Drinking Vodka from the ‘Butt-Crack’

Abstract

This article speaks to the emerging literature by critical scholars of race and gender focused on Private Militarized Security Companies (PMSCs) working in conflict and post-conflict settings. As one aspect of a wider project to illuminate concerns of security and the masculinized world of the private security contractor, I develop the concept of fratriarchy to bring into sharp relief the potential consequence of contractors' relative operational freedom within the context of close, yet sometimes competitive brotherly relations. Here, I go on to consider the means by which a small group of US Embassy guards in Kabul created dense intra-masculine bonds within a wider hierarchy of men through norm-bound, homoerotic practices. From the view of those involved, these practices may well have neutralized the threat of homosexuality through cementing heteronormative relations among the hegemonic members. In discussing three images depicting sexualized activities drawn from the 2009 Kabul Hazing, I argue that intimate forms of embodiment intersect with processes of racialization in politically important ways. In conclusion, it is tentatively argued that the Kabul Hazing and wider discussions of the industry conceived of through the lens of fratriarchy provide the emerging feminist security studies literature with a closely focused resource with which to augment claims located at higher levels of abstraction around the process of (re)masculinization argued to be underway in this exemplary sphere.

Keywords:

• accountability
• fratriarchy
• heteronormativity
• masculinities
• racialization
• PMSC

Notes

The phrase ‘Private Militarized Security Company’ rather than ‘Private Military Company’ is used here in order to circumvent the endless discussions of how best to describe the roles and functions of particular companies. Use of the word ‘militarized’ directs attention towards social practice within the context of the (albeit diverse) gendered-cultural milieu of the sphere. See Enloe (2002: 23–4).

See http://www.icoc-psp.org/ (accessed 9 February 2012).

While mechanisms of accountability may be in place in national militaries and Peace Support Operations, it is their weak implementation – often explained by recourse to the ‘boys will be boys’ culture – that protects perpetrators from sanction in these public contexts. The important point here (registered later in the article), is that unlike the case for a number of those joining the PMSC sector, it is hard to imagine that civilians enlisting into regular militaries or military personnel deployed on peacekeeping missions, might articulate their motivation in terms of operating autonomously, as do some moving into PMSCs; indeed the reverse is more likely the case.

ESRC/AHRC funded project entitled ‘Mercenary Masculinities Imagine Security: The Case of the Private Military Contractor’ (RES-071-27-0002).

During the course of field research, I have detected a degree of resistance from older, former military personnel towards the greater inclusion of women in the armed forces, framed disparagingly by Martin van Creveld (2000) as ‘feminization’ that serves to weaken the institution.

One of the most important factors influencing approaches taken to security work for veterans in the industry is argued to be the professional ethos they import from previous military experience (Higate 2012a).

See John Geddes' autobiography, Highway to Hell (2006) for further details of these individuals.

As Lanigan notes ‘Generally, PMSC personnel fielded abroad by the U.S. government are subject … to the criminal laws of the territorial state. In conflict and post-conflict environments, however, territorial state institutions may not be developed or resourced sufficiently to enforce local law. And in Iraq in 2004 the U.S. government-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) promulgated CPA Order No. 17, conferring presumptive immunity from Iraqi legal jurisdiction upon international (non-Iraqi) contractors who work in Iraq for Coalition governments or international organizations’. See http://www.privatesecurityregulation.net/files/Microsoft%20Word%20-%20PMSC%20Article,%20US,%20Kevin%20Lanigan,%20Final.pdf (accessed 1 March 2011).

The images referred to in this article are open to a range of interpretations and have been used as catalysts to analyses in an ideal-typical and heuristic rather than definitive sense.

Though fratriarchal practices are often seen as key to strengthening security through fostering camaraderie (Hockey 1986).

See http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5280628n&tag=related;photovideo (accessed 9 February 2012).

A search of YouTube with the term ‘hazing’ elicits hundreds of hits featuring naked buttocks in the proceedings; there are numerous other rituals shaped by cultural context that provide meanings other than those outlined here.

See http://www.cbsnews.com/2300-100_162-5280529-2.html?tag=page;next (accessed 9 February 2012).

For the image of England see http://www.nndb.com/people/609/000046471/ and for the image from the Kabul Hazing, see http://www.cbsnews.com/2300-100_162-5280529-3.html?tag=page;next (both images accessed 9 February 2012).

The murder of Somali youth Shidane Arone by members of the Canadian Airborne Regiment in 1993 has also been analysed through its gendered and racial dimensions alongside the role of hazing in this egregious human rights abuse (see Razack 2004).