The spy, private equity baron and ghost of a Trump donor: The revolving door behind a Gaza mercenary firm
The US mercenary firm overseeing a controversial Gaza aid programme is the creation of a bespectacled Chicago private equity baron and a CIA spy with old ties to a Donald Trump ally who participated in one of the Middle East’s nastiest diplomatic rifts.
The story of Safe Reach Solutions (SRS) exemplifies the shadowy revolving door between old spies and Middle Eastern states, one that is increasingly being monetized by American investors flush with cash.
The spies running SRS also have old links to an intelligence company owned by a wealthy patron of pro-Israeli groups.
The intelligence firm, Circinus, is little known today but is unmistakable among diplomats and officials who remember the feud between Qatar and its Gulf neighbours during the first Trump administration.
Since Israel went to war on Gaza, SRS has sent Arabic-speaking mercenaries to oversee aid distributed by the controversial US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
The GHF has come under intense scrutiny by human rights experts and aid groups.
Palestinian health officials say hundreds of civilians have been killed trying to obtain food from GHF distribution sites in the last month. The United Nations has called the GHF’s hubs “death traps”. Last week, 15 human rights and legal organisations said the GHF may be complicit in international crimes.
This week, contractors guarding aid sites in Gaza told the BBC and AP on condition of anonymity that the live ammunition was being used on Palestinians seeking food.
In response, the GHF said its team was composed of seasoned humanitarian, logistics and security professionals and that people with a “vested interest” were trying to make the aid organisation fail. A spokesperson for SRS told the AP that there hadn’t been any serious injuries at their sites.
SRS’s creation mirrors that of dozens of private military firms that mushroomed after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, when the Middle East was awash with money for mercenaries. There are many layers to this lucrative world.
For two decades, former soldiers deployed to war zones like Yemen, Libya and Afghanistan with firms that won big US or foreign government contracts. [Continue reading…]