Press TV : Private security firms ravaging Iraq

Private security firms ravaging Iraq

August 23, 2008

Iraq's Defense Ministry spokesman Lt. Gen. Mohammad al-Askari says western security firms are behind the upsurge of violence in his country.

Al-Askari said the security firms are working on behalf of intelligence agencies in some countries that see Iraq's stability as being against their strategic interests.

The Iraqi official would not name any states but noted that the security firms have recruited thousands of volunteers mainly from North African Arab countries and have deployed them in Iraq.

“Once trained to carry out special violent actions they are sent to Iraq to execute their plans,” Askari said.

The Iraqi official added that a new class of foreign fighters has emerged in Iraq which includes many detainees who have admitted to being trained in Europe by specialized security firms and then being sent to Iraq "to kill Iraqis and cause further insecurity."

“I am certain about the information I have and I believe that there are now some 2,000 such fighters in the country,” he said.

Al-Askari said these fighters are tasked with assassinating top Iraqi figures including scientists and university professors.

WaPo : How Blackwater Sniper Fire Felled 3 Iraqi Guards

How Blackwater Sniper Fire Felled 3 Iraqi Guards

Witnesses Call Shooting From Justice Ministry Unprovoked, But State Dept. Cleared Its Security Team After a Brief Probe

By Steve Fainaru | Washington Post Foreign Service | November 8, 2007

BAGHDAD -- Last Feb. 7, a sniper employed by Blackwater USA, the private security company, opened fire from the roof of the Iraqi Justice Ministry. The bullet tore through the head of a 23-year-old guard for the state-funded Iraqi Media Network, who was standing on a balcony across an open traffic circle. Another guard rushed to his colleague's side and was fatally shot in the neck. A third guard was found dead more than an hour later on the same balcony.

Eight people who responded to the shootings -- including media network and Justice Ministry guards and an Iraqi army commander -- and five network officials in the compound said none of the slain guards had fired on the Justice Ministry, where a U.S. diplomat was in a meeting. An Iraqi police report described the shootings as "an act of terrorism" and said Blackwater "caused the incident." The media network concluded that the guards were killed "without any provocation."

The U.S. government reached a different conclusion. Based on information from the Blackwater guards, who said they were fired upon, the State Department determined that the security team's actions "fell within approved rules governing the use of force," according to an official from the department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security. Neither U.S. Embassy officials nor Blackwater representatives interviewed witnesses or returned to the network, less than a quarter-mile from Baghdad's Green Zone, to investigate.

The incident shows how American officials responsible for overseeing the security company conducted only a cursory investigation when Blackwater guards opened fire. The shooting occurred more than seven months before the Sept. 16 incident in which Blackwater guards killed 17 civilians at another Baghdad traffic circle.

The Feb. 7 shootings convulsed the Iraqi Media Network, one of the prominent symbols of the new Iraq, in anger and recrimination.

U.S. officials and the security company, now known as Blackwater Worldwide, offered no compensation or apology to the victims' families, according to relatives of the guards and officials of the network, whose programming reaches 22 million Iraqis.

"It's really surprising that Blackwater is still out there killing people," Mohammed Jasim, the Iraqi Media Network's deputy director, said in an interview. "This company came to Iraq and was supposed to provide security. They didn't learn from their mistakes. They continued and continued. They continued killing."

A Blackwater spokeswoman, Anne E. Tyrrell, said the company's guards came under "precision small-arms fire" and fired back with "well-aimed shots." The company was unable to comment further because of operational security and contractual obligations, she said. "This was absolutely a provoked incident," Tyrrell said.

U.S. officials were "overwhelmingly convinced" that the Blackwater guards acted appropriately, based on information they had provided, according to the diplomatic security official. He spoke on condition of anonymity because a joint U.S.-Iraqi commission is investigating private security matters, including previous Blackwater shootings. Shortly after the Feb. 7 incident, the official said, the U.S. Embassy briefed an Iraqi government official and invited him to discuss the matter further, but the embassy never heard from him again.

Under State Department rules for the use of force, security contractors are authorized to use deadly force only if there is no safe alternative and the guards or the people they are protecting face "imminent and grave danger." The Blackwater guards said they came under fire from the building and responded, the security official said.

"The embassy conducted a review of the circumstances surrounding the whole shooting incident and essentially what happened is, after going over all the reports, interviewing all the personnel that were involved in it, talking with people that were coming back in the motorcade, they concluded that the actions of the security team fell within the approved rules," the official said.

