Mark Mitchell fires back on his life before politics

Analysis: A politician’s life before politics is fair game. We deserve to know what a person stands for, whether there is consistency between their public policy and private persona, and whether the new police minister operated with integrity while carrying out sensitive security work in war-torn Iraq.

Last week, when Labour police spokesperson Ginny Andersen said Mitchell was “paid to kill” people, and asked whether he had kept a “tally of how many people you’ve shot”, she was roundly criticised.

Those on the left and the right – including her boss, Chris Hipkins – said Andersen went too far. The Labour leader even said he would prefer it if MPs’ backgrounds weren’t discussed.

It’s taken close to a week for Andersen to publicly apologise, telling RNZ, “it is unacceptable to personally attack someone”.

“It is not my usual standards … I would like to apologise to any listeners who took offence to those comments I made,” she said.

But the damage was done.

Andersen’s comments have forced Mitchell to explain his work as a private security contractor, as he did when entering politics in 2011 and again during his National Party leadership tilt in 2018.

Again, the question on everyone’s lips was: how many people have you killed?

Mitchell remained purposefully opaque, telling Newstalk ZB he wasn’t sure if he killed anyone during a well-documented, multi-day siege of the Coalition Provisional Authority’s compound in Nasiriyah, Iraq.

“We had to defend our position, there [were] casualties on both sides, I don’t know how many people were killed and I don’t know whether I was responsible for any of that,” he said.

But rather than asking how many people Mitchell has killed, we could ask whether New Zealand is comfortable with the private security industry, the way in which it operates, and the checks and balances in place.

Especially considering New Zealand continues to pay private security contractors at home and overseas.

In a written statement, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said it hired private security personnel to guard some of its premises in New Zealand and overseas.

Sometimes, private security contractors were hired on a short-term basis to support events and travel.

According to those who have worked in this industry, the vast majority of companies and operators carry out their tasks – often in unstable situations – with integrity.

They also told Newsroom countries needed to outsource security work, rather than rely on local or international police and defence forces.

However, questions remain about an industry that has been involved in fatal incidents, war crimes, and has been criticised by the United Nations.

What is private security?

International security specialist Dion Jensen said it was almost impossible to have an informed debate on this topic, because of a lack of understanding and context surrounding the work these companies do.

Jensen balks at the term security – it’s a catch-all, which doesn’t reflect the breadth of the work and the different skill sets.

Private security can include the Armourguard employee standing outside the liquor store on a Friday evening, right through to the type of diplomatic protection Mitchell and his team carried out in Iraq.

In the context of a conflict zone, it can include surveillance and risk assessment down to checking cars and standing guard at compounds and residences.

In some cases, it’ll be a case of guarding humanitarian goods, or private mines.

Close protection teams are also used as part of convoys – as Mitchell was – moving people safely between locations and meetings. This was core work in the Middle East when improvised explosive devices and car bombing was widespread.

Jensen, who was a soldier in the NZ Army and a community police officer before working for private protection firms such as Control Risks and Sardonyx International, now runs his own international company, with his father, Tamafaiga Jensen.

According to the pair’s website, the security wing of the company specialises in the strategic planning and operational oversight of security operations from investigations, surveillance and close-protection.

They say their clients include oil companies Shell and Chevron, tobacco giant Philip Morris, and the New Zealand and Australian Governments.

Jensen also worked in the Middle East between 2004 and 2007, carrying out close protection for British diplomats. So, he’d know a thing or two about the type of work Mitchell was doing.

‘Governments can’t and won’t provide this. It is up to the private sector’

Mark Mitchell

The Palmerston North-based security and protection expert says the problem with the term “private security” is that the nature of the work isn’t well-understood.

The public often sees different operators as all having the same faults but many of the companies and people who worked in this space were well-respected, Jensen says.

The companies Mitchell worked for, and Mitchell’s own company, Threat Management Group, had good reputations within the community.

What exactly did Mark Mitchell do?

The past week has seen the retelling of Mitchell’s involvement in a multi-day siege in Iraq, where he was working to provide close protection to the UK diplomat Rory Stewart and the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Most of the security team remained at the compound, with Mitchell and his close protection teams the only ones able to leave the site to provide security between locations.

“Our job simply was to get these personnel there and back in one piece. I was relieved at the end of my time, leading a team, that I hadn’t lost anyone and no one under our protection had been killed or captured,” Mitchell said in 2019. 

