A Private Mercenary Firm Is Making Millions Off Tragedy in Houston, Puerto
Rico and Standing Rock
Saturday, March 24, 2018
By Mehreen Kasana, AlterNet | Report
Members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and their supporters opposed to the
Dakota Access Pipeline confront bulldozers working on the new oil pipeline
September 3, 2016, near Cannon Ball, North Dakota. Private security guards
used pepper sprayed and attack dogs to attempt to repel the protestors.
(Photo: Robyn Beck / AFP / Getty Images)
The practice of governments and security firms conducting wide-scale
exploitation of major disasters, natural and otherwise, is nothing new. Last
week, the Intercept reported on TigerSwan, a mercenary security firm that
follows a similar disaster-capitalist model and has attacked the No Dakota
Access Pipeline (NoDAPL) movement since 2016, at least. But that's not all:
TigerSwan has also been preying on relief needs in hurricane-hit areas like
Houston and Puerto Rico since 2017.
So far, the mercenary firm keeps its media presence at a minimum level,
attracting little attention from the press. This makes sense considering the
depth and scale of its massive military-style operations, including
suppressing anti-pipeline activists by infiltrating activist groups with
informants, surveilling the movement and calling on law enforcement agencies
to suppress activist organizing.
In spite of how shadowy the firm may sound, TigerSwan has the approval of
the United States government. TigerSwan contracts with the U.S. military and
the state department to offer its services to Energy Transfer Partners, the
company behind the Dakota Access pipeline. In May 2017, the Intercept
published leaked internal documents from the firm in which TigerSwan
officials likened NoDAPL activists to "jihadists" and called the movement an
"ideologically driven insurgency with a strong religious component." Calling
for a combined strategy of increased surveillance and security, the
TigerSwan documents concluded that in order to suppress NoDAPL, the firm
would need "aggressive intelligence preparation of the battlefield and
active coordination between intelligence and security elements."
Tara Houska, who directs campaigns for Honor the Earth, told Democracy Now!
in May 2017 that TigerSwan's deliberate mischaracterization of the NoDAPL
movement carries dangerous implications for activists. "The movement was
'Water is life,'" Houska said. By drawing false parallels with extremist
religious movements, Housak said TigerSwan emboldened a state-sanctioned
response that was "incredibly violent, incredibly brutal."
As of February, TigerSwan has added savior to its role by creating maps
calling Hurricane Maria and Hurricane Harvey "billion dollar weather and
climate disasters." Center for Constitutional Rights attorney Pamela Spees
told the Intercept that there's reason to be concerned about TigerSwan's
interest in these ravaged regions, as "you have this growing patchwork of
private and state interests that are basically executing law enforcement and
security functions in these settings."
This isn't the first time a mercenary firm has expressed interest in a
hurricane-devastated region. After Hurricane Katrina, the firm Blackwater
swooped into New Orleans and deployed heavily armed security guards to
patrol the streets. Jeremy Scahill reported on the scene for the Nation and
was told such operations are anything but over. A Blackwater member told
Scahill, "This is a trend. You're going to see a lot more guys like us in
these situations."
Mehreen Kasana
Mehreen Kasana is a news writer for AlterNet. Previously, she worked as the
front-page editor for the Huffington Post. Follow her on Twitter at
@mehreenkasana.
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