"To say Blackwater was the only source of information for this investigation is completely false," the security official added. U.S. officials declined to say who else was contacted as part of the probe or to provide any details about the assertions of Blackwater guards that they came under fire.

The Iraqi Interior Ministry has forwarded information about the Feb. 7 incident and five other fatal shootings involving Blackwater to the U.S. Embassy, which never responded, it said.

The Iraqi Media Network sought to sue Blackwater in an Iraqi court, according to Faisal Rahdi, the network's legal adviser. A judge rejected the petition, he said, citing a 2004 law signed by L. Paul Bremer, the administrator for the now-defunct U.S. occupation authority. That law, which the Iraqi government has moved to overturn, granted contractors immunity from the Iraqi legal process.

An internal review of the State Department's handling of private security recently found serious deficiencies in the agency's supervision of contractors, including Blackwater. The State Department's security chief, Richard J. Griffin, was forced to resign last month after the report was released.

The Feb. 7 incident was one of at least 10 fatal shootings involving Blackwater since June 2005, including three that led to confrontations between the security company and the Iraqi government in the months before the pivotal Sept. 16 incident at Nisoor Square.

Blackwater provides security for State Department employees traveling in Iraq. The company has received more than $1 billion in U.S. government contracts since 2001, including $832 million for security services in Iraq over the past two years. Blackwater employs 861 guards in Baghdad, according to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

The Iraqi Media Network shootings were particularly sensitive because Blackwater fired from one Iraqi government compound into another. The network is a state-funded corporation modeled after the BBC and launched by the U.S. government. After the March 2003 invasion, the network replaced the state-run television system that once dispensed propaganda for the government of then-President Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi Media Network operates several newspapers, radio stations and a flagship TV network, al-Iraqiya.

"What really shocked us is that our colleagues were killed inside their workplace, in a place that was supposed to be secure," said Abbas A. Salim, the network's news director. "The IMN, its main job is to explain democracy to the people and support the new Iraq."

News of the shootings was broadcast on al-Iraqiya, which reaches about 85 percent of Iraq's population.
'Nabras Is Hit!'

On the morning of the incident, a convoy of four armored SUVs pulled up at a traffic circle that separates the Justice Ministry from the back of the Iraqi Media Network's sprawling compound. About 20 Blackwater guards got out of the vehicles, according to witnesses.

"Before they went inside, they asked me what this other building was," said Nadim Salim, a bodyguard at the Justice Ministry. "I told them, 'That's the Iraqiya network.' "

Blackwater snipers set up on the Justice Ministry roof, taking cover behind concrete walls that crown the seven-story building. Blackwater "had full control over the guys at Iraqiya because they were higher than them," Salim said.

Across the circle, Nabras Mohammed Hadi manned his guard position. He sat on a chair on the third-floor balcony of an abandoned building looking out on the Justice Ministry and King Faisal Circle, near the rear gate of the Iraqi Media Network compound. The traffic circle, which features a statue of the king on horseback, connects to Haifa Street, a notoriously dangerous central Baghdad thoroughfare.

Hadi had been living inside the Iraqi Media Network complex because insurgents had threatened to kill him unless he left his state-supported job, according to Mohammed Adel Ali, a friend and fellow guard.

Hadi was dressed in dark-green military camouflage and held an AK-47 assault rifle. On the same balcony, about 20 feet to his left, another network guard manned a belt-fed machine gun. Two guard towers overlooked the network's rear gate, one flying the Iraqi flag. Hadi was positioned below the snipers, who stood about 450 feet away, near a large Iraqi flag on top of the Justice Ministry.

Hadi stood up in response to a commotion that suddenly broke out in the circle, according to several of his fellow guards. The time was between 11 a.m. and noon. "The problem started because some people wanted to park their car there," said one guard, Adel Saadi. "Our guards didn't allow them, because we were worried about car bombs. But they kept insisting."

Hadi yelled at the civilians to move back, according to Ali, who was also nearby. "He was shouting: 'Move away from here. You can't stay here. This is a government building.' While he was shouting, he was holding his gun in a ready position. That's when the sniper shot him."

It remains unclear what precipitated the shooting. The Blackwater guards said they came under fire from the building and responded, the diplomatic security official and the Blackwater spokeswoman said. Hadi's colleagues said he never fired his weapon. Saadi said he heard one shot, looked up and saw Hadi falling.

Saadi and Ali raced up the stairs with several other guards, Ali yelling: "Nabras is hit! Nabras is hit!" The guards said they believed the compound was under attack from insurgents. "We never thought that people would be shooting at us from the Ministry of Justice," said Hussein Abdul Hassan, the guards' chief. "It's a government building. No one would expect it."