When the compound came under attack, a series of events – which Mitchell documented in a Facebook post in 2019 – led him and a small team up to the roof, to fight back against hundreds of insurgents.

Mitchell has also spoken to the media about working alongside the Hague scientists charged with gathering evidence for Saddam Hussein’s war crimes trial.

His job was to protect the scientists, setting up a safe camp “in the middle of nowhere” next to mass graves, open them to allow the scientists access to evidence, and close them again.

Mitchell became adept at kidnap and ransom negotiations, dealing with more than 100 hostage negotiations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Darfur, Sudan.

And in 2007, he accepted a mission into Baghdad to save a stray dog, who had been befriended by a US soldier.

Mitchell initially worked for well-known security companies before becoming the chief executive and shareholder of Threat Management Group. 

When he sold the company in 2010 it was turning over $130 million a year.

Mitchell stands steadfast behind his record, saying he’s proud of the work he’s done.

“There are security professionals in the field every day all over the world protecting people, property, critical infrastructure and supply chains,” the police minister tells Newsroom.

“Right now there are journalists in conflict zones providing critical information to their audience who rely on close protection teams to keep them safe and protected. 

“Governments can’t and won’t provide this. It is up to the private sector,” he says.

Why do we need these firms?

Ron Mark is another politician who has been on the receiving end of personal attacks for work he did before entering politics.

Mark was called a “mercenary” by the former Labour MP Trevor Mallard, which Mark told Newsroom was “an outrageous claim”.

After leaving the New Zealand Defence Force, the former NZ First minister worked for the Sultan of Oman’s forces.

When asked what that work involved, he said that was between himself and the Sultan, but did say a lot of the work was training other forces, in an effort to help stabilise legitimately elected governments.

Former Labour Party leader and UN chief of mission David Shearer has also seen security firms working in conflict zones, unstable states, and areas of lawlessness.

When Shearer travelled to a meeting away from his compound in Iraq, four Humvees manned by US soldiers and three armoured four-wheel drive vehicles with UN security staff would accompany him in his convoy. Before the meeting, security staff would check the location was safe.

He describes this work as “passive” protection. The security staff were there to get diplomats safely from A to B. Yes, they had weapons, and yes they would use them if they needed to defend their clients and themselves, but they weren’t carrying out military-style assaults.

In 1998 Shearer wrote a paper on outsourcing war, which concluded this industry played an essential role in peacekeeping, security and close protection.

The work was essential and needed to be viewed in the context of conflict zones, he said.

“There’s no way you could operate in Somalia or Iraq without some sort of protection.”

The work detailed by Jensen, Mark and Shearer all sounds like the type of work that could be done by police and defence personnel, which raises questions of why private security firms were needed in the first place.

They said some of the work was low-level security, which a defence force would not undertake. Or it may be a small, or short-term job that would not be worth the logistics of a deployment by a country’s defence force. 

Security personnel may be available and able to take on a role faster than a country’s police or military. Or the job may require a very specific skillset.

And sometimes it was political, Mark said. A country might not want to be seen to have ‘boots on the ground’ in a specific country. 

So, what’s the problem?

Those who spoke to Newsroom all said private security had a legitimate place in conflict zones.

However, the industry has come under constant fire.

Private security became synonymous with the US company Blackwater in the early 2000s.

The US company was contracted to provide protection to US State Department employees in Iraq. In 2007 a bloody shoot-out took place in a crowded town square, which involved a Blackwater convoy and led to the death of 20 Iraqi civilians, including a child.

Meanwhile, US-based CACI International and Titan were named in reports on torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Beyond that, the idea that some profit from war was unpalatable to some.

The industry, which began in the post-Cold War era, was worth US$223 billion in 2020, and set to double by 2030. There are more than 150 private military companies, which offer their services in about 50 countries.

At a higher level, the lack of industry oversight, regulation and notable human rights abuses across a range of operators has been repeatedly noted by the UN.

By the same token, the UN’s reliance on private security companies has grown over the years and the UN has described it as justified. 

A 2010 report found the amount spent on such firms by the UN went up from at least NZ$60m in 2009 to $103m in 2010.

Last year, the working group again concluded that many states were failing to effectively engage with and implement the regulatory frameworks applicable to mercenaries, mercenary-related actors and private military and security companies, “to the severe detriment of human rights and international humanitarian law”.

But Shearer said the idea that any New Zealand politician had been a “mercenary” was unhelpful.

It was legitimate to ask elected officials about their roles before coming into office, he said. But he believed the line was crossed when accusations were made without any understanding of the context.