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    Iraqis Round on Blackwater 'Dogs' After Shooting
    Agence France-Presse

    Tuesday 18 September 2007

    Baghdad -- Hated by Iraqis who refer to them as "Mossad," Blackwater contractors are also mistrusted by fellow private security guards operating in Iraq who say they are arrogant, rude and dangerous.

    "They kill innocent people in the street," Hameed Hussein, a pensioner in west Baghdad's Al-Maamoun neighbourhood said on Tuesday, two days after guards from the US security firm opened fire on civilians, killing 10 people and wounding 13.

    "Where else in the world does this happen?" asked 60-year-old Hussein. "These are not security forces but rather forces to kill Iraqis. They are frenzied dogs."

    Iraq's interior ministry ordered the cancellation of Blackwater's operating licence after its guards who were escorting US embassy officials were involved in Sunday's shooting in Baghdad's Al-Yarmukh neighbourhood.

    Repeated calls to Blackwater in the United States for comment on the shooting and the reaction in Iraq have gone unanswered.

    US and Iraqi sources in Baghdad said the shooting erupted after a bomb exploded near a US diplomatic convoy, but a US government incident report said armed insurgents fired on the convoy and Blackwater guards responded.

    Blackwater contractors, who are hired to protect US officials in Iraq including Ambassador Ryan Crocker, are well known on the streets of Baghdad.

    Toting M-16 rifles and grenade launchers, they drive armoured vehicles or SUVs mounted with machine guns through the streets accompanied by their own helicopters, bringing traffic to a halt.

    The message is clear, stay back or risk being shot.

    "They behave just like the US soldiers," said Mohammed Abdullah, 32, an engineer who lives in western Mansour district. "They are part of the occupation forces, which is why they behave this way."

    Housewife Um Omar, who also lives in Mansour, had nothing good to say about Blackwater.

    "They seal off the roads and drive on the wrong side. They simply kill," she said.

    A traffic policeman at Al-Wathba square in central Baghdad was equally scathing.

    "They are impolite and do not respect people, they bump other people's cars to frighten them and shout at anyone who approaches them," said the 42-year-old policemen, who asked not to be named.

    "Two weeks ago, guards of a convoy opened fire randomly that led to the killing of two policemen... I swear they are Mossad," he added, referring to the Israeli secret service which is despised across the Arab world.

    Shopkeeper Ali al-Saadi, 59, said a week ago a Blackwater security convoy sealed off both sides of the main street in the inner district of Al-Sikek.

    "This convoy of Mossad opened fire in all directions without a reason," he said.

    One of those shot in the incident was another shopkeeper, Adil Lafta, according to his son Salim who is now running the shop.

    "My father was hit in the leg. He was in hospital for six days. He is now in bed at home. He cannot move," said Lafta.

    An Iraqi soldier, standing guard with his AK rifle at Al-Khillani square in central Baghdad, added his voice to the chorus of condemnation.

    "We cannot do anything because they occupy our country and they represent US and Israeli forces," he said, asking not to be named because he is not permitted to speak to the media.

    "Even the Iraqi government cannot stop their barbarous acts."

    Other foreign security contractors based in Iraq - who all declined to be named - said the behaviour of Blackwater guards was giving them all a bad name.

    "Unfortunately, it appears there is an institutionalised arrogance (and) they feel they can't be held accountable," said an American security officer who has been working in Iraq for a US construction company for the past three years.

    "I and others have had Blackwater aggressively try to run us off the road and point guns at us at checkpoints," said the contractor, who gave his name only as Mike.

    "They are crazy, aggressive and arrogant," said another contractor working for a European company, who was reluctant to speak to the media and unwilling to be named.

    "They are more aggressive than American soldiers. They ride around in their vehicles pointing their weapons at people in the street or in cars," he said, speaking from personal experience.

    "They give us all a bad name. We are all known as 'Mossad' because Iraqis can't distinguish between us and them."

 

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    Go to Original

    Iraqi Report Says Blackwater Guards Fired First
    By Sabrina Tavernise and James Glanz
    The New York Times

    Wednesday 19 September 2007

    Baghdad-- A preliminary Iraqi report on a shooting involving an American diplomatic motorcade said Tuesday that Blackwater security guards were not ambushed, as the company reported, but instead fired at a car when it did not heed a policeman's call to stop, killing a couple and their infant.

    The report, by the Ministry of Interior, was presented to the Iraqi cabinet and, though unverified, seemed to contradict an account offered by Blackwater USA that the guards were responding to gunfire by militants. The report said Blackwater helicopters had also fired. The Ministry of Defense said 20 Iraqis had been killed, a far higher number than had been reported before.

    In a sign of the seriousness of the standoff, the American Embassy here suspended diplomatic missions outside the Green Zone and throughout Iraq on Tuesday.

    "There was not shooting against the convoy," said Ali al-Dabbagh, the Iraqi government's spokesman. "There was no fire from anyone in the square."

    A State Department spokesman, Edgar Vasquez, said he had not heard of the report and repeated that the department was conducting an investigation supported by the American military. A spokeswoman for Blackwater did not respond to an e-mail request for comment.

    "Let these folks do the investigation and get all the facts," Mr. Vasquez said, "and if department procedures were not followed, after the facts have been gathered we would decide what action to take."

    The shooting, which took place on Sunday, has angered Iraqi officials and touched off a harsh debate about private security companies, which