At first glance, it appears that 2009 didn’t start so well for the mil­i­tary con­trac­tor Xe, until Feb­ru­ary known as Black­wa­ter World­wide. In Jan­u­ary, with mul­ti­ple oth­er law­suits pend­ing, six of its for­mer employ­ees went on tri­al for the death of 17 Iraqi civil­ians in Sep­tem­ber 2007 in Nisoor Square, Bagh­dad. And in March, its con­tract in Iraq, where it has so far made more than $1 bil­lion dol­lars, was canceled.

Martin Hippe calls the Xe site a ‘precancerous mole,’ but concedes that most people in Jo Daviess County ‘are more concerned about the impact of the mega-dairy.’

Yet, on April 20 the AP report­ed that Xe (pro­nounced ​“zee”) will remain in Iraq until the sum­mer. It has been wide­ly report­ed that its avi­a­tion com­pa­ny, Pres­i­den­tial Air­lines, will con­tin­ue oper­a­tions in Iraq until the fall. And Triple Canopy, the com­pa­ny that will assume Xe’s con­tract in Iraq to pro­tect U.S. per­son­nel, will be hir­ing for­mer Blackwater/​Xe personnel.

The pri­vate mil­i­tary cor­po­ra­tion (PMC) mar­ket, of which Xe is a bou­tique part, is grow­ing glob­al­ly at 6 to 8 per­cent a year and has now sur­passed $100 bil­lion, most­ly based in the Unit­ed States and the Unit­ed King­dom. The use of mer­ce­nar­ies goes back mil­len­nia, but the phe­nom­e­non of cor­po­rate pri­vate armies capa­ble of chal­leng­ing the nation state’s ​“monop­oly on vio­lence” – as Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma put it – is a late 20th cen­tu­ry devel­op­ment that wor­ries peace activists around the globe. These pri­vate armies are used not just on the bat­tle­field but also to pro­tect cor­po­ra­tions, train pub­lic law enforce­ment per­son­nel and, as after Kat­ri­na, patrol city streets.

Mary Shes­green, co-founder of the Illi­nois group Clear­wa­ter, shares Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s con­cern about PMCs. But, unlike the Pres­i­dent, she believes they should be made ille­gal. Shes­green sees their exis­tence as part of the increas­ing mil­i­ta­riza­tion of our soci­ety. ​”Civil­ian con­trol of the mil­i­tary is a basic tenet of any democ­ra­cy. Cor­po­rate con­trol, or pri­va­ti­za­tion, is an essen­tial­ly anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic trend,” she says.

As part of its new incar­na­tion, for­mer Blackwater/​Xe CEO, Erik Prince, claimed in his res­ig­na­tion speech that the com­pa­ny plans to focus on its ​“core” busi­ness of domes­tic secu­ri­ty training.

A seem­ing vic­to­ry for the anti-Black­wa­ter coali­tion occurred in March 2008, when the com­pa­ny was forced to aban­don its plans to devel­op an 800-acre train­ing facil­i­ty in rur­al Potrero, 40 miles east of San Diego. Ray­mond Lutz, founder of Cit­i­zens’ Over­sight Projects (COPs), which mon­i­tors the deci­sion-mak­ing process of local gov­ern­ment enti­ties, was a key orga­niz­er of the opposition.

Lutz believes strong­ly in work­ing with local elect­ed offi­cials who, he says, ​“on the whole have the best inter­ests of the com­mu­ni­ty at heart,” but he also believes in account­abil­i­ty and uses ​“net-roots” strat­e­gy that includes record­ing pub­lic meet­ings in order to shine a wider light on the deci­sion mak­ing process. COPs suc­cess­ful­ly recalled the local plan­ning board mem­bers who sup­port­ed the Black­wa­ter site.

Cir­cum­stances also were prov­i­den­tial: The pent up anger against the war drew demon­stra­tors and gar­nered press cov­er­age. Envi­ron­men­tal­ists and local res­i­dents who opposed the noise from fir­ing ranges joined forces. Jour­nal­ist and author Jere­my Scahill chron­i­cled the Potrero vic­to­ry and insists that its sig­nif­i­cance should not be under­es­ti­mat­ed: ​“Those peo­ple … stood up against one of the most pow­er­ful para­mil­i­tary groups in this coun­try and won.”

Yet while the com­mu­ni­ty of Potrero scored a vic­to­ry, Blackwater/​Xe mere­ly expe­ri­enced a short-term set­back. Hydra-like, it sim­ply popped up in a new guise and a new loca­tion. Lutz received a tip less than two months after the Potrero project was aban­doned that Xe was seek­ing per­mits for a facil­i­ty in Otay Mesa in the city of San Diego, where it can exe­cute an ongo­ing train­ing con­tract with the U.S. Navy and also bid for bor­der secu­ri­ty contracts.

In pur­su­ing per­mits for the Otay Mesa site, Black­wa­ter dis­guised its appli­ca­tion under the names of sub­sidiaries and broke the project down into sev­er­al small­er ones to avoid the more intense over­sight required for a sin­gle large project. The city orig­i­nal­ly refused Blackwater’s cer­tifi­cate of occu­pan­cy, but Black­wa­ter took its case to fed­er­al court and Bush-appoint­ed Judge Mar­i­lyn Huff sided with the com­pa­ny. Oppo­nents want to stop Xe from gain­ing legit­i­ma­cy as a state train­ing orga­ni­za­tion – the com­pa­ny would like to enter into an agree­ment with the South­west­ern Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege Dis­trict to offer weapon­ry train­ing to its law enforce­ment students.