The guards crawled toward Hadi, shielded by a three-foot-high wall. The sniper was still firing, they said. "Anyone crawling or walking, he shot at them," Hassan said. At least three bullets lodged in the building's facade. The guards found Hadi in the corner with a bullet through his head.

As they tried to move him, another shot rang out. It struck Azhar Abdullah al-Maliki, 31, another guard. His colleagues said he had raised his head above the low wall and was shot.

The Blackwater guards said they believed they were again under immediate threat and responded with lethal force, the security official said.

Maliki's older brother, Zuhair, said Maliki had taken the job just six weeks earlier. He lived with 21 members of his family, including his wife and three children, in a tiny house in Sadr City, a Baghdad slum.

Maliki slumped to the ground next to Hadi. "People were yelling, 'Azhar, what's wrong?' " Hassan said. "When they went to move him, they saw the blood spurting from his neck."

The guards quickly withdrew, ceding authority to an Iraqi army company that controls the neighborhood, Salihiya. The company commander, Capt. Ahmed Thamir Abood, said he sent soldiers up to the balcony to recover the bodies. Hadi was dead. Maliki was evacuated to a nearby hospital but was pronounced dead of a gunshot wound to the neck at 2 p.m., according to his death certificate.

Abood, a short, stocky man who speaks halting English, said he learned from the Justice Ministry that snipers from a U.S. security company -- not insurgents -- had shot the guards. He drove in a Humvee with one of his lieutenants to the ministry. The Blackwater guards were gathered in the traffic circle, he said, preparing to leave. Most were stocky, with goatees and small communication devices in their ears.

"I told them, 'I want to speak with the guy who is in charge of this unit,' " he said.

The Blackwater guards started toying with him, Abood said.

"He's in charge," said one, pointing at one of his colleagues.

"No, he's in charge," said another.

"They didn't care what I was saying," Abood said.

Abood said he spotted an American who appeared to be the diplomat being escorted by Blackwater. The man was young, perhaps in his 30s, and wore a navy blue sport coat, a tie and a combat helmet, Abood said. He tried to approach the diplomat, but the Blackwater guards stood in his way, he said.

Abood said he spoke to another Blackwater guard. "I introduced myself in English, but he didn't even look at me," he said. "I told him there are two people dead up there. He told me, 'Wait by this guy.' Then that guy told me to wait by another guy."

Abood said he was still waiting when the Blackwater guards climbed inside their vehicles, set off smoke grenades in the circle and sped away in a green-and-orange cloud toward the Green Zone.

Security contractors are instructed to leave the scene of a shooting as quickly as possible to ensure the safety of the person under their protection, according to the diplomatic security official. The Blackwater team followed standard operating procedures, the official said.
'Abu Sajad Is Dead'

Pandemonium had broken out inside the media network compound. Hundreds of employees were locked down inside the buildings, afraid of more shooting. A leader of the guard team, Thair Salaam, tried to assemble his men. He noticed that one was missing: a 40-year-old armorer named Sabah Salman, also known as Abu Sajad.

"We couldn't find him, no one could find him," Salaam said. "Then suddenly we got a call: 'Abu Sajad is dead.' That was more than an hour after the first shooting."

Guards found Salman's body on the balcony. He had been shot in the side. Salaam said he believed Salman was shot by a sniper while trying to retrieve Hadi's weapon.

"He went up there without a gun," Salaam said. "I don't know why they shot him."

Salman, like the two other guards, was poor, his colleagues said. He had taken responsibility for a second family after his brother was killed during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. He helped support 17 children, including eight of his own. Salman was diabetic and often sick, according to fellow guard Mohammed Adel Ali.

He and the other guards earned 285,000 Iraqi dinars a month, about $231. That was less than half of what Blackwater security guards earn in a day.

Jasim, the Iraqi Media Network deputy director, said the company was uncertain where to turn.

The Justice Ministry, the Interior Ministry, the Iraq police and an Iraqi Media Network internal investigation identified Blackwater's involvement in the shootings.

"On Feb. 7, members of Blackwater opened fire from the roof of the Ministry of Justice building, intentionally and without any provocation, shooting three members of our security team which led to their deaths while they were on duty inside the network complex," the Iraqi Media Network report concluded.

A Salihiya police investigator, misspelling Blackwater, wrote: "By collecting information and questioning the Ministry of Justice guards, it became clear that the armed personnel, who came to the Ministry of Justice, who were using special security vehicles and caused the incident and killed guards of the Iraqi Media Network, they are working with the company of BlackRwatey for special security."

