That’s because the dispute isn’t really about whether the gunners for Blackwater USA were at fault for the deaths that occurred when a convoy of SUVs reportedly returned fire from unidentified gunmen in Nusoor Square. First accounts are often wrong and the full story may never be told. The question is whether anything would happen to the guards even if they did kill innocent people. Through multiple decrees by past American administrators in Iraq, later imposed on the Iraqi government, contractors are largely immune from prosecution for the force they use here against Iraqis. There are some 20,000 to 30,000 private security contractors here now, presumably about the same as their presence over the past three years, and none has been prosecuted for the use of excessive force against local residents.
Iraqis know this and point it out constantly with stories of deaths involving contractors. A notorious one in the Green Zone was the allegedly unprovoked killing of a guard for an Iraqi vice president by a Blackwater employee on Christmas Eve. (U.S. officials acknowledged a killing occurred and promised to investigate.) Iraqi politicians cry out for changes in the Iraqi law to end what they see as the impunity of the contractors and note the contradiction it poses amid American efforts to promote the rule of law by the Iraqi government. U.S. soldiers who commit crimes here can be punished and have been jailed under military codes, but those don’t apply to contractors. They often just get a flight out of the country when they get in trouble.
Even Monday, a day after the incident, it seemed the U.S. Embassy did not understand the depth of the local resentment about the issue. Embassy officials held the routine Monday conference call for reporters and got hammered with questions about the Blackwater case. They gave few answers, repeating that the embassy would investigate and that it was discussing Blackwater’s future with Iraqi officials. But there was little else: no answer on Blackwater’s legal standing in Iraq, on whether the company has a license (which the Iraqi government said it was revoking), or how the company could be held accountable. (While security companies in Iraq need to register with the Iraqi government if they work for commercial firms, there apparently is not the same requirement for companies working for the U.S. government or military.)
They said they could not even state the number of Blackwater employees working for the embassy because it would compromise security. It wouldn’t, since Blackwater is just one group in an array of private and government organizations protecting the world’s largest U.S. Embassy. For the record, a Congressional report from July has the numbers and they were supplied by the state department. As of May, Blackwater USA had 987 employees on the embassy contract, including 744 American citizens.
Blackwater has highly skilled veterans who have paid a heavy price in Iraq, with around 30 of its employees being killed. The most prominent were the four killed and dragged through the streets of Fallujah on March 31, 2004. Five Blackwater employees were killed in January when one of the company’s helicopters went down in a Baghdad neighborhood and came under fire. So its guards have reason to fear for their lives and the safety of their clients, the embassy staff. But the company is also known as one of the most aggressive in a war theater where convoys–private, Iraqi, American, or military–sometimes open fire on cars that simply get too close. Some security workers criticize these tactics and say they would welcome more regulation.
The facts in this case are still unclear. In a statement late Monday, a Blackwater spokeswoman said the convoy came under attack and “the ‘civilians’ reportedly fired upon by Blackwater professionals were in fact armed enemies and Blackwater personnel returned defensive fire.” The company said the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior had not moved to revoke its license. It said the company’s guards “heroically defended American lives.”
And what would happen if the facts were sorted out? There are specialized U.S. laws that could be employed to investigate and prosecute crimes by Americans overseas, but they have rarely been used against contractors in Iraq: the Congressional report cited as the only successful prosecution a case against a contractor caught with child pornography. The U.S. military has been criticized for lax prosecution of its troops, but it has at least held several high-profile cases in which soldiers received long prison sentences. Each time, military officers stress the importance of showing Iraqis that Americans believe in justice for all. Iraqis don’t see why that shouldn’t include those guarding American diplomats.