In Illi­nois, oppo­si­tion to Xe has been focused on Skunk Hol­low in Jo Daviess Coun­ty in the north­west of the state. In 2006, Black­wa­ter qui­et­ly leased an 80-acre weapons train­ing facil­i­ty there. (Tak­ing over exist­ing train­ing facil­i­ties is anoth­er favorite Xe tac­tic to avoid pub­lic scrutiny.)

Oppo­si­tion to what is now known as U.S. Train­ing Cen­ter Mid­west began almost imme­di­ate­ly, trig­gered when Dan Ken­ney, a school teacher from DeKalb, two coun­ties east of Jo Daviess, read about the pro­posed facil­i­ty in a short sto­ry by the Asso­ci­at­ed Press.

Ken­ney was a mem­ber of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of North­ern Illi­nois Peace Groups Coali­tion, which decid­ed to form Clear­wa­ter as part of their focus on war prof­i­teers. Over the past three years Ken­ney has become one of the groups’ chief strategists.

He spear­head­ed the first nation­al con­fer­ence of PMC oppo­nents, held in the small town of Stock­ton, close to Xe’s U.S. Train­ing Cen­ter Mid­west, on April 25 to 27. Con­fer­ence pre­sen­ters includ­ed orga­niz­ers from North Car­oli­na, Cal­i­for­nia (by video), Scahill and Col. Ann Wright, the 29-year army vet­er­an who resigned her com­mis­sion on the eve of the Iraq inva­sion and is now an out­spo­ken activist against the war and PMCs.

On April 27, 75 con­fer­ence atten­dees marched to the gate of the Xe’s site to per­form a ​“cit­i­zens’ fore­clo­sure” on the com­pa­ny. State police arrest­ed 22 pro­test­ers as they rolled under the prop­er­ty gates. The pro­test­ers stat­ed that they were ​“going onto Blackwater’s prop­er­ty to serve a notice of fore­clo­sure on the prop­er­ty of a com­pa­ny that is moral­ly bankrupt.”

It’s been chal­leng­ing for Clear­wa­ter to raise aware­ness of Xe’s pres­ence in Jo Daviess Coun­ty. The coun­ty has oth­er prob­lems, from con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed drink­ing water to a pro­posed new mega-dairy. Mar­tin Hippe, a con­cerned local res­i­dent, calls the Xe site ​“a pre­can­cer­ous mole” but admits that most peo­ple ​“are more con­cerned about the impact of the mega-dairy.”

Clear­wa­ter is also pur­su­ing the pas­sage of state leg­is­la­tion to cur­tail the use of pri­vate mil­i­tary con­trac­tors to train police forces. ​“A com­pa­ny that behaves as if it is above the law, should not be train­ing law enforce­ment per­son­nel,” says Shes­green. The Illi­nois State Police opposed a bill by state Rep. Julie Hamos (D) because they did not want to cede the right to get train­ing from the best avail­able train­ers, accord­ing to Shes­green. Clearwater’s new draft for the 2010 leg­isla­tive ses­sion would lim­it the state’s abil­i­ty to use pri­vate con­trac­tors, except in case of emer­gency. But even this is an uphill fight.

If Clearwater’s leg­isla­tive ini­tia­tive seems to be tem­porar­i­ly stalled, so too does U.S. Train­ing Cen­ter Mid­west. When Ken­ney vis­it­ed the site in ear­ly April – accom­pa­nied by 15 Domini­can nuns – he says Site Direc­tor Eric Davis told him that course enroll­ment is down and the chances of being cer­ti­fied to offer law enforce­ment train­ing by the Illi­nois State Law Enforce­ment Train­ing Board seem remote. Davis also claimed that Xe’s head­quar­ters in Moy­ock, N.C., is cut­ting the staff by 50 percent.

At Moy­ock, Xe is being mon­i­tored by Black­wa­ter Watch, an off­shoot of Stop Tor­ture Now, an orga­ni­za­tion formed to oppose extra­or­di­nary ren­di­tion flights out of the state. It held the first civ­il dis­obe­di­ence against a PMC in 2007, sim­u­lat­ing the Nisoor Square mas­sacre and has also protest­ed out­side the Win­ston Salem, N.C., offices of Xe’s lob­by­ing firm Womble Car­lyle San­dridge and Rice. Chris­t­ian Stall­berg who main­tains the Black­wa­ter Watch web­site says, ​“I think we have raised the aware­ness considerably.”

But he con­cedes that North Carolina’s econ­o­my relies on the mil­i­tary. ​“A lot of peo­ple don’t draw a dis­tinc­tion between the mil­i­tary and Black­wa­ter,” Stall­berg says. ​“It’s like a career path: You come out of the mil­i­tary and you’ve not been trained for any­thing else so Black­wa­ter takes advan­tage of that.”

Con­gress is not like­ly to abol­ish or lim­it the pow­er of mil­i­tary con­trac­tors. As an alter­na­tive, PMC oppo­nents are con­sid­er­ing tak­ing the fight to the courts. They argue that use of pri­vate con­trac­tors in law enforce­ment vio­lates the Posse Comi­ta­tus Act, which for­bids the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment from using the mil­i­tary for law enforcement.

Xe’s year may not be going as bad­ly as it appeared at first, but its oppo­nents say that they are in for the long haul too.