"But these people were not well known to us," Jasim said. "We don't know where they are located or who they report to. Are they at the Green Zone, at the airport? We don't know how to contact them."

Abbas, the news director, said he called a U.S. military official, who told him that the military had no information about the incident.

Follow-up investigations can be difficult in a war zone environment, the diplomatic security official said. "The State Department investigates security contractor incident scenes except when to do so would endanger the lives of the investigators," he said, adding that he was not specifically addressing the Feb. 7 incident.

The network gave the families of each of the victims 1 million dinars, or about $812, to assist with burial. The network then hired one member from each family to make up for the lost income.

The diplomatic security official said the U.S. government offered no compensation because the investigation concluded that the Blackwater guards fired in self-defense. "It is the State Department policy to offer ex gratia condolence payments when innocent civilians have been hurt," he said. "In this case, the investigation determined that the security detail had been fired upon, and therefore the issue of payments did not arise."

Rahdi, the legal adviser, said the company had hoped to recover more money for the families by suing Blackwater. But he said CPA Order 17, the law granting contractors immunity, made it impossible.

"I'm talking to you from my point of view as someone representing the law," Rahdi said. "Even if I go to the U.S. ambassador, even if I go to Bush, they go by the law. If there is no law to go after them -- what are they going to do?"

"America doesn't need more enemies in Iraq," he added. "When someone loses one of his relatives, or one of his friends who gets killed by an American and that American is protected -- untouchable -- because of a law that was set by an American, this definitely will create new enemies for the United States."

Jasim said he is still hopeful that Blackwater or the U.S. government will provide assistance.

"Those three people were killed in cold blood," he said. "They have families to support. They should at least forward a letter of apology so we can give that to their relatives. That would give them some relief."

Special correspondent Naseer Nouri in Baghdad and staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.

NYT : Use of Contractors by State Dept. Has Soared

Use of Contractors by State Dept. Has Soared

By JOHN M. BRODER and DAVID ROHDE | October 24, 2007

WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 — Over the past four years, the amount of money the State Department pays to private security and law enforcement contractors has soared to nearly $4 billion a year from $1 billion, administration officials said Tuesday, but they said that the department had added few new officials to oversee the contracts.

It was the first time that the administration had outlined the ballooning scope of the contracts, and it provided a new indication of how the State Department’s efforts to monitor private companies had not kept pace. Auditors and outside exerts say the results have been vast cost overruns, poor contract performance and, in some cases, violence that has so far gone unpunished.

A vast majority of the money goes to companies like DynCorp International and Blackwater USA to protect diplomats overseas, train foreign police forces and assist in drug eradication programs. There are only 17 contract compliance officers at the State Department’s management bureau overseeing spending of the billions of dollars on these programs, officials said.

By contrast, the Army has 70 people managing just $900 million in logistics contracts in Kuwait, Pentagon officials said.

Two new reports have delivered harsh judgments about the State Department’s handling of the contracts, including the protective services contract that employs Blackwater guards whose involvement in a Sept. 16 shooting in Baghdad has raised questions about their role in guarding American diplomats in Iraq.

In a report delivered to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday, a review panel found that there were too few American officials in Iraq to enforce the rules that apply to Blackwater and other security contractors. It also found that the conduct of the contractors had undermined the broader mission of ending the insurgency and establishing a democratic government in Iraq.

The panel recommended a variety of steps to strengthen oversight of the security contractors, including a revision of the rules for the use of deadly force and creation of review panels to investigate every episode involving the injury or death of a civilian.

Interviews with administration officials, auditors and outside experts show that the use of contractors has grown far beyond what department officials imagined when they first outsourced critical security functions in 1994 and hired private security guards to protect American diplomats in Haiti, which was thrown into turmoil by civil strife.

A few years later, the department went outside again to hire private bodyguards for the American diplomats in Bosnia.

Today, the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the small State Department office that oversees the private security contractors in Iraq and elsewhere, is overwhelmed by its responsibilities to supervise the contractors, according to former employees, members of Congress and outside experts.

They say the office has grown too reliant on, and too close to, the 1,200 private soldiers who now guard American officials overseas.

“They simply didn’t have enough eyes and ears watching what was going on,” said Peter W. Singer, an expert on security contactors at the Brookings Institution. “Secondly, they seemed to show no interest in using the sanctions they had.”

Another State Department office, the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, has issued more than $2.2 billion in contracts for police training and drug eradication in Iraq, Afghanistan, Latin America and elsewhere, according to State Department records. Ninety-four percent of that money has gone to DynCorp.

