[R-G] Iraqi government may ban Blackwater security group

[Anthony Fenton]

Iraqi government may ban Blackwater security group
An incident that left eight Iraqi civilians dead has raised concerns  
about the private military contractor in Iraq.
By Dan Murphy

from the September 18, 2007 edition
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0917/p99s01-duts.html

Cairo - The Iraqi government said it would suspend the license of  
Blackwater, probably the most famous among the armies of private  
security contractors working inside Iraq, after an incident in  
central Baghdad in which government officials allege eight civilians  
were killed. The incident looks certain to rekindle the controversy  
of the wide role given to the contractors in the Iraq war, with  
critics saying that they operate outside the sorts of legal oversight  
and codes of conduct that restrict the behavior of soldiers in war  
zones.

Blackwater first became famous after four of its contractors were  
murdered in Fallujah in early 2004, an event that prompted an  
American assault on that city that engendered widespread anger  
against the US inside the country.

Reuters reports that the government is vowing a tough line with  
Blackwater, with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki saying the  
incident was a "criminal act." An Interior Ministry spokesman said  
the contractors, working for a US security firm, "opened fire  
randomly at citizens" on Sunday after mortar rounds landed near their  
cars.

     "We formed a committee to investigate the incident and withdraw  
the license from this company and also to deliver those who committed  
this act to the court," Brigadier-General Abdul-Karim Khalaf told  
Reuters.

     The U.S. military said on Sunday security contractors working  
for the State Department were involved in an incident, but gave no  
further details.

     Khalaf said the contractors opened fire after two mortar rounds  
landed in Nusour Square in the western Baghdad district of Mansour.

     "By chance the company was passing by. They opened fire randomly  
at citizens," Khalaf said. Eleven people were killed, including one  
policeman, and 13 people were wounded, he said.

The Washington Post reports that one of its employees witnessed the  
incident.

     A Washington Post employee in the area at the time of the  
shooting witnessed security company helicopters firing into the  
streets near Nisoor Square in Mansour. Witnesses said they saw dead  
and wounded people on the pavement.

Blackwater often uses light helicopters with riflemen at the windows  
to provide cover to ground-based convoys.

The Associated Press reports that witnesses said the convoy  
definitely came under attack.

     "We saw a convoy of SUVs passing in the street nearby. One  
minute later, we heard the sound of a bomb explosion followed by  
gunfire that lasted for 20 minutes between gunmen and the convoy  
people who were foreigners and dressed in civilian clothes. Everybody  
in the street started to flee immediately," said Hussein Abdul-Abbas,  
who owns a mobile phone store in the area.

     The wartime numbers of private guards are unprecedented — as are  
their duties, many of which have traditionally been done by soldiers.  
They protect U.S. military operations and have guarded high-ranking  
officials including Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Baghdad.

Blog reactions to the incident, so far, have roughly broken down  
along left-right lines, with right-leaning blogs viewing groups like  
Blackwater as patriots doing difficult jobs, and left-leaning ones  
seeing the groups as dangerous and financially predatory.

On Freerepublic, a popular pro-war blog, one fairly representative  
comment was: "Methinks they were just doing their job. The message  
is, if terrorists dress like civilians you can't shoot at them even  
if they blow up your vehicle. What cowardice."

At Democratic Underground, which sits firmly on the left of the US  
blog divide, this was a fairly typical comment. "Goes to show what I  
think of the sovereignty of the Iraqi government. It will be  
interesting to see if they can make this stick, and improve their  
rep, or if [it] fails and provides another evidence of their  
government's impotence."

The controversy comes even as Blackwater appears set to begin  
offering direct counterinsurgency training to foreign air forces. A  
number of blogs, including Danger Room, a national security blog for  
Wired Magazine, referred to a subscription-only article in Jane's, a  
defense magazine, in late August, that said Blackwater was seeking to  
buy a Super Tucano light-attack plane. The Wired blog shares the  
following passage from the Jane's article.

     Blackwater President Gary Jackson confirmed to Jane's at the  
Force Protection Equipment Demonstration in Stafford, Virginia, in  
mid-August that the company is in the process of acquiring the Super  
Tucano for a new training programme.

     If the deal goes through, it will give the company a significant  
boost in a growing international market for fixed-wing tactical  
flight instruction, as well as a potential platform for counter- 
insurgency-style training.

     The Super Tucano is in service with the Brazilian Air Force,  
which operates the aircraft as a primary aircraft trainer and in  
border-patrol missions under its SIVAM (Sistema de Vigilância da  
Amazônia) programme. Colombia finalised a contract for 25 Super  
Tucanos in December 2005; the aircraft has also been marketed to  
Singapore and the Dominican Republic. Fully equipped, the aircraft  
features five weapon hardpoints and a night-vision goggle (NVG)- 
compatible 'glass cockpit'.

In an interview with PBS Frontline, Peter Singer, a scholar at the  
Brookings Institute in Washington who has tracked the rise of Private  
Military Contractors (PMCs) like Blackwater, said the business is  
worth $100 billion a year and worries about the impact their role is  
having on policy and accountability.

     You're talking about an industry that really didn't exist until  
the start of the 1990s. And since then, it's grown in size, in  
monetary terms to about $100 billion worth of revenue a year. In  
geographic terms, it operates in over 50 different countries. It's  
operated on every single continent but Antarctica.

     It operates in poor states, rich states -- you know, the Saudi  
Arabias, the Congo-Brazzavilles. It operates in superpowers like  
United States -- we're the largest client of that industry; the  
Pentagon's entered into over 3,000 contracts with it in the last  
couple years -- to weak states, failed states, Sierra Leones,  
Liberias, Afghanistans of the world.

     … sometimes [the Pentagon has] outsourced things that infringed  
upon the core function of the military. And that's when you see all  
these kind of questions of accountability, all these kind of  
questions of how the heck did we get contractors in that role, where  
it's not only the public that's surprised, but people in the military  
themselves who are surprised and offended by it.