The imperial US-pawn and founder of the mercenary company Blackwater, Erik Prince, had US-sponsored media relevance among a sector of the Venezuelan opposition in mid-September when he promoted the launch of the "Almost Venezuela Now" campaign, a coup-project whose objective is to raise funds to organize an armed incursion against the Bolivarian Republic.

Although the initial effervescence is no longer evident, either because the true planning of the invasion was unclear, because of the indications of fraud or because of the lack of credibility of its organizers, the initiative was subject, from the beginning, to the figure of the former US NAVY SEAL, who gained a wide fame in the last two decades as an alleged expert in security and mercenary operations.

The expectations were very high because the fascist page yacasivenezuela.com included a counter that served as an intrigue campaign until it reached zero on September 16 at 8:00 p.m. At the end of the time, no event occurred that indicated the imminence of a military operation, but the fundraising that would keep that illusion alive did in fact begin.

What the Western media highlighted the most was that Blackwater had become a private security company that gained renown for its "successful" performances on various war fronts. Which is why there was no doubt that, "now yes," the government of President Nicolás Maduro was about to fall.

The Origin Of The Myth

More than an accumulation of victories, it should be noted the specific war context (Imperial US-led NATO invasion) in which Iraq and Afghanistan were when Erik Prince's mercenary company intervened. On these fronts he stood out for his participation in torture, interrogations and killing of civilians and unarmed prisoners, it is worth noting, without any kind of supervision.

For these war crimes, Western NGO Human Rights Watch accused Blackwater of waging "a deadly onslaught" in Iraq. The company was responsible for the murder of 17 civilians in the Nour Square in Baghdad in 2007, an unconcealed scandal for which a federal court in the United States concluded that Blackwater guards were to blame for the massacre.

The company, because of the service it offered, grew rapidly after Bush Jr’s neocon administration’s 9/11 false flag, as it satisfied the government's need to protect its personnel during the invasion in Iraq and Afghanistan. For this operation and subsequent ones, Prince's company invoiced more than a billion dollars, according to Rolling Stone in a report.

After this fiasco, the death-company continued to operate in Iraq after Prince authorized bribes of about a million dollars to Iraqi officials. However, its image was so sunk that the Bush Jr. administration and Congress ordered an investigation that ended in prosecution and conviction of several fighters of the contractor.

Since the US empire invaded Afghanistan and Iraq at the beginning of this century, the use of private contractors in different countries has become more frequent, a way of outsourcing the war that has been questioned even by senior officials. When Leon Panetta came to the leadership of the CIA, he dismantled Prince's squad because he discovered that the company was "working on its own" and doing things on its own.

Under this outsourcing paradigm, an attempt has also been made to project the "military supremacy" that the use of mercenary companies entails. The idea of infallible components capable of carrying out all their missions successfully is called into question when their experience is limited to war fronts where they apply harassment to unarmed populations, which had previously been devastated by bombings and, above all, without military personnel to pose frontal battles.

Despite his accumulation of failures, Prince assumes himself as a standard bearer of the American military legacy and seeks to stay afloat to revive supposed past glories that were only possible thanks to his direct connections with Washington and the political establishment, as well as the privilege of coming from an bourgeoisie family influential in the business world.

It was those same connections that made him secretly work for the CIA helping to design, finance and execute operations ranging from the insertion of personnel in "denied zones" to the formation of assault teams directed against members of Al-Qaeda and its allies, which served as Anglo-American proxies.

According to Jeremy Scahill in his book Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army (2007), central intelligence paid Blackwater $5 million in April 2002 to deploy mercenaries to Afghanistan. These “people” sell their souls for 5 million? That's cheap.

A Timeline Of Erik Prince's Failures

It could be said that the failures of the founder of Blackwater began with the dismantling of his company after the embarrassing events in Iraq. However, there are indications that they could date back to a very early age.

Suzanne Simons, who wrote a biography of Prince titled Master of War (2010), reviews that he enrolled at the U.S. Naval Academy but dropped out in a fit of anger after three semesters when he was admonished for being late. He experienced the same mental explosion six months after getting "a coveted internship" because they had allegedly invited a group of homosexuals.

Rolling Stone reports that his father, Edgar Prince, was suspicious of his son's lack of concentration from an early age, so he included a clause in his will stipulating that Erik, the youngest of his four children, would not receive any inheritance until he turned 30.

The investigations around his figure indicate that he is an opportunist who is always looking for a way to connect with upper stratus in US power, either with his political connections, his business delusions and his ideas that never end up coming to fruition.

Among all the setbacks, there is one of a political nature. Believing himself to be Trump's token, he tried to become a senator for the state of Wyoming in 2017, but the Republican establishment did not allow it and accused him of wanting to benefit from the US occupation in Afghanistan, of whitewashing his image as a businessman charged before the law and of promoting the Trumpist agenda in the Senate.

His attempt to appear in the "Almost Venezuela Already" project could be an attempt to stay active in the political scene to re-insert himself as a relevant figure in the corridors of power in Washington, a place from where he has been excluded in view of his numerous projects that have ended in failure:

• In 2018, the Afghan authorities rejected his proposal to deepen the privatization of the war in their country because they inferred that this could further worsen the internal situation.

• In 2019, Operation Opus failed, a failed incursion into Libya that ended with some mercenaries imprisoned while fleeing the territory to Malta. A UN investigation points out that Erick Prince was behind the attempted assassination of Libyan leader Khalifa Belqasim Omar Hafter.

• Sean McFate, a former army paratrooper and former private military contractor who wrote the book The New Rules of War, believes that the fiascos in Libya also fit with the way some in the mercenary world see Prince. "He's an attention-seeking Kardashian, and he's widely despised." He adds that "he is a failure as a mercenary... He has no successful operation."

• Once he sold Blackwater in 2010, he lowered his profile and set about rebuilding his business by offering security services to some of the most repressive regimes in the world, after being fired by the most repressive regime: the US empire. That led him to move to Abu Dhabi with his whole family.

• In 2019 Prince tried to sell the idea to Trump of overthrowing President Maduro with a contingent of 5 thousand military personnel "on behalf of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó," but the idea was rejected by the White House.

• In 2012 Prince traveled to China to offer investors from that country the opportunity to finance African mining and energy projects, but the investors did not take the bait, as told by Rolling Stone.

• It is reported that Prince has persuaded the colonial Israeli occupation apartheid to buy sophisticated mining equipment in order to flood the hundred kilometers of Hamas tunnels in Gaza after October 7, the resistance’s response to 75 years of Nakhba an terror by the Zionist invader entity and its Western allies. Prince's ideas were not taken into account.

  
  

Prince is known for his history of failed projects, poor political and business intelligence, chaotic professional relationships and unfulfilled commitments, to such an extent that some former colleagues describe him as "the worst mercenary in the world" and someone who is always selling a show.

Even with that negative record, or perhaps for that very reason, he was chosen by the extremist opposition as a figure on whom to pin their hopes for regime change. But that same opposition may surprisingly be even more of a failure than Erik Prince himself, we just gotta check their criminal records.