State Department officials say they have tried to increase competition, but few companies are able to operate in war zones. “The lack of competition does concern us a great deal,” said a senior State Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We want as many companies as possible.”

State Department contracting officials complain that they do not have nearly enough people to properly oversee the more than 2,500 contractors now under their informal command around the world. And a proposal to charge contractors a fee to pay for additional government compliance officers has stalled in the State Department bureaucracy.

The ballooning budget for outside contracts at the State Department is emblematic of a broader trend, contracting experts say.

The Bush administration has doubled the amount of government money going to all types of contractors to $400 billion, creating a new and thriving class of post-9/11 corporations carrying out delicate work for the government. But the number of government employees issuing, managing and auditing contracts has barely grown.

“That’s a criticism that’s true of not just State but of almost every agency,” said Jody Freeman, an expert on administrative law at Harvard Law School.

On the eve of the 1994 American invasion of Haiti, the State Department’s law enforcement bureau received an urgent request. The department needed 45 American police officers to help secure the nation.

Officials in the small bureau contacted DynCorp, a Texas aviation services company with a $30 million bureau contract to operate counternarcotics flights in Latin America. Impressed with its aviation work, a selection committee awarded DynCorp a small contract over two other companies.

State Department officials viewed it as an interim measure. DynCorp viewed it as an opportunity. “We always saw it as a growth area because of the conflicts in the world,” said Steve Cannon, a former DynCorp executive.

Later that year, DynCorp won a contract from the diplomatic security office to guard American diplomats in Haiti. Over the next several years, the two small State Department offices issued more than $250 million in police training and diplomatic security contracts to DynCorp for work in Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo.

After the 2001 American invasion of Afghanistan, contracts grew again, eventually bringing the company $400 million per year. The law enforcement office had DynCorp dispatch dozens, and then hundreds, of police trainers to Afghanistan. And the diplomatic security office had DynCorp send employees to guard the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai.

Former State Department officials and Afghan officials said the DynCorp guards were far too aggressive in their tactics, and their conduct alienated Afghan and European officials, as well as Afghan citizens.

DynCorp officials said the tactics had prevented Mr. Karzai from being assassinated. State Department officials said DynCorp had performed well over all, and won most of its contracts through competitive bidding.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq opened new opportunities in the burgeoning world of government security. Blackwater got a toehold with a $27 million no-bid contract to guard L. Paul Bremer III, the administrator of the American occupation in Baghdad. A year later, the State Department expanded that contract to $100 million.

Blackwater now employs 845 of the more than 1,100 private security contractors at work in Iraq and holds a contract worth $1.2 billion.

Assistant Secretary of State Richard J. Griffin, who oversees the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, told Congress this month that his office had 36 agents overseeing the guards.

Congressional investigators say the security bureau has sought to minimize episodes like the shootings of civilians.

“We are all better off getting this case — and any similar cases — behind us quickly,” one State Department security official in Iraq wrote to another, after Blackwater guards killed a father of six in Hilla in 2005, according to an internal State Department memo turned over to Congress. He recommended paying the man’s family $5,000.

The State Department took no action against Blackwater for the killing. Blackwater declined to comment for this article. The company has denied any wrongdoing and said that its techniques have resulted in no diplomats, visiting members of Congress or other American dignitaries being killed or seriously hurt in thousands of escort missions since 2005. Twenty-seven Blackwater employees have died in Iraq.

DynCorp’s work and the department’s oversight of the company have been questioned as well. In interviews in Iraq and Afghanistan, local police officials said DynCorp’s trainers were costly and in some cases poorly qualified. The trainers are mostly retired civilian police officers from the United States who are paid up to $134,000 in Iraq and $118,000 in Afghanistan for a year of service.

State Department and DynCorp officials said all of the trainers were carefully screened and well qualified. Department officials also said they had added some two dozen staffers to oversee DynCorp over the past year.

American military officials in Iraq and Afghanistan said the quality of trainers was mixed as well. Jonathan Shiroma, a captain in the California National Guard who worked with DynCorp trainers in Iraq from 2005 to 2006, said some were “outstanding,” while others preferred to remain on base.

DynCorp and Blackwater, meanwhile, continue to win contracts.

Despite growing questions about the State Department’s system for overseeing contractors, the department has said it will continue to rely on them because, for now at least, it has no choice. It cannot quickly hire the bodyguards and trainers it would need to replace the contractors, and the military does not have the trained personnel to take over the job.

John M. Broder reported from Washington, and David Rohde from Washington, Baghdad and Kabul, Afghanistan. Paul von Zielbauer contributed reporting from Baghdad.