From Blackwater to Abu Dhabi
After selling Blackwater — the private military company he had built into one of the largest security contractors in the world — Erik Prince relocated to Abu Dhabi in 2010 as legal scrutiny and government investigations into Blackwater’s operations intensified. Before departing the United States, Prince stated he was finished with government contracting. That pledge, however, applied specifically to the US government. His new host country would become his next client.
Documents obtained by the New York Times revealed that Prince had established a new venture called Reflex Responses, contracted by the United Arab Emirates to build what amounted to a private military force. The contract, reportedly worth $529 million with the potential for billions more, was set to run through 2015. Prince concealed his involvement using the codename “Kingfish.”
Composition of the Mercenary Force
Reflex Responses recruited a force of approximately 800 personnel drawn primarily from two sources: Colombian soldiers of fortune and South African veterans of Executive Outcomes, the notorious private military firm that had conducted counter-guerrilla operations in Angola and Sierra Leone before Blackwater’s emergence.
The deliberate exclusion of Muslim soldiers was a notable feature of the arrangement. The contract specified that only “leaders” of the force needed to be proficient in English, with no requirement for Arabic language capability. This meant a force composed of Christian-nation mercenaries would be operating on Islamic soil, potentially against Muslim civilians demanding political reform.
Scope of Operations
The contract with the UAE consortium of monarchies outlined an extraordinarily broad mandate. Reflex Responses was tasked with conducting special operations missions inside and outside the country, defending oil pipelines and skyscrapers from terrorist attacks, and suppressing internal revolts. The force was designed to operate “independent of formal command and support structures throughout the UAE.”
Specific operational capabilities included a quick reaction force staffed by Executive Outcomes veterans capable of seizing key infrastructure and containing protests, aviation support with rotary and fixed-wing aircraft for medical evacuation and intelligence gathering, advanced mission training encompassing sniper operations, explosive ordnance disposal, and scout surveillance, and a private naval component responsible for small boat operations, maritime interdiction, and securing oil delivery platforms.
The contract outlined what was essentially a self-contained military organization in miniature, requiring ships, helicopters, transport aircraft, communications equipment, fuel infrastructure, vehicle fleets, weapons, and a purpose-built desert barracks for housing and training.
Legal Questions and US Law
The arrangement raised immediate questions about compliance with US law. American citizens are prohibited from training foreign militaries without government authorization. The State Department declined to confirm whether Reflex Responses held the required license and told reporters it was investigating whether the operation was legally compliant.
Prince’s top deputy at Reflex was Ricky Chambers, a former FBI agent who had previously run Paravant, a Blackwater subsidiary. Paravant’s guards in Afghanistan had drawn scrutiny after personnel signed for weapons under fictitious names and were involved in the shooting deaths of Afghan civilians during a 2009 vehicle incident.
The UAE’s Security Calculus
The United Arab Emirates, despite its enormous oil wealth and financial influence in the Persian Gulf, maintained a relatively small military of approximately 65,000 personnel. The country’s ruling sheikhs had long relied on imported labor for their domestic workforce and were now applying the same outsourcing model to security.
The UAE’s primary strategic anxiety was Iran, but the contract with Reflex predated the wave of popular uprisings that swept the Middle East beginning in late 2010. As those protests toppled regimes across the region, the existence of a private military force designed in part to suppress internal revolts took on heightened significance.
Blackwater’s Ongoing Transformation
Meanwhile, Prince’s former company — renamed Xe Services after the Blackwater brand became synonymous with the 2007 Nisour Square shooting that killed 17 Iraqi civilians — was undergoing its own reinvention under new ownership. The company hired former US Attorney General John Ashcroft as its ethics chief and attempted to pivot its public identity toward law enforcement training rather than the armed security operations that had generated international controversy.
The revelation of Prince’s UAE operation suggested that while Blackwater as an entity was attempting to rehabilitate its reputation, its founder had simply transferred the private military model to a new market where oversight was minimal and the client’s willingness to pay was virtually unlimited. The leaked contract itself raised questions about internal dissent within Reflex Responses, as someone within the organization had provided the full document to journalists.
