{"id":13457,"date":"2014-03-19T10:38:26","date_gmt":"2014-03-19T10:38:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=13457"},"modified":"2014-03-19T10:38:26","modified_gmt":"2014-03-19T10:38:26","slug":"britains-private-army-g4s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=13457","title":{"rendered":"Britain’s private army, G4S"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"g4s\"<\/a>G4S is the world\u2019s third-largest private-sector employer. The\u00a0British multinational security services company headquartered in Crawley, United Kingdom, is the world’s largest security company measured by revenues.<\/p>\n

Contractors from the security behemoth cleaned up after an explosion in a crowded souk in South Sudan.<\/p>\n

G4S is based near London and is traded on the stock exchange there. Though it remains generally unknown to the public, it has operations in 120 countries and more than 620,000 employees.<\/p>\n

The security company is engaged by the United Nations mission sometimes to handle difficult tasks.<\/p>\n

In recent years it has become the third-largest private employer in the world, after Walmart and the Taiwanese manufacturing conglomerate Foxconn.<\/p>\n

The fact that such a huge private entity is a security company is worrying.<\/p>\n

Most G4S employees are lowly guards, but a growing number are military specialists dispatched by the company into what are delicately known as \u201ccomplex environments\u201d to take on jobs that national armies lack the skill or the will to do.<\/p>\n

Pierre Booyse, an Afrikaner and ex-SADF colonel, for one, did not dwell on the larger meaning. For him, the company amounted to a few expatriates in the Juba headquarters compound, a six-month contract at $10,000 a month, and some tangible fieldwork to be done.<\/p>\n

He felt he was getting too old to be living in tents and mucking around in the dirt, but he liked G4S and believed, however wearily, in the job.<\/p>\n

As he set out for the west, his team consisted of seven men\u2014four de-miners, a driver, a community-liaison officer, and a medic.<\/p>\n

The medic was a Zimbabwean. All the others were soldiers of the Sudan People\u2019s Liberation Army, the S.P.L.A., now seconded to G4S, which paid them well by local standards\u2014about $250 a month.<\/p>\n

At their disposal they had two old Land Cruisers, one of them configured as an ambulance with a stretcher in the back.<\/p>\n

Merely two years after official independence, South Sudan was fracturing as a country, but the names of the Souk Sita victims could be inserted into the U.N. forms, and for G4S the day had been a success.<\/p>\n

Source: Vanity Fair\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

G4S is the world\u2019s third-largest private-sector employer. The\u00a0British multinational security services company headquartered in Crawley, United Kingdom, is the world’s largest security company measured by revenues. Contractors from the security behemoth cleaned up after an explosion in a crowded souk in South Sudan. G4S is based near London and is traded on the stock exchange … Continue reading “Britain’s private army, G4S”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11662,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,123],"tags":[186,6660,1946,8674],"class_list":["post-13457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-world","tag-britain","tag-g4s","tag-uk","tag-worlds-largest-security-company"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/g4s.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13457"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13458,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13457\/revisions\/13458"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}