This article is a collaboration between Inkstick Media and the Greece-based Incubator for Media Education and Development (iMEdD). A Greek-language version of this article first appeared in print in the weekend edition of the Ta Nea newspaper on Feb. 22.
A little-known American private military security company (PMSC) will reportedly operate a checkpoint in the middle of the Gaza Strip as part of the fragile ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. Donald Trump’s first presidency showed that such contractors come with a bad track record and hidden costs.
Reuters and multiple other media outlets have reported that an American military contractor called UG Solutions will manage a checkpoint in Gaza. The contractor’s purpose is to ensure that vehicles moving into the northern half of the Strip aren’t transporting weapons. This checkpoint is a key provision of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. The company did not respond to a request for comment.
To understand what kind of company UG Solutions is, it’s helpful to think about the PMSC industry as having four size categories. There are the giants — like Amentum or G4S — which operate globally and have subsidiaries in many if not most countries. Then there are large companies with a national or regional presence, followed by midsize contractors that run out of a central facility and are often subcontractors for the giants.
Then there are the small operators — usually shell companies for what are essentially informal networks of veterans with overlapping service histories. They exist to provide a corporate instrument for whatever work — above board or not — comes their way. The owners usually pursue other lines of work to make ends meet, and so these companies often intersect and share DNA with other entities.
*
UG Solutions resembles a shell company. Its website contains no information — only a message form and a generic stock image of a military-like command post. Its registered address is a PO box in North Carolina, and it was incorporated in early 2023 by Jameson Govoni, a special forces veteran.
UG Solutions is closely tied to the Sentinel Foundation, which can only be described as a military NGO. Sentinel claims to be an outfit of special forces veterans hunting down child traffickers and saving the needy. It partners with a mix of Christian charities and gun stores. Sentinel is similar to other charity groups that sprang up following the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
UG’s founder Govoni also founded Sentinel alongside fellow veteran Glenn Devitt. The two also had another venture selling hangover cures they claim to have developed when they were required to get drunk while undercover. Govoni has incorporated several other businesses and entities, including what appeared to be a cannabis business.
*
UG Solutions would be unremarkable if it didn’t land a contract at the heart of the world’s most closely watched ceasefire. While there are arguments for using a PMSC to implement this arrangement, it is unclear why a seemingly unknown company with no apparent experience in managing checkpoints landed this highly sensitive, dangerous job.
For Dr. Jovana Ranito, Chair of the United Nation Working Group on the use of Mercenaries and Professor at the University of Twente, PMSCs that have no demonstrated experience in their portfolio to sustain and execute a certain contract is normally a red flag. She also noted that small PMSCs often struggle to comply with international standards on the quality of their services as they lack the resources for human rights trainings and other safeguards.
Yet, UG Solutions’ deployment matches a pattern that emerged during the first Trump administration (unsurprisingly, both Govoni and Devitt appear to be Trump fans). Between 2017 and 2020, small, hard-to-trace US-linked contractors showed up in several hot spots with varying (albeit ambiguous) degrees of official approval.
*
One such case was Delta Crescent Energy, an oil company that was set up in 2019 to export crude oil from the Kurdish part of Syria. One of its co-founders previously owned a PMSC called TigerSwan, which ran security operations for US government contractors in Iraq and Syria. The company received a coveted sanctions exemption from the Trump administration to export Syrian oil. The deal apparently failed due to extortionate demands by the Iraqi Kurdish regional government, which would have processed and exported the crude.
Several cases involved US contractors operating on behalf of or in close connection to the UAE. One infamous case involved a failed plan to furnish Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar with an elite airborne unit capable of abducting high value targets in 2019-2020. The plan was allegedly promoted by Erik Prince — Blackwater founder and brother of Trump’s then-Education Secretary — and implemented by a UAE-based PMSC called Lancastar6. Prince’s alleged involvement would have required a US arms export license as he apparently brokered an arms transfer to a heavily embargoed conflict zone.
Then there was the failed Operation Gideon (or “bay of piglets” incident) in which an outfit of US special forces veterans and Venezuelan dissidents attempted to depose the Maduro regime in 2020. The operation was a spectacular failure as regime forces managed to capture the participants, including the American contractors. The founder of the involved PMSC, Silvercorp USA, claimed to have high-level support from the Trump administration, though the US government strongly denied any involvement.
*
These incidents are part of a global trend of increasing PMSC activity as states pivot away from former security partnerships, according to Dr. Ladd Serwat, senior analyst at ACLED, an NGO that monitors armed violence. Negative public attitudes toward such partnerships, such as UN peacekeeping operations and bilateral cooperation with western militaries, have created openings for PMSCs, particularly in Africa and the Middle East.
Governments may find small PMSCs appealing as they provide a layer of separation and deniability, Dr. Serwat said. States can take credit when they are successful and disown them when they fail. They operate in a poorly regulated global market and can exploit loopholes and grey areas that states can’t. They can provide a mechanism for shadowy transactions, such as arms transfers, resource concessions, or off-the-books payments, and they can dissolve when the job is done.
But the costs of using PMSCs should outweigh the appeal. They often fail, as all the above cases did, as ambitious adventurers often find themselves in over their heads. If the Gaza ceasefire deteriorates, UG Solutions’ personnel could quickly find themselves at risk of death or capture.
*
At the same time, private contractors could also cause great civilian harm, akin to Blackwater’s 2007 Nisour Square massacre in Iraq, which left dozens dead and injured. Dr. Serwat pointed out that outside contractors can improperly target civilians in conflict zones as they often operate with a rudimentary framework for determining hostile actors. Dr. Ranito also found that former military personnel may struggle in their new roles as private security contractors as they cannot handle complex situations as they did in the past.
Using shady PMSCs as a foreign policy tool also comes with hidden costs in the long run. Selecting companies like UG Solutions encourages other companies to operate in the dark and avoid accountability, which would reverse two decades of painful lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan about the dangers of unaccountable contractors. It will also fuel perceptions that the US sponsors mercenary activities even when this isn’t the case — such as with Operation Gideon.
Most importantly, the use of shadowy PMSCs could further normalize such groups as a semi-legitimate tool of statecraft to other governments. This comes as countries like Russia, Turkey, the UAE, and China are increasingly using such groups to advance their interests in destabilized countries. If the second Trump administration leans into this shifting paradigm, the next several years could bring a surge in mercenary-like activities in an increasingly complex and conflict-prone world.
