US, Iraq Negotiate Blackwater Explusion

The US and Iraq are in negotiations about what is the become of Blackwater and there is no sign that the Iraqis are backing away from their insistence that Blackwater employees leave Iraq.

There are many people watching this unfold who are thinking that, if Iraq can't get the US to dismiss Blackwater from Iraq after the company has shot innocent civilians, then what chance do they have of asking US forces to leave if the US decide that they don't want to go?

But the Iraqis are insisting that Blackwater's time in Iraq has come to an end. And this has come as a result of an investigation by Iraqi officials into the incident on Sept. 16 when Blackwater guards opened fire without provocation in Baghdad's Nisoor Square and killed 17 Iraqi citizens.

The Iraqi investigators issued five recommendations to the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, which has since sent them to the U.S. Embassy as demands for action.

Point No. 2 in the report says:

"The Iraqi government should demand that the United States stops using the services of Blackwater in Iraqi within six months and replace it with a new, more disciplined organization that would be answerable to Iraqi laws."

Sami al-Askari, a top aide to al-Maliki, said that point in the Iraqi list of demands was nonnegotiable.

"I believe the government has been clear. There have been attacks on the lives of Iraqi citizens on the part of that company (Blackwater). It must be expelled. The government has given six months for its expulsion and it's left to the U.S. Embassy to determine with Blackwater when to terminate the contract. The American administration must find another company," he told AP.

In talks between American diplomats and the al-Maliki government, al-Askari said, the U.S. side was not "insisting on Blackwater staying." He was the only Iraqi or American official who would allow use of his name, others said information they gave was too sensitive.

Al-Askari said the Americans have been told that another demand, Blackwater payment of $8 million compensation for each victim, was negotiable.

So al-Askari couldn't be any clearer. Blackwater must go and this is non-negotiable, but what is negotiable is the size of the compensation package which Blackwater must pay.

I have found it simply astonishingly arrogant that the US could even propose keeping Blackwater in Iraq after the Iraqi government have made their views as clear as they have done. Were the Bush regime to refuse to remove Blackwater then they would be undermining their own claims that Maliki's government are in charge in Iraq.

One American diplomat said he did not see how the State Department could insist on keeping Blackwater in place given how "tainted" it had become after the Sept. 16 incident and several others.

The Iraqi government investigative report said Blackwater guards had killed 21 other Iraqi citizens and wounded 27 in a total of seven previous incidents, including a shooting by a drunk Blackwater employee after a 2006 Christmas party. Congress is investigating where the government is relies too heavily on private contractors who fall outside the military courts martial system.

While the Blackwater name may be removed from security operations surrounding U.S. diplomats in Iraq, American officials and members of the security community in Baghdad said the company's men and other assets in Iraq would likely be taken over by one of the many security companies currently working in Iraq.

They said DynCorp, which already has security contracts with the State Department to guard officials working outside Baghdad, appeared poised to take over the Blackwater role.

For years the Bush administration has hidden the fact that it is using mercenaries in Iraq, often describing them Private Security Firms. But this doesn't answer why is the US even using mercenaries?

The use of mercenaries shows that Bush doesn't actually have the power of his own convictions. If he thinks that this war is as important as he says it is then he would have sent the appropriate number of soldiers to carry out the task. Instead, in order to try and keep the public onboard for his war, he has sent less troops than required and then outsourced many of their tasks to private firms such as Blackwater.

And these private military contractors are not just ‘helping out’ the armies of America and Britain – they are carrying out risky and key operations in some of the most volatile towns and cities. Indeed, the private fighters have become the public face of the occupation. Where American and British military personnel take part in fewer and fewer public patrols or hand-to-hand combat operations, the private contractors have become, according to one report, the most visible part of the occupation, ‘…the most hated and humiliating aspect of the occupation [for Iraqis]’.

Peter W Singer, author of Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatised Military, points out that traditional US military doctrine held that civilians accompanying US forces abroad should not be put into positions where they had to carry or use weapons. The doctrine also said that ‘mission-critical’ roles should be kept strictly within the military itself. Yet in Iraq, civilian contractors are armed to the teeth, with guns, tanks and helicopters, and they play key ‘mission-critical’ roles: including combating anti-American insurgents and even protecting Paul Bremer, the American head of the Coalition Provisional Authority from 2003 to 2004. As Singer says, ‘you can’t get more mission-critical’ than being charged with keeping safe America’s no.1 representative in Iraq. Protecting Bremer was more than a simple security task: it was political and moral endeavour, where ‘guns for hire’ were effectively charged with preserving American rule itself.

So getting rid of Blackwater won't change much in Iraq, for their place will simply be taken by yet another "private security firm".

Singer says that in Iraq there is now a system where ‘it’s not civilians accompanying the military force, but civilians who are an essential part of the force’. This is an astonishing development. It used to be that legitimate governments shied away from using mercenaries; people who fought, not out of patriotism, but for money.

Bush now finds himself behaving like an Afghan warlord, resorting to guns for hire. He is doing this because he is unable to convince the American people or even his own armed forces of the need to stay in Iraq, so he is outsourcing violence - the ultimate weapon of the state - to private firms.

The real question here isn't whether or not Blackwater will leave - and I presume they will only for their place to be taken over by other mercenaries - the real question is why is Bush being allowed to use "private contractors" in the first place?

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Tags: Bush, Iraq, Iraq war, Blackwater, private security firms, mercenaries