ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights stories of mercenaries and their activities, as well as popular culture's portrayal of mercenaries. It presents a brief discussion of the problem of categorizing the wide variety of security and military related services that private military companies (PMCs) fulfill. There are several different ways to categorize PMCs; for example, through their functions, by the services they provide, or through their proximity to the front lines. How one goes about categorizing private military companies can color the perspective when exploring ethical dimensions of using privatized force. There are basically two camps in the literature attempting to categorize PMCs, such as the proximity and the service-based methods. Policing and Security service companies provided and continue to provide three main subcategories of services in Iraq and Afghanistan: personal security details for senior civilian officials, non-military and military site security, and non-military convoy security.
