Erik Prince is Reportedly Trying to Privatize Afghan War and Profit Off Country’s Resources
Blackwater Ops founder and security contractor Erik Prince has pitched a way to privatize America’s war in Afghanistan and profit off it through stripping the country of its natural resources.
According a BuzzFeed News report, Prince presented an idea to the Trump administration that would remove US troops and replace them with “security contractors” in “an East India Company approach” — a reference to the British empire’s business-focused method of colonization.
Prince’s intentions to privatize the Afghanistan war has been no secret, as he has written op-eds for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and USA Today arguing for the use of contractors. Though, a pitch directly to the administration should be taken more seriously given the fact that has close ties with former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos — who is his sister.
BuzzFeed News — who obtained the documents from “a source familiar with the matter” — reported that Prince pitched his idea to officials inside the Trump administration. The natural resources he intends to strip from the country include Afghanistan’s supply of lithium, uranium, and magnesite, as well as other “rare earth elements.”
Per one of the slides in Prince’s plan, privatizing the war focuses on “strategic mineral resource extraction funded effort that breaks the negative security economic cycle.”
In a statement to the online outlet, a communications staffer for Prince argued that his pitch would provide the US with “an affordable” model for America’s longest running war.
“What is laid out in the slides is a model of an affordable way for the US to stabilize a failed state where we are presently wasting American youth and tens of billions of dollars annually,” said the spokesperson.
When confronted by BuzzFeed News personally, Prince responded by saying, “You’re a fucking hack.”
Prince’s most famous involvement in a Middle Eastern war involved his contractors killing 17 civilians in Iraq, as Blackwater contractors gunned down bystanders in the infamous 2007 Nisour Square incident.
[image via screengrab]
Comments
↓ Scroll down for comments ↓