The capital of Kurdistan, Irbil, has become an unofficial marketplace of mercenary services, reminiscent of the Tatooine bar in the movie Star Wars-full of smugglers and guns for hire. Some are just adventure seekers, while others are American veterans who found civilian life meaningless. Kurdistan is a haven for soldiers of fortune looking for work with the Kurdish militia, oil companies defending their oil fields, or those who want terrorists dead. Many of these for-profit warriors outclass local militaries, and a few can even stand up to America’s most elite forces, as the battle in Syria shows.
Recent years have seen major mercenary activity in Yemen, Nigeria, Ukraine, Syria, and Iraq. No one truly knows how many billions of dollars slosh around this illicit market. Private force has become big business, and global in scope. 2 Consequently, there is a dangerous lacuna of understanding concerning this emerging threat. Curiously, this trend is overlooked by scholars, the mainstream media, and the Intelligence Community. Firms like Blackwater are quaint compared to the Wagner Group and other contemporary mercenaries. However, the market for force has moved on. When people think of private military contractors, they imagine Blackwater Security Consulting in Iraq circa 2007. Unsurprisingly, mercenaries do not fight conventionally, and traditional war strategies used against them may backfire. Patriotism is unimportant, and sometimes a liability. Their employees are recruited from different countries, and profitability is everything. Private military companies such as the Wagner Group are more like heavily armed multinational corporations than the Marine Corps.
Those who assume they are cheap imitations of national armed forces invite disaster because for-profit warriors are a wholly different genus and species of fighter. Mercenaries are more powerful than experts realize, a grave oversight. What happens when they have to face 1,000? 5,000? More? It took America’s most elite troops and advanced aircraft 4 hours to repel 500 mercenaries. No Americans were killed, and the Department of Defense (DOD) touted this as a big win. 1įour hours later, the mercenaries finally retreated. Scores of strikes pummeled the mercenaries, but they did not waver. Warplanes arrived in waves, including Reaper drones, F-22 stealth fighter jets, F-15E Strike Fighters, B-52 bombers, AC-130 gunships, and AH-64 Apache helicopters. This was the Wagner Group, a private military company based in Russia, and like many high-end mercenaries today, they were covert and lethal. These were not the cartoonish rabble depicted by Hollywood and Western pundits. No one expected an enemy armored assault.Īttacking them were 500 mercenaries, hired by Russia, who possessed artillery, armored personnel carriers, and T-72 main battle tanks. Their collective mission was to defend the Conoco facility, alongside Kurdish and Arab forces. Roughly 20 miles away, a team of Green Berets and a platoon of Marines stared at their computer screens, watching the drone feeds of the battle. They were in danger of being overrun.Ī team of about 30 special operations forces was pinned down at a Conoco gas plant. They returned fire, but it was not enough to repulse the tanks. After the barrage, a column of Russian tanks advanced on their positions, firing their 125-millimeter turret guns at soldiers. Picking the proper lane per soldier is crucial.The opening salvo of artillery was so intense that American troops took cover in foxholes for protection.
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