The more and more the world learns about Blackwater USA — a private military company and security firm — the more and more apparent it’s bizarrely incestuous relationship with the United State’s executive branch becomes. Most recently brought to light after the Sept. 16 shooting incident that left 14 Iraqi civilians wounded and 11 dead, Blackwater’s history as a private military company in Iraq is unfolding as one of an unregulated armed force let loose into a country currently hanging by fragile threads of civilization and order.
Many of you may remember Blackwater from the horrific ambush of four of its employees in April 2004, whose bodies were charred and mutilated by a mob in Fallujah. Clad in shades and plastic earpieces and armed to the teeth, Blackwater presented itself as a mysterious militia of paid volunteers protecting our diplomats on risky foreign relation missions inside Iraq.
The group seemed like a miracle solution at the time; handing off non-offensive combat work to private companies, freeing more enlisted troops to eradicate the insurgents and partially alleviate the problem of low recruitment numbers. Kinda like the movie "The Bodygaurd."
The biggest tipping point to what is wrong with all this came most publicly in 2006 when Bush was asked in a public forum — proudly, I may add, by a first-year college student — what code of justice the organization adheres to. Bush laughed it off with an "I don’t know."
Since Paul Bremer, the director of post-Iraq reconstruction, granted Blackwater and the American government immunity from Iraqi law; there is essentially no authority Blackwater answers to outside the terms of its contract with the American government.
The first question that should leap into your mind is "Has this immunity been abused?" Sadly, it seems that it has. There are numerous accounts detailing a lack of repercussions against the organization after severe criminal acts, even when committed against the highest levels of the American-backed Iraqi government.
On Christmas Eve in 2006, an intoxicated Blackwater employee murdered a security guard assigned to the Iraqi vice president. The Blackwater contractor was given means by the State Department to leave Iraq within 36 hours, and he faced no criminal charges by any court. The extent of the repercussions was a recommendation by the U.S. Embassy to apologize and pay the family of the deceased a quarter of a million dollars, which was afterwards deemed too high and eventually reduced to $15,000.
Explicit incidents like this sit among statistics that make it easy to believe such crimes are commonplace. The U.S. House of Representatives recently released a report detailing Blackwater's involvement in 1.4 shootings per week in Iraq, 84 percent of which had the private organization firing first, despite its contractual obligation to fire only in defense. I find it outrageous that this even has to be in the contract, as if it would otherwise be deemed outside common knowledge.
However, positive first steps have been taken in light of this hailstorm. Blackwater recently had its license to operate in Iraq revoked. But remember what I said about Blackwater maintaining close-knit ties to the administration? Well, despite the ongoing oversight committee hearings — which, by the way, have been admitted to being mainly about determining if Blackwater is a good deal to the American taxpayer rather than anything else — the organization has been awarded an indefinite contract for $92 million by the pentagon for operations in countries such as Afghanistan. Nice loophole eh?
Add to that the fact that the initial State Department’s report detailing the Sept. 16 incident, which failed to mention the Iraqi civilian casualties, was written by a current Blackwater employee, and you begin to wonder if Blackwater is truly above and beyond the law.
To be fair, there have been incidents where Blackwater has provided a service to the United States, such as when marines were entrapped outside the Coalition Provisional Authority headquarters and an all-volunteer Blackwater team assisted in the evacuation. Also, according to Blackwater, no United States diplomat has been killed while under the protection of one of their security teams. But, whether or not this outweighs the reckless concept of a private military force in Iraq, the question is, who answers to less authority than do enlisted troops?
Is the privatization of military really a feasible concept? Certainly not in this writer's opinion. When you inject a force not drawn from a nation’s regular army into a conflict that lacks a nation’s support, that acts in direct contradiction to the humanitarian efforts made by the diplomats it protects and does not answer the will of the nation it is stationed in — you are no longer fighting a war, you are playing with fire.
Charles Lim ([email protected]) is a junior with no declared major.
