Billy Tucci, co-creator of The Blackwater Chronicles, works the booth at Comic-Con International.
Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired

SAN DIEGO — War correspondent Robert Young Pelton approached Erik Prince, founder of the notorious mercenary company Blackwater, with a bold proposal in late 2004. Pelton, a veteran who’s covered more than a dozen conflicts, wanted to ride along for a month with the toughest for-profit soldiers in Prince’s outfit, in what was then the most dangerous place in the world: Route Irish, the 12-mile stretch of highway connecting Baghdad’s airport to the Green Zone, the fortified neighborhood surrounding the U.S. embassy.

In exchange for unprecedented access, Pelton would tell the real story of Blackwater’s security contractors, men that Pelton and his co-writer Billy Tucci later described as being “attacked by terrorists, hated by the media [and] loved by the troops and the men they protected.”

Pelton’s upcoming graphic novel The Blackwater Chronicles is the result. Based on Pelton’s book Licensed to Kill and co-written by Pelton and Tucci, with pencils by Tucci and colors by Brian Miller, The Blackwater Chronicles is a gritty, unflinching portrait of hard men in a hard place at a moment in history that most Americans would probably prefer to forget. Wired met up with Tucci at Comic-Con International for a preview of the graphic novel, slated for a 2013 release.

Read the rest at Underwire.

Steve Lieber art.

by KEVIN KNODELL

War comics rarely get it right.

Just like with movies, TV and books about soldiers and war, there are so many varied ways to get it wrong. Wrong equipment, soldiers not carrying themselves as professional soldiers would, stereotypes and incorrect notions of what duty and patriotism mean to soldiers, making it too frivolous or making it overly serious.

All the same, here at WIB we’re a fan of our comics. Hell, our name is derived from David and Matt’s very own war comic. This why I want to direct everyone’s attention to Shooters, the new graphic novel from DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint.

Shooters follows the story of Chief Warrant Officer Terry Glass, a Special Forces soldier who is wounded in action during the early days of the Iraq war in a friendly fire incident. The story follows his physical recovery, his struggle readjusting to civilian life and his return to Iraq as private military contractor. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a comic that gets it right.

The creative team behind Shooters includes writers Eric Trautmann (who worked as a writer on video games such as Halo and Gears of War and runs on the comics Checkmate and Action Comics) and Brandon Jerwa (GI Joe, Red Sonja), and Eisner-winning illustrator Steve Lieber, best known for his work on Whiteout. Lieber also draws Alabaster Wolves for Dark Horse Comics. It’s a series about an teenage albino girl who kills monsters with a kitchen knife. It’s awesome.

Few works have the feeling of authenticity that Shooters exudes, which is surprising coming from writers who worked on the game Gears and on GI Joe comics, two of the most gung-ho masculine military fantasies in existence.

The authenticity arguably comes mostly from Eric Trautmann, who married into a military family and whose brother-in-law in part inspired the protagonist Glass. The brother-in-law, a Blackwater employee, died in Mosul when he intercepted a suicide bomber meant for a State Department official he was protecting. Trautmann said one of his main motivations was to provide something more nuanced than the overwhelmingly negative portrayals of contractors.

However, he does not glamorize anything or anyone. There are good contractors and bad contractors, good companies and bad companies. Even the good guys in this story are deeply flawed, and our protagonist Glass is no exception. Though a loving husband and father, he isn’t necessarily a great one. He’s an angry man being consumed by his mental and physical wounds and haunted by his past. Despite his flaws, or perhaps because of them, he is immensely sympathetic.

Though flawed, Glass is a truly heroic figure, always trying his best to do right by his comrades, his family and his country. He will risk anything and pay any price to see justice done, to ensure the fallen are remembered and to protect those he cares about. To anyone who’s ever been around soldiers, the characters in this book are instantly familiar.

The book isn’t perfect; the first act is a little rough. Also, early on Lieber makes a few mistakes in terms of military authenticity such as ACU uniforms being worn in 2003 and soldiers wearing garrison caps with their Class As long after berets became the norm. These are minor quibbles, Once you get to the image of Terry in a wheelchair looking up at the Iron Mike statue at Fort Lewis with Mt. Rainier in the background as the rain of the Pacific Northwest falls around him, it becomes clear that this creative team that understands its subject.

