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detention facilities, located in nearly every state in the Pakistani forces in "counterterrorism" operations, country. Only a few of these facilities are under the full including house raids and border interdictions, in the operational control of ICE; the majority are jails under orth-West Frontier Province and elsewhere in Pakistan. the control of state and local governments that This arrangement allows the Pakistani government to subcontract with ICE to provide detention bed space. __ utilise former US Special Operations forces that now However, ICE has created a network of secret jails work for Blackwater, while denying an official US military designed for confining individuals in transit. These 186 presence in the country. He also confirmed that unlisted and unmarked subfield offices are not subject to Blackwater has a facility in Karachi and has personnel ICE detention standards, lacking showers, beds, drinking deployed elsewhere in Pakistan. water, soap, toothbrushes, sanitary napkins, mail, In addition to planning drone strikes and operations attorneys or legal information. Many of these subfield against suspected Al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in offices are in suburban office parks or commercial Pakistan for both JSOC and the CIA, the Blackwater team spaces, revealing no information about their ICE in Karachi also helps plan missions for JSOC inside tenants—nary a sign, a marked car or even a US flag. Uzbekistan against the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. In addition, there is a complete lack of a real-time As well as working on covert action planning and database tracking people in ICE drone strikes, Blackwater Select custody, meaning that ICE has created provides private guards to perform a network of secret jails, designed for the sensitive task of security for secret confining individuals in transit, that . US drone bases, JSOC camps and literally make people disappear. This arrangement Defense Intelligence Agency camps Immigrant detainees” can be allows the inside Pakistan. transferred away from their attorneys . . at any point in their immigration Pakistani 6. Health Care Restrictions Cost proceedings, and often are. Detainees government to Thousands of Lives in the US can be literally "lost" by their ne Despite national legislative health attorneys and family members for utilise former US reform, health care in the US will days or even weeks after being . . remain dismal for many Americans, transferred. Special Operations resulting in continuing deaths and forces that personal tragedies. 5. Blackwater (Xe): The Secret US A Harvard research team estimates War in Pakistan now work for at 2,266 US military veterans b Ata covert forward operating Blackwater, died in 2008 ave ° lack of health ase run by the oint Specia g 9 insurance. e figure is more Operations Command (JSOC) in while denying an an 14 times the number of the Pakistani port city of Karachi, official US military deaths suffered by US troops in members of an elite division of . Afghanistan in 2008, and more Blackwater are at the centre of a presence in the an twice as many as have died secret program in which they plan country since the war began in 2001. The researchers concluded that 1.46 million working-age vets lacked ealth coverage, increasing their targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al-Qaeda Operatives inside and outside Pakistan. The Blackwater death rate. The American Journal of operatives also gather Public Health published findings intelligence and help direct a secret US military drone demonstrating that being uninsured raises an bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well- individual's odds of dying by 40 per cent. documented CIA Predator strikes, according to a well- Health insurance laws are often complicated by placed source within the US military intelligence individual states, where health insurance is legally apparatus. controlled. Blackwater, which also goes by the names Xe Services According to research led by the Johns Hopkins and US Training Center, has denied that the company Children's Center, lack of health insurance may have led operates in Pakistan. or contributed to nearly 17,000 deaths among A former senior executive at Blackwater confirmed the hospitalised children in the United States in the span of military intelligence source's claim that the company is less than two decades. The study was published online working in Pakistan for the CIA and JSOC. He said that on 29 October 2009 in the Oxford, UK, Journal of Public Blackwater is also working for the Pakistani government —_ Health. Using more than 23 million hospital records from on a subcontract with an Islamabad-based security firm 37 states between 1988 and 2005, the Johns Hopkins that puts US Blackwater operatives on the ground with investigators compared the risk of death in children with This arrangement allows the Pakistani government to utilise former US forces that Blackwater, while denying an official US military country. NEXUS ¢ 13 Special Operations now work for presence in the DECEMBER 2010 - JANUARY 20II www.nexusmagazine.com