Thursday, April 15, 2004
Dirty Work – but someone’s paid to do it

The death and mutilation a fortnight ago of four civilian contractors in Fallujah marked the beginning of a hardening of US/Coalition military tactics in quashing both the Sunni and Shi’ite insurgency.

On an individual level the murdering then desecration and despoliation of a body is morally repugnant, however, angry mobs have been known to perpetrate hideous atrocities and so this case should not come as a shock – it is not without precedent.

But why would four civilian contractors be the target of an angry mob? They are not the occupying force, but merely ordinary people helping to rebuild Iraq and establish some sort of normality to an embittered country.

The truth is – they were part of the military apparatus of the occupying force. They were four of the some six thousand private security armed mercenaries that are currently contracted by the US government to carry out non-combat and non-mission critical work in Iraq.

The four were heavily armed employees of Blackwater Security Consulting. Blackwater has a $37.7 million dollar contract with the Bush administration to train 10,000 US troops in Iraq. Blackwater is also a subsidiary of Halliburton, the conglomerate that Vice-President Dick Cheney is former Chairman and is still taking a healthy pension. But this is probably coincidence.

Blackwater has the contract for the armed protection of Paul Bremmer, the US administrator of occupied Iraq. Private security firms are now the coalitions third largest contributor of personnel to the coalition’s forces (after the US and UK) – that is the third largest army.

These security firms are staffed by ex-soldiers and retired special forces goons who are attracted by the high salaries and perhaps high risks. Retention of experienced and highly trained military operatives is rumoured to be getting difficult, such is the loss to these growing firms. Blackwater’s turnover has increased 300% in the last three years.

They were not telephone engineers or air traffic controllers; those who you would immediately understand to be ‘civilian contractors’. They were in fact ‘soldiers-for-hire’ - something that was not made clear in White House/Defense Department statements and only came to light a least a week after the incident. They were referred to as 'coalition contractors' or simply 'Americans'.

Was this because

1. the killing of a civilian mercenary in a ‘combat zone’ should not have happened,


2. the US government does not wish to highlight the number of these combatants currently operative or


3. had they known, the incident would not have enraged the American public to quite the extent desired by the Bush administration?

Or maybe this fact was just overlooked?

But should that make any difference? It should certainly not have made a difference to the atrocities that followed the grenade attack but it does explain why their vehicles were a target for a mob of angry insurgents. Fallujah has hardly been a place where the occupying army have been met with open arms and these mercenaries are as much a part of the occupying force as any regular soldier.

So next time a ‘civilian contractor’ is murdered, just wait a while, until after the White House press conference and then ask – are these ‘contractors’ on the payroll of the US President, as Commander in Chief of US forces, or on the payroll of the Vice-President, as ex-Chairman of Halliburton?

• Blackwater Security Consulting


• United States Department of Defense

---