Ultimately it’s the emotional authenticity of the military experience that truly stands out — something arguably harder to get right than gear. Already I’ve heard stories of soldiers and military spouses and dependents who couldn’t finish it in one sitting because they got too emotional.

Though a work of fiction, it is a profoundly truthful story about the impact war has on people, and showcases the best and worst aspects of soldiers in a way that is as authentic as it is respectful. Shooters is a masterpiece of the genre, and proves once again that a comic can tell meaningful stories.

Jack Idema. Photo via Penny Alise.

This is the end for Jonathan Keith “Jack” Idema. The vigilante adventurer and terrorist hunter once jailed in Afghanistan for running a private prison and torture shop has reportedly died in Mexico.

According to local press reports first spotted by Robert Young Pelton, an emergency call placed Saturday led to the discovery of Idema’s body at his home in Bacalar, a small town in southeastern Mexico where Idema was reported to have operated a tour boat business. Bacalar’s police chief reportedly said Idema was suffering from AIDS.

The State Department has not confirmed Idema’s death, but Penny Alise, Idema’s ex-partner, tells Danger Room: “Yes, he’s dead.”

Idema has popped up in the Mexican media before. More than two years ago, Idema had holed up in the town, wanted for questioning regarding allegations he raped and forcibly detained his then-partner over several days. He then later apparently skipped a court summons and (temporarily) fled across the nearby border to Belize.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

Puerto Vallarta. Flickr user HBarrison.

Ten miles up the Bay of Flags from Puerto Vallarta along Mexico’s Pacific coast, along tourist traps and getaways for the wealthy and celebrity, is Punta Minta. Its developers boast of large gated villas, luxury hotels, fine beaches and a Jack Nicklaus Signature golf course. Following a tabloid-fodder August visit to the peninsula by Lady Gaga, the resort says: “we in Punta Mita have a cul­ture of not reveal­ing our celeb and Fame Mon­sters‘ where­abouts while in res­i­dence.”

But the resort almost featured another resident fame monster: Libyan party boy and military commander Saadi Gadhafi, son of deceased dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

According to Mexican Interior Minister Alejandro Poire, the Gadhafi family warlord — a soccer enthusiast with a reputation for partying and ordering attacks on unarmed protesters — attempted to flee to the resort town with the assistance of a Canadian private security company and a shadowy multinational team of contractors. The plot was foiled, however, following its detection in September by Mexican intelligence agents. Then last month, federal police in Mexico City swooped on the plotters, which included a Canadian ringleader, a Danish logistician and two Mexicans accused of creating false identity papers for the Gadhafi family.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

Ship guard. Via Lockforce.

In two years of operations, a Virginia-based maritime security company has escorted commercial vessels through pirate-infested East African waters 300 times without incident. Nexus Consulting Group of Alexandria’s impressive record is the latest evidence of a surprising turn in the five-year-old international war on Somali pirates. More and more, for-profit security guards are taking over from the world’s navies on the maritime front lines.

But as it grows its protection business, Nexus — “the world’s leading provider of private maritime security solutions,” according to a company press release — might want to heed the hard lessons learned by one of its rivals. As it turns out, the ship-protection biz is rife with risk, of the diplomatic and AK-47-wielding variety. Carrying guns aboard commercial ships has the potential to cause all kinds of legal problems.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

Al Shabab. Flickr photo by Abdurahman Warsame.

If you thought it was bad that Washington is paying a shady French mercenary to do its dirty work in Somalia, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Just wait to you see our latest ally: an admirer of Osama bin Laden with a gory past.

Richard Rouget, a notorious gun-for-hire who uses American funds to train African Union soldiers fighting in the ruins of Mogadishu, has been mentioned in connection with at least one murder. But U.S.-backed Somali government general Yusuf Mohamed Siad, a.k.a. “Indha Adde,” a.k.a, “The Butcher,” once ruled an entire region of Somalia with a bloody fist.

