Dead Man's Shoes Part II
'Evil' PMCs
Before launching into Part II of security firms who are now all erroneously lumped into the PMC basket, I want to give a nod to Ben Dixon who writes Where the Wasteland Ends. In particular, his most recently posted article, Ukraine & Terrorism: Coincidence or Collaboration. Whatever your thoughts are on the Crocus Hall terrorist attack in Moscow, or your role in the military or private security contracting, Ben’s background setting to the attack is well worth the read. I have my own personal thoughts on the ‘Islamic State/IS-K as instigators of the attack’ narrative that is being pushed out, but I won’t expand on them beyond a few observations.
Without wanting to labour the point, despite the great respect I have for Seymour Hersh, Ben’s article is simply better than Hersh’s on this subject. I would even go as far as to say that Hersh embarrassed himself in his last edition. Anyway, we all have our bad days …
As for Crocus Hall, a lot of ‘analysts’ are making quite a big deal out of the 500,000 ruble, half-down, half-on-job-completion price for the job. The basic storyline is that this is completely inconsistent with IS (Islamic State) motivation, modus operandi, and way beyond IS operational capability. As an aside, Douglas Macgregor also makes the point that the terrorists use of the same route out of Russia as the route in is amateurish beyond belief.
Anecdotal observation: Any operation involving an extraction after the task multiplies tenfold the required level of planning and resources. It is the reason for the widespread belief of a state-based actor behind the murderous, sub-human filth who carried out the Crocus Hall attack. Both AQ (Al Qaeda) and Islamic State are ‘geared’ for the cheaper, less complicated, one-way suicide missions of their true believers. In the mid-2000s, AQ was running short on true believers which is partly why they pushed recruitment amongst desperately poor women and the mentally handicapped. Since then, however, both AQ and IS have proven the ability to supply a steady stream of one-way martyrs for the cause. What happened in Moscow, only time will tell, but one thing is for certain. The attempted escape afterwards is completely out of character for IS/IS-K.
Second anecdotal observation/suggestion: Stop confusing AQ with IS. Yes, they both emanate from the radical fringes of fundamental Sunnism, but they have a murderous hatred for each other. Doesn’t seem to matter how far up the food chain you go amongst some western analysts, the moment the term ‘jihadist’ is mentioned their brains freeze and it all just becomes one big scary blur of brown-skinned radicals. And btw, if anybody is going to form transient alliances with jihadist groups, best to leave that to the Gulf countries who understand what they are doing. When the US does it, it’s a disaster every time, the Gulf countries get off scot-free and the US always ends up with egg on its face.
Enough on that subject, check out Ben’s article linked above.
Back to the ‘Scary’ PMCs.
New subscribers: Best to read the last edition of Dead Man’s Shoes that is free to access for background to this article.
Governments Despising but Copying PMCs