A Saudi shot dead in Pakistan: what next?

Yesterday morning two gunmen in Lahore, riding along on a motorcycle, shot and killed a lone Saudi diplomat on his way to work at the Saudi consulate. Last Wednesday, militants threw two hand grenades at the Saudi consulate in Karachi – no one was injured. One unnamed Pakistani Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the killing; another named by Al-Jazeera English as Ehsanhullah Ehsan, said: “We support the action but we are not afraid. Had we done it, we would have claimed it.”

So, have the Taliban turned on the hand which once fed it? Saudi money and more helped the American effort to recruit and train the Taliban in the 1980s to assist in driving the Soviets out of Afghanistan. The Saudi Ambassador to Pakistan has responded to the killing of his diplomat by saying: “no one who carries out this kind of action can be a Muslim”.

Which brings me to a remarkable, even shocking, article in Saturday’s New York Times headlined “Secret Desert Force Set Up by Blackwater Founder”. It describes a plane load of Colombian mercenaries, landing at dead of night in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and transferring to a secret desert military complex.

The article goes on to chart the build up of an 800 member battalion of foreign troops. The contract for this mercenary force is, according to the newspaper, worth some $529 million. And is being run by the billionaire, Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater (renamed Xe Services) – who provided thousands of “security personnel” for the American forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and four of whose men stand accused of killing seventeen Iraqi civilians in 2007.

The NYT identifies some $42 million that Blackwater (Xe Services) paid in fines levied last year by the US government for the unlicensed training of foreign troops in Jordan.

The 21st Century has seen the alarming and rapid growth of such forces across the world’s conflict zones. Beyond the protection that entities like the UAE believe they cannot provide for themselves these “security corporations” have become increasingly close to the action in the assorted wars in which we are involved. Despite the fines, there is huge money to be made from “military protection”.

But are our interests really being served by the growth of what look perilously close to highly trained mercenary forces? What measures are being taken by the UN and the international community to regulate these things? The United Nations may well be exercised by Governments that kill their own people. But what if the work is done by “outside agencies”, at arms length from the authorities? What role are these outfits already playing in the myriad attempts to suppress the Arab Spring?

Now that their own diplomats are dying, how much do we know about what Western-trained mercenaries the Saudis or any of these Arab regimes are hiring to protect their interests?