The U.S.-led international intervention in civil war-torn Somalia is unlike any of America’s other wars. Where the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are fought by tens of thousands of U.S. troops, in Somalia Washington pays others to do most of the fighting. These proxies include merc firms, regional bodies such as the A.U. and local allies including the nascent federal government.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

PVI photo.

In December, a vessel with four men aboard eased into the port of Massawa in the East African country of Eritrea. It was an unplanned stop. The ship, operated by Protection Vessels International, a British company, had encountered rough weather and run short of fuel while sailing through pirate-infested waters around the island of Romia.

At any other time, under any other circumstances, the vessel’s fuel call would have been routine. But this was no typical ship — and times were not normal. What happened after the vessel entered Massawa is indicative of a dangerous, and sometimes confusing, new era for seafarers in East African waters.

For five years now, pirates have waged an escalating campaign of banditry and kidnapping against the roughly 25,000 commercial vessels that pass through the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean every year. Pirates, armed with guns and rockets and riding in fast fishing boats called “skiffs,” have captured an average of 40 large vessels a year. Ransoms can be a million dollars or more. Last year, eight seafarers died in pirate attacks.

Today around 30 warships from a dozen nations patrol these waters. But with nearly 3 million square miles of ocean within range of pirate enclaves, the warships are spread too thinly to prevent most attacks. Increasingly, the larger shipping lines are turning to armed guards — former military personnel, mostly — to protect vessels during their transits.

Read the rest at Offiziere.ch.

PVI Maritime Security on watch in the Gulf of Aden, April 2011. PVI photo.

It was a normal morning in April last year. Normal, that is, by the crazy standards of the fishermen, ship’s crews, navy sailors and Somali pirates plying their dangerous trades on 2.5 million square miles of lawless ocean stretching from India to Kenya.

“Dave,” a 44-year-old from Wiltshire in southwest England, was standing watch on the upper deck of a commercial car carrier bound from Mumbai to Mombasa. Scanning the horizon with a pair of high-powered binoculars, the former British Royal Marine of 24 years’ experience spotted something suspicious ahead of the carrier: a small freighter matching the profile of a pirate “mothership,” a sort of floating base for heavily armed sea bandits and their small boats.

What happened next was like something out of a Hollywood thriller. But for Dave and a fast-growing number of for-profit ship guards, it was just another day on the job — and evidence of a surprising turn in the years-old, international war on piracy.

The world’s governments are waking up to the sobering fact that the gazillion-dollar warships they’ve sent to the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean can’t keep up with the region’s elusive pirates. The hijackers’ simple, brutal tactics are too effective. Their business model is too attractive. And they’ve got nothing to lose but their lives.

The days are probably numbered for 10,000-ton Burke-class destroyers chasing down illiterate Somali thugs sailing in souped-up fishing boats called “skiffs.” The future of the piracy war could belong to Dave and guys like him, standing lonely guard on gigantic, fortified commercial vessels speeding through pirate-infested waters.

Destroyers are expensive and ill-suited to long, tedious piracy patrols. Armed guards are comparatively cheap and, as Dave proved that April morning, highly effective. Sure, guards come with their own limitations and complications. But hiring professional ship-protectors beats the alternative: an endless, pointless military exercise.

Dave and his three teammates from Protection Vessels International, a 3-year-old, English firm offering “safe passage for vessels, master and crew through high-risk environments,” watched as the suspected pirate mothership silently approached the car carrier. “When it got to approximately seven miles distance, we saw a small craft being launched from it and it began to approach from the port side at 23 knots,” Dave recalled. The boat carried four men, at least two of them armed with AK-47s.

That’s when the PVI guards, all former Royal Marines, knew for sure that the carrier was under attack. A hijacking could mean: months of captivity and abuse for Dave, his teammates and the ship’s crew; a multimillion-dollar ransom for the vessel’s owner; and a small but meaningful blow to an already-rickety world economy. “We immediately increased speed to 19 knots, altered course, activated the piracy alarm and informed [the authorities],” Dave told Danger Room.

