Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa with mercenary boss Erik Prince in Ecuador. Photo: X/@DanielNoboaOk.
By Fidel Narváez – Mar 24, 2024
Since Lenín Moreno’s presidency in 2017, Ecuador has faced an economic and social debacle that has turned insecurity into its most critical problem.
Once the second safest country in Latin America, the country now leads the region in violence and has become the main supplier of drugs to Europe. This quick deterioration, indeed, the quick genesis of a new narco-state, has laid the groundwork for implementing what is known as the “shock doctrine,” where neoliberalism takes advantage of extreme situations to impose drastic policies. In the Ecuadorian case, this tragedy is not the consequence of natural disasters or wars, but of the deliberate weakening of the state’s capability.
The Noboa government’s narrative of “internal war” has not only failed to reduce violence, but has also led to human rights violations by the armed forces and police. Because of this failure, the president, backed by a part of the frightened population, has toughened laws and insists on a strategy of repression that clearly is not producing real solutions.
The alliance with Erik Prince, founder of the controversial Blackwater (now Academi), is perhaps the most demeaning of the government’s diversionary strategies.
Blackwater has the most extensive criminal record of its kind, for which it has been taken to court on many occasions.
A case in point: civil action No. 1:09-cv-618, filed in 2009 in a US court (available in the WikiLeaks archives). In this lawsuit, a number of Iraqis alleged a series of crimes, including murders and acts of indiscriminate violence.
Among the documented incidents is a shooting in July 2007, where a civilian car was shot at by mercenaries, resulting in the death of a nine-year-old boy and a baby girl, and several people were wounded.
“The gunmen shot the mother in the back as she tried to protect her three-month-old daughter, who was shot in the face,” the case describes. In February 2007, a 37-year-old woman was shot in the head and killed as she “was driving to her office near the Iraqi Foreign Ministry.” That same month, three security guards were killed: “One was on a balcony: he was shot for no reason; two others came to his aid and were also shot for no reason.” In July 2005 a taxi driver was shot with “…prohibited ammunition, which explodes and causes maximum physical harm.” In August 2005 a “professor of veterinary medicine at Baghdad University” was wounded “… for no other reason than to reach the checkpoint before him.” It goes on.
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The lawsuit accuses Erik Prince’s company of being involved in “murder, arms smuggling, money laundering, tax evasion, kidnapping, child prostitution, destruction of evidence,” and of failing to prevent “its employees from carrying their weapons when they are drinking alcohol or using drugs.”
Such a lawsuit could not have been brought before the Iraqi courts, because the employees of Daniel Noboa’s new friend enjoy immunity wherever they commit crimes. The same immunity that the current Ecuadorian government has granted to the US-Americans in the “Status of Forces Agreement,” in force since February 2024.
Even in the United States, the aforementioned lawsuit was dismissed in 2011 on the grounds that private contractors operating under government contracts in conflict zones are granted immunity.
For a president to turn to a criminal like Prince to offer him a government contract, without this being a scandal, means that the country’s downfall is above all a moral one. But to ask for explanations from someone who boasts of invading embassies, who applauds the deportation of his own citizens and who has not complained when they have been treated like slaves, deported in chains, is futile. The questions should rather be addressed to the patriotic Ecuadorian officers: Will they allow foreign mercenaries to dictate how to act in their own country?
Finally, an indignant reflection for every Ecuadorian who will go to the polls on April 13: Are we going to put an end to this moral debacle that is destroying Ecuador?
Fidel Narváez is a Ecuadorian human rights activist and former consul of Ecuador in London who was a key figure in assisting Julian Assange obtain asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012.
