الشركات العسكرية والأمنية الخاصة: الوجه الآخر لعودة المرتزقة

Résumé: Latest years have seen a stunning increase in the number of private military and security companies, and an astonishing rise in their business turnover, which has reached higher levels as a result of the heavy demand for their services from States, Governmental, and non-governmental organizations, and even commercial and industrial companies. This demand has encouraged the military companies to broaden the scope of their activities to cover periods of peace and periods of armed conflict, as well as post-armed conflict, alongside the quality of the services that overstepped the mere counseling and training of the military forces, or some logistical support, to more difficult tasks that overlap with military operations, and even some of them have directly participated in combat operations. And if the hiring of these companies goes back to few years after world war two, and took its ascending rise directly after the end of the cold war, however, its remarkable emergence was thanks to media coverage that highlighted their activities, and with the declaration of the United States of America of what has been called the war on terror, and its invasion of both Afghanistan and Irak, in which the services of military companies has been used in an unprecedented way that made them presence competes with the regular troops in some cases. This prompted the question about the position of international law and international humanitarian law on the activity of these companies, in light of growing criticism against them, because of their involvement in many violations of international humanitarian law, which recalls the crimes committed by the mercenaries. And with the existence of these companies as a fact, the debate about the legitimacy of hiring their services has declined, in order to subject them to respect the rules of international humanitarian law, and that is because the rights and duties of these companies are unknown, and the exact legal status of contractors with these companies is also unknown, do they belong to the category of civilians as defined by international humanitarian law, or are they combatants since they carry weapons, or does it depend on the nature of the service they propose.

Publié dans la revue: مجلة العلوم الإنسانية