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Occupation’s sleazy underbelly

Two recent incidents in which Iraqi civilians were killed by guards working for private security firms have brought into focus the problems created by outsourcing governmental functions to contractors. On September 18, personnel hired by a company called Blackwater opened fire indiscriminately in a crowded Baghdad square, killing 17 and wounding dozens. In another incident on October 9, more than 40 rounds were let loose at a car that did not stop at the first warning and two women passengers were killed in the barrage. While troops of the United States Army and Marine Corps have caused the deaths of far larger numbers of civilians, the actions by the private contractors have exposed a particularly vicious dimension of the occupation. Until recently, personnel working for security companies were not subject to either the U.S. or the Iraqi law. Such a state of affairs created a culture of immunity that led the mercenaries to believe they could get away with acts for which even uniformed troops would be accountable under military law. According to some reports in the media, military law will henceforth cover private guards as well. However, as indicated by the two recent incidents, the firms seem to be in no mood to recast the terms of engagement for their personnel. These operators know that they have the administration over a barrel. With the regular armed forces stretched to the limit, there are not enough soldiers to provide day-to-day security to the officials of the state and other departments as they go about their business of “governing and reconstructing” the occupied country. The number of personnel deployed in Iraq by private security firms is believed to run into tens of thousands.

The lawless cruelty of the occupation aside, there is a sleazy side to this privatisation of security matters. In a recent editorial, The New York Times provided an account of the windfall that has come Blackwater’s way since the invasion. The firm, which received less than $1 million from the government in 2001, now has about $1 billion in federal contracts. The higher echelons of the company are well known for their affiliation to the Republican Party and its list of employees includes a number of people who worked previously for the Bush administration. Private contractors have been hired for all manner of tasks, including the building of schools and the laying of sewerage and power lines. When governmental auditors visited sites where reconstruction work had been ‘completed,’ they found the work to be substandard in many instances. Iraq might be on the fast track to ruin but the Blackwaters and the Halliburtons are on their way to unbelievable prosperity.

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