U.S. military contractors involved in sex trafficking in Bosnia

Off Our Backs, Nov/Dec 2002

Recent investigations have revealed that U.S. military contractors were involved in sex trafficking in Bosnia but, because of legal loopholes and bureaucratic confusions, are immune from prosecution. The involvement of U.S. military contractors in sex trafficking came to light because of recent lawsuits filed by two former DynCorp employees against the defense contracting firm. They allege that the firm fired them for reporting that co-workers were involved in the sex-trade in Bosnia. Ben Johnson was fired after he reported that several DynCorp employees purchased underage girls, some of whom were as young as 12, according to Salon.com. Kathryn Balkovac, who was contracted to the U.N. as part of its International Police Task Force in Bosnia, was fired after implicating DynCorp employees who participated in forced prostitution in the Balkans. According to Martina Vanderberg, a women's rights researcher with Human Rights Watch, the problem of trafficked women in Bosnia is overwhelming, and she has seen little effort to stop it. Johnson's and Bolkovac's court actions took place in Fort Worth, TX, and England, respectively.

Both Johnson and Balkovac won legal victories in their cases. A tribunal in England found that Balkovac "acted reasonably" while DynCorp did not. The tribunal ruled that DynCorp violated England's whistle blower statue when they fired Balkovac. There will be a hearing in October to determine the amount of damages DynCorp will be forced to pay. The company settled the lawsuit with Ben Johnson.

These lawsuits highlight a significant problem regarding the lack of accountability of private military contractors working overseas. Despite the fact that investigations by Bosnian police and the U.S. Army confirmed that U.S. military contractors in Bosnia bought women as sex slaves, no one was prosecuted. And this is not uncommon when it comes to private military personnel based overseas.

In the case of the DynCorp employees at Camp Comanche in Bosnia, when the Army's Criminal Investi ation Command (known as CID) began its investigation, the Army's Office of the Staff Judge Advocate for Bosnia-Hercegovina declared that the office did not have jurisdiction to prosecute civilian contractors. So the CID turned the investigation over to the Bosnian authorities. But the Bosnian police believed DynCorp employees to be members of the international stabilization forces, immune to Bosnian prosecution according to the Dayton Peace Accords. The question of jurisdiction became irrelevant when the Army and DynCorp pulled the accused men out of Bosnia.

The question of jurisdiction over the DynCorp employees supplied to the U.N. is far less vague-officers of the U.N.-supplied International Police Task Force are subject to a U.N. internal investigations unit, and if evidence is found against them, they are repatriated for punishment.

But whether the employees are sent home by the U.N. or fired by DynCorp, they are not prosecuted in the U.S. either because U.S. law does not cover most common crimes that are committed in a foreign country. Vanderberg notes that the International Criminal Court may technically have the jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed by military contractors. But the Bush Administration already announced that it will not participate in U.N. peacekeeping missions unless Americans are granted immunity from the ICC. And anyway, Vanderberg says, the court probably would not pursue cases like those of the DynCorp employees because of a focus on larger-scale crimes such as genocide.

-info from the Feminist Majority Foundation and the Feminist Peace Network