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Governments today also increasingly outsource the fighting of wars to private military corporations—today’s version of the age-old mercenary. These corporations act under government authorization, through contract, but they are not part of the national army. During recent U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, private contractors accounted for 50 percent of the total Department of Defense presence, on average. As for the United Kingdom, in 2006 there were twenty thousand private contractors in Iraq—three times as many as regular British soldiers.