Private Security Companies

Transforming Politics and Security in the Czech Republic

Old?ich Bureš

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137477521
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Military Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This study presents intriguing analysis of the impact of private security companies' practices upon the fields of security and politics in the Czech Republic. It situates cases concerning ABL, the biggest Czech private security company, in the larger social, political, legal and economic contexts of the booming private security business. This company's extensive linkages with Czech politics suggest that the continued absence of specific legislation for the regulation of private security companies' activities is due to too much, rather than too little, political interest in their activities. This is problematic, arguably, because the practices of private security companies have already contributed to a significant transformation of the Czech security field by enhancing the commodification and depoliticization of security, while ABL's use of security methods for political purposes and a business approach to politics have profoundly transformed the field of politics. Reflecting the growing interest in the privatization of security, this timely study unpacks the relationship between politics, business and security in the Czech Republic.

1

A Novel Strategic Plan

In a closed meeting of the top management of the biggest Czech private security company (PSC) Agentura bílého lva (ABL, Agency of the White Lion), in October 2008, the company’s founder Vít Bárta presented a novel Strategic Plan for 2009–2014. According to the transcript of this plan, published by a leading Czech daily in April 2011 (see Box 1.1), the company aimed at achieving a dominant market share by means of ‘uniform building of stable economic and political power’. To achieve the former (i.e., economic power), ABL was to develop ‘new categories of customers in the field of public administration (health, education, government agencies, local government, social services)’ as well as ‘a comprehensive security service for the [Czech] business elites’. To achieve the latter (i.e., political power), ABL was to acquire its ‘own political power base’ in the form of the previously little-known political party Věci veřejné (Public Affairs) (Idnes.cz 2011). In June 2010, Public Affairs competed for the first time in the general parliamentary elections. Running on an anticorruption platform (accusing the representatives of the established Czech political parties of being ‘dinosaurs’ of political–economic power-games), the party won 10.88 percent of votes. This translated into 23 members of parliament (MPs, out of 200) and an invitation to join the new coalition government, where the formal party leader was allocated the post of Minister of Interior (in charge of drafting the long-overdue law for regulating the activities of PSCs in the Czech Republic); the informal party leader (or the ‘superguru’, as the founder of ABL called himself) the post of Minister of Transport (in charge of the biggest public infrastructure spending programs); while his wife was duly elected as the Vice President of the lower (but in terms of legislative powers more important) chamber of the Czech Parliament.

Box 1.1 Strategic Plan of ABL for 2009–2014

Vision

• Unified building of stable economic and political power

Economic objectives

• Create the strongest PSC in the Czech Republic with a dominant market position, by means of fake competition generation through friendly PSCs

• Develop new categories of customers in the field of public administration (health, education, government agencies, local government, social services, etc.)

Economic–political objectives

• Develop a comprehensive security service for the (Czech) economic elites

• Create projects leading to government contracts (private prison, luring away the employees in security areas, etc.)

Political goals

• Build a coalition of the Civic Democratic Party (CDP) and the Public Affairs (PA) in 2010

• City hall control in Prague (districts) 1 and 5 in 2010

• Develop relations with Social Democrats for their government in 2010

• Take control over CDP in Prague (districts) 1 and 5 by 2012 (2014)

• In 2014, obtain 30 percent of CDP’ votes in Prague, or 30 percent of the (Prague’s) municipal council through PA

Resources

• ABL, the economic base of power, in the following years to be given maximum independence and depersonalization

• PA, the political base of power

Source: Adapted from Idnes.cz (2011).

