever you want for cash. Its quality folks, is what I’m saying — unlike those suckers who do it for love of country.” While there have been some bad eggs in the history of privatized military forces, there have been examples of mercenary forces actually doing some good, where legitimate militaries had failed. One of the best examples of this is the civil war in Sierra Leone, in which a small Mercenary company called Executive Outcomes (EO) over took the superior forces of the brutal rebels known as the Revolutionary United Front(RUF). Where a UN peacekeeping mission failed, it only took a year for these mercenaries to do some serious damage to the RUF and force them to the negotiating table. But according to Francisco Aguilar, that was a

Flare-ups in violence between Israel and the Palestinians have often accelerated peace efforts - the first intifada led into the Oslo accords of the mid-1990s and the second gave rise to the Arab and Geneva peace initiatives.

There is a clear consensus among researchers that private military forces have taken part in national and international conflicts for centuries, with the earliest instance of mercenary-type forces reaching back to around 1500 BC (Bayley, p 15; Herbst, p 282-289; Phelps, p 830). In this case, using the definition of mercenary as an individual hired to support a foreign army (Dictionary.com), disambiguates the confusion with private security forces as security contractors working for an independent company offering military- or security-related services (Fulloon, p 29). Therefore, private military forces of today are not true mercenaries, yet the action and purpose of deploying private forces to bridge workforce and security gaps is relevant to historical times.

Conflict occurs when people disagree with each other whether it be what one is doing, saying or even believes. Often times this leads to violence from the opposing sides who are trying to stop the other. When it takes place at the level of it being a global conflict involving countries then the violence tends to be catastrophic resulting in many lives lost and others injured. Countries have conflicts within itself, for example, the American Civil War when the North and South were fighting each other. This conflict derived from the policy of slavery when the North wanted to abolish while the South wanted to keep their slaves. The Rohingya crisis is similar in that it is a conflict happening within the country of Myanmar, but it is over the Rohingya people not being recognized as citizens.

Wars, pogroms, genocides, inquisitions, crusades, and political actions have caused many to lose their lives or kill others for centuries. Majority of them are over the clashes in beliefs of ideologies, politics, philosophies, and religion (and usually a combination of several reasons). These belief-systems, when explained and read about, may inject a sense of being magical and the ability to bring peace to the world to those who are innocent. But when they are confronted by faced with the clashing with another belief system, they fail to prove how their belief-system can bring peace to the world. I will be focusing on religious beliefs, which are sets of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered

“Politics, plays a very vital role in an intense and violent struggle like the one in Jos. This precipitates inter and intra communal/ethnic conflict”. In order to adequately understand the nature of any, there is the need to understand the possible causes of such crises. From the analysis of scholars in the field of conflict resolution, causes of conflict can range from historical, mythological and political perspectives to mention a few. Dawan (2004) traces the root of the crisis in Plateau State to people. He opines that, “the settlers” feel they were being labeled as such in order to be further marginalized”. This feeling among the people instigated the debate on the ownership of Jos. Also, the creation of Local Governments and Federal Constituencies by the Babangida administration in a lopsided manner gave “the minority Muslim Hausa/Fulani economic and political advantages over the indigenes; this further fueled the crisis” (the International Conflict Group 2012). Any political machination of this nature can and will always trigger conflict now or in future.

However, conflicts are rarely resolved easily, to a certain extend most conflicts are managed, as individuals work out difference (Barker, 1987).