They prepared for battle, “kitting up” with body armor, helmets, warning flares and rifles. At that moment the front line of the piracy war, which has claimed scores of lives on both sides and cost ten of billions of dollars in ransoms, insurance premiums and lost property, intersected the fast-shrinking span of water between his ship and the approaching pirate skiff.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

by DAVID AXE

The U.S. State Department is finally admitting what maritime consultants and analysts have been saying for a couple years now: that naval patrols to interdict Somali pirates are far less cost-effective than installing defenses on the targeted merchant ships.

According to Bloomberg, “defensive measures taken by ship owners and crews are ‘the lowest-cost and most-effective way to deter pirate attacks,’” Tom Countryman, the principal deputy assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs, said. “Measures can include using firehoses to fend off pirate skiffs, erecting barbed wire at entry points to the ship and teaching the crew to take evasive action when potential pirates are in sight.”

But Countryman omits the absolutely best defense: highly-trained security guards — yes, sea mercenaries — standing watch during transits through pirate waters.

Related:
Canadians Catch, Release Suspected Somali Pirates
Somali Insurgents Claim Boost from Yemen
Shipper Hires Mercenary Pirate-Fighters
Ship-Protection Firm “Looking at” Former Blackwater Pirate-Fighter
Pirates Surge in Gulf of Aden
A.U. Air Defenders Could Block Eritrean Arms
Maritime, Air Roles for A.U. Peacekeepers in Somalia
Puntland Scraps Makeshift Pirate-Fighting Force
Regaining the Initiative against Somali Pirates
World Politics Review: Counterpiracy Mission Targets Seafarers’ Hearts and Minds

Kenyan sea officer. Photo by David Axe

by DAVID AXE

Just four months after the world’s navies all but declared victory in their war on Somali pirates, hijackings have spiked. In the span of just one week in early January, sea bandits seized four large commercial vessels off the Somali coast. Captured vessels can be ransomed for several million dollars apiece.

Piracy’s dramatic resurgence has accelerated a profound change of heart among the shipping companies whose vessels ply East African waters. No longer content to entrust their safety to naval forces, shippers are mulling the wide adoption of seaborne private soldiers — in a word, mercenaries, either sailing aboard targeted ships or riding shotgun in their own armed escort vessels. Mercenaries are a potentially more effective, but politically risky, short-term solution to an escalating crisis.

There was just one hijacking in the Gulf of Aden between July and September last year, compared to 17 during the same period in 2008. That led NATO Commodore Steve Chick to label the piracy decline “a fact” last September. At the time Chick, a British navy officer, led one of several international flotillas assigned to interdict pirates.

But the lull in hijackings was deceptive, as the January attacks proved. There are around 40 warships from more than a dozen nations in the region. But they must patrol some 2 million square miles of ocean teeming with thousands of commercial vessels and perhaps hundreds of bandits, many disguised as fishermen. The window of opportunity for responding to a pirate attack is just a few minutes; the chances are slim that a warship will be close enough to help before pirates gain control of the targeted vessel.

The January hijackings underscored this reality and perhaps represented a tipping point for shipping companies. “Initially ship owners seemed to concur that they would do what they’ve always done and have navies patrol the region,” Claude Berube, a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, told World Politics Review. “I think we’re on the cusp of the next threshold, in which privately owned escort vessels are more acceptable.”

Read the rest at World Politics Review.

Related:
Somali Insurgents Claim Boost from Yemen
Shipper Hires Mercenary Pirate-Fighters
Ship-Protection Firm “Looking at” Former Blackwater Pirate-Fighter
Pirates Surge in Gulf of Aden
A.U. Air Defenders Could Block Eritrean Arms
Maritime, Air Roles for A.U. Peacekeepers in Somalia
Puntland Scraps Makeshift Pirate-Fighting Force
Regaining the Initiative against Somali Pirates
World Politics Review: Counterpiracy Mission Targets Seafarers’ Hearts and Minds

McArthur. Photo via Military Times.

by DAVID AXE

In 2007, mercenary firm Blackwater outfitted a 183-foot yacht, pictured, with weapons and helicopter pad in a bid to grab a slice of the piracy-protection business. With hijackings exploding off the coast of Somalia — 100 large ships seized in 2008 alone — more and more shippers were hiring security guards for their vessels or even chartering Tanzanian or Yemeni military vessels for protection.

Blackwater, now called “Xe,” dubbed their pirate-fighter McArthur and advertised the ship’s services to shipping firms. But no one jumped, and McArthur idled at a Virginia port for two years, her crew slowly going crazy.

Blackwater finally gave up and put McArthur up for sale in Spain in recent months, sparking a rather bitter debate between online journalists over the virtues of mercenary pirate-fighters. But one experienced maritime security specialist confirms that the idea, fundamentally, is sound. John Dalby, head of security company Marinerisk, told me last week he is “looking at” buying McArthur. The vessel wasn’t the problem. Blackwater’s reputation for war crimes in Iraq was what prevented the company from getting any work in the piracy-protection biz.

Even so, there’s an even better way to guard against pirates. Instead of hiring separate escort vessels, just place guards like Marinerisk’s aboard ships, Dalby said. “Every ship transiting the area should have four professionals on board — and I don’t mean crews who’ve done a one-week training course in how shoot their fire hoses at pirates.”

More on all this, later.

Related:
Shipper Hires Mercenary Pirate-Fighters
Pirates Surge in Gulf of Aden
A.U. Air Defenders Could Block Eritrean Arms
Maritime, Air Roles for A.U. Peacekeepers in Somalia
Puntland Scraps Makeshift Pirate-Fighting Force
Regaining the Initiative against Somali Pirates
World Politics Review: Counterpiracy Mission Targets Seafarers’ Hearts and Minds

by DAVID AXE

To protect its vessels transiting the Indian Ocean from increasingly aggressive Somali pirates, in 2008 shipping firm Maersk hired a Tanzanian navy patrol boat and its crew. (Kenyan patrol boat pictured.) That move was only recently reported. “It’s a temporary solution that a shipper has hired a warship from another country, but there’s no alternative,” Jan Fritz Hansen, vice-president of the Danish Shipowners’ Association, told a reporter.

It was neither the first nor last time a shipper hired mercs to fight pirates. Usually the security personnel ride aboard the vessel they’re protecting. Hiring an escort vessel represents a rare private convoy. It’s no accident that many Tanzanian military personnel are trained in China: the Chinese also form convoys to protect Beijing’s shipping interests from pirates, whereas the U.S. and European model relies on independent navy patrols protecting a shipping corridor.

Tanzanian sailors have also benefited from American expertise. A year ago the U.S. Navy frigate Robert G. Bradley visited Tanzania in part to train up local forces in counter-piracy operations.

Merc firm Blackwater, a.k.a. “Xe,” tried to get into the pirate-killing’ bizness in 2007 when it outfitted a small vessel, McArthur, with a helicopter pad, medical bay and weapons facilities. The Blackwater navy never scored a contract, perhaps owing to its worsening reputation for unethical behavior. Springbored at U.S. Naval Institute Blog celebrated when Blackwater put its vessel on sale in Spain, calling McArthur a “platform that just was inappropriate for the job.”

Blogger Galrahn defended the use of mercs in the piracy fight:

There is a slow but deliberate escalation taking place in regards to piracy off the coast of Africa, and the absence of a political solution by global political leaders is prompting the gigantic shipping industry to take matters in their own hands.

But the hiring of a formal navy as mercs has got one expert worried. “Long-term, it’s a dangerous development because it will make poor African countries reliant on private companies’ money to run their militaries,” said Lars Bangert Struwe from the Danish Institute for Military Studies.

(Photo: The Citizen)

Related:
Pirates Surge in Gulf of Aden
A.U. Air Defenders Could Block Eritrean Arms
Maritime, Air Roles for A.U. Peacekeepers in Somalia
Puntland Scraps Makeshift Pirate-Fighting Force
Regaining the Initiative against Somali Pirates
World Politics Review: Counterpiracy Mission Targets Seafarers’ Hearts and Minds