As such, a mere two years after its formulation, ABL’s Strategic Plan appeared to be on the track of being accomplished. But as with most master plans, real-world developments took a radically different course since the end of 2010. The extensive personal, as well as alleged financial, linkages between the biggest Czech-owned PSC and the newly governmental political party Public Affairs attracted unprecedented media attention. Concerns ‘that the process of privatization of security will be managed by one man, both as a representative of the state and the founder of one of largest and financially strongest PSCs’ (Šmíd 2010a) were reinforced by a number of widely publicized scandals concerning past contracts of ABL, which allegedly included spying on several local politicians and their family members.¹ In April 2011, the founder of ABL was accused of bribery by several of the MPs from Public Affairs, for which he was conditionally sentenced to 18 months of imprisonment a year later. This prompted him to resign from the government and the party split right in the middle, with Bárta’s faction ultimately going into opposition. The sentence was subsequently suspended by a higher court ruling, according to which the acts of corruption cannot be investigated due to their falling under the broad immunity privileges enjoyed by all Czech MPs. In February 2013, Bárta was elected as the formal chairman of Public Affairs, but the party’s popularity in the public opinion polls was already close to zero, which explains why it did not even compete in the October 2013 parliamentary elections. ABL, meanwhile, changed its name to Mark2 Corporation (M2.C), claiming that an English name is more suitable for a planned expansion abroad.

Due to the aforementioned developments, for the first time in the modern history of the Czech Republic, Czech journalists as well as the security experts of political parties engaged in a general debate about PSCs’ activities. This debate was long overdue because ABL/M2.C merely represents the visible tip of a large iceberg of 7,000+ PSCs registered in the Czech Republic (Bureš 2012). Moreover, as of late 2014, the Czech Republic is the only EU member state where the provision of private security services is not regulated by a special legal act. Czech PSCs, therefore, still operate under the general 1991 Trade Licensing Act (455/1991 Coll.) as any other type of private business, according to which the same basic minimum rules apply to opening an ice-cream stand and a multimillion PSC. As a consequence, not only was the start of the political debate about security privatization belated, but many of its key protagonists still lack the appreciation of the complexity of this phenomenon. This, in particular, concerns the possible political, economic, social, legal, and security impacts on the functioning of the Czech state and the lives of all people living within its borders.

The activities of ABL/M2.C and the successful political campaign of its ‘political power base’ in the general parliamentary elections in 2010 also served as a catalyst of scholarly attention to privatization of security. While much of the Czech academic literature has thus far paid more attention to the more controversial activities of private military companies (PMCs) outside of the Czech Republic (Bílková 2012; Bureš 2006, 2009; Bureš and Nedvědická 2011; Pernica 2011; Závěšický 2005), in the recent years, several journal articles and one edited book have been devoted to mostly empirically oriented analysis of PSCs in the Czech Republic (Bureš 2013; Bureš et al. 2013; Šmíd 2012b). In the English academic literature, the topic of Czech PSCs has thus far received relatively little attention (Bureš 2012, 2014). As will be discussed, this is largely a consequence of one of the distinctive features of the post-Cold War Czech security field – the hitherto absence of the more controversial activities of PMCs. In the Czech Republic, the term ‘private security company’ therefore refers to entities that provide mostly passive security services to counteract ‘decent ordinary crimes’ such as burglary or mugging. The higher levels of the force continuum are not covered – there are no PMCs providing primarily lethal services in the Czech Republic, domestic or international.

Furthermore, most Czech PSCs offer all of their services domestically. Only some unofficial Internet sources have alleged that ‘the rumor is that there are private security contractors with Czech equity shares supplying services to various places of conflict’ (Policista.cz 2007). Speculations have also emerged about the ‘training of Czech citizens, who became “security specialists” for places such as Iraq’, which is allegedly occasionally conducted in various locations of the territory of the Czech Republic under the guise of ‘private bodyguards training’, and some Czech citizens allegedly ‘serve as armed contractors, including places like Iraq’ (Policista.cz 2007). There were also reports in the Czech press that following the US-led invasion in Afghanistan, ABL/M2.C has unsuccessfully tried to enter the Afghan security market in cooperation with the help of Czech-Central Asian Chamber of Commerce (Šmíd 2010a). Unfortunately, it is impossible to verify any of these claims. Nevertheless, the growing interest of various Czech companies in the postconflict reconstruction contracts seems to generate occasional demand for VIP protection services in Afghanistan. In June 2011, for example, a little-known Czech PSC for the first time actually provided protection to two Czech business managers during their week-long visit to Kabul. The owner of the company, which he already refers to as the ‘Czech Blackwater’, hoped that further such contracts would follow (Šnídl 2011). If that indeed were the case on a larger scale, the Czech security field could soon include companies offering their services abroad and, eventually, perhaps even covering the higher spectrum of the force continuum.

In the longue durée perspective, this would not be an unprecedented development. In the late Middle Ages, when the then Czech Kingdom was an integral part of the Holy Roman Empire, it gained notoriety for supplying numerous soldiers to the so-called free and great military companies in the late Middle Ages (Ortiz 2010: 14–16) and entire regiments of leased soldiers following the dawn of this era (Percy 2007: 156–157). Moreover, the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) not only started in the Czech Kingdom but also led to the rise of the phenomenon of private military entrepreneurs (Redlich 2004: 170). In the absence of regular armies, European kings and emperors were forced to rely on noblemen willing and able to share both the financial and military burden: ‘A ruler in need of military labor would enter into a formal agreement with a military entrepreneur to supply a number of soldiers for a particular period and at an agreed wage’ (Ortiz 2010: 18). Albrecht von Wallenstein, a Czech native, gained international fame as the most successful private military entrepreneur of the Thirty Years’ War for being able to raise and sustain an army of 20,000 men on behalf of Ferdinand II, the then Holy Roman Emperor. For his services, von Wallenstein was awarded a nobility title of Duke and subsequently was appointed the commander of the entire Imperial Army (Ortiz 2010: 18; Percy 2007: 87).

The nonlethal quality of today’s private security business in the Czech Republic is due to three factors. First, despite the considerable benefits of the military services provided by entrepreneurs like von Wallenstein, they were also potential political rivals to the kings and emperors. Hence, the end of the Thirty Years’ War ushered in an era of state sovereignty, the building of national armies and gradually limited the power of private military entrepreneurs (Kramer 2007: 23). This development appears to be eminently influential in the case of the Czech Republic, as during the period between the Thirty Years’ War and the end of World War II there is no evidence of the existence of a market for private force on the territory of today’s Czech Republic. Second, any potential private security enterprise would have found its end in February 1948, when the communist party took over Czechoslovakia and abolished all previously existing private markets. Following the Soviet model, Czechoslovakia implemented a rigid, centrally planned, and state-owned economy. Moreover, all security forces were under the control of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, which was constitutionally granted a monopoly on the use of force. As a consequence, there was no room for any type of private security enterprise, and the first PSCs in the then still Czechoslovakia emerged only in the aftermath of the November 1989 Velvet Revolution that brought down the communist regime. In the early 1990s, the Czech Republic embarked on what many economists have subsequently called a ‘shock therapy’ transition toward a free market economy (Hoehn 1998; Lavigne 1995), which included both the privatization of state assets and the opening of market opportunities for the provision of all kinds of services, including security. As discussed in Chapter 3, this ‘shock therapy’ transition is an important explanatory factor for the current shape of the Czech security field. Third, on the demand side, there has been no need for private military services due to the peaceful nature of the transition from communism (the Velvet Revolution) and the smooth break-up of the Czechoslovak Federation in 1993. On the supply side, the Czech army has undergone substantial force reductions (from over 100,000 in 1993 to less than 20,000 as of 2014), but much of this was achieved by the elimination of mandatory conscription, which provided over 70 percent of all manpower during the Cold War era.

Book overview and structure

Building on the recent literature that points out the need to focus on the many subtle ways in which the micro-level practices of PSCs affect security governance as well as the very perception of security as a public good, this book provides an analysis of the broader impact of PSCs’ activities on the fields of security and politics in the Czech Republic since the end of the Cold War. This analysis follows the global security assemblages model originally developed by Rita Abrahamsen and Michael Williams (2009, 2011) to analyze the role of private security in Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and South Africa. Its roots can be traced to the criminological concepts of nodal and/or network governance, whose primary aim is to explain the increasing participation of private actors in the provision of security (Shearing and Wood 2003; Wood and Dupont 2006). In contrast to several well-known International Relations (IR) treatments of private security actors (Avant 2004; Percy 2007; Singer 2003), which according to Abrahamsen and Williams (2011: 14) suffer from a ‘mercenary misconception’ (excessive focus on the more sensational PMCs and corresponding neglect of the expansion of commercial PSCs, and resulting tendency to view all private security actors as illicit, illegal, and immoral), the nodal/network governance perspective presents a more nuanced picture of the constantly evolving web of relations between various public and private actors (the nodes), which is always located in a particular time and place. At the same time, however, the implicit notion of a certain network centricity inherent in all conceptualizations of a network was not really capturing the more decentralized nature of the African state, where Abrahamsen and Williams did their empirical research of the evolving nature of security provision and where private security firms are playing evermore prominent and sometimes controversial roles (Abrahamsen and Williams 2014: 26, 28).

As a consequence, Abrahamsen and Williams turned to the idea of assemblages to order their empirical investigations of the shifting relationship between the public and the private, the global and the local in the field of security in African states:

[T]he notion of an assemblage proved to be incredibly useful because it allowed us to ‘de-abstract’ the African state, to look at the actors and relationships that were actually doing the security work, as well as the forms of cooperation and competition between them. One of the things we reacted against was the predominant idea that African states were weak and incapable and that security privatization could be understood simply as global private networks filling in the void left by the weak, incapable public structures. Empirically it just wasn’t that simple.

(Abrahamsen et al. 2014: 27–28)

Specifically, in contrast to the often presented view that the rise of private security actors implies the decline of public security actors, their assemblage analysis suggested that

what is at stake in ‘security privatization’ is much more than a simple transfer of previously public functions to private actors. Instead, these developments indicate important developments in the relationship between security and the sovereign state, structures of political power and authority, and the operations of global capital.

(Abrahamsen and Williams 2009: 3)

As such, privatization of security ‘does not happen outside the structures of the state: it is embedded in the social and the legal and may well involve the participation of elements of the public security forces’ (Abrahamsen and Williams 2011: 236). States are therefore not disappearing, or fading away, ‘rather particular components of the state are undergoing a process of “denationalization” and rearticulation’ (Abrahamsen et al. 2011: 91). Importantly, however, these processes do lead to shifts in the relative positions of private actors within the security field, and they also alter the context of political contestation. In the security field, a result of these shifts is the emergence of what Abrahamsen and Williams (2011: 90) call ‘global security assemblages – transnational structures and networks in which a range of different actors and normativities interact, cooperate and compete to produce new institutions, practices and forms of deterritorialized security governance’ (italics in the original).

As discussed in the following chapter, Abrahamsen and Williams are not the only ones who found the concept of assemblages appealing. Chapter 2 therefore surveys several other strands of assemblage thinking that have recently become popular in several social sciences, including IR. Only Abrahamsen and Williams have, however, attempted to enhance assemblage thinking with Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological field theory in order to identify and analyze not only the more traditionally understood material power of PSCs, but also the often neglected principal-agent cultural power of PSCs vis-à-vis their private customers’ property protection. Moreover, they highlighted PSCs’ skillful exploitation of the decline of state’s symbolic power by contrasting the failure of public authorities to maintain the desired levels of security with the cost-effective and professional provision of PSCs’ services. These latter forms of power, as...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Boxes, Figures, and Tables
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• 1. A Novel Strategic Plan
• 2. Global Security Assemblages: Enhancing Assemblage Thinking with Bourdieu’s Sociology
• 3. Private Security Assemblage(s) and Powers of Private Security Companies
• 4. Transforming Politics
• 5. Transforming Security
• 6. Limits and Opportunities of Further Privatization of Security
• 7. Concluding Remarks
• Notes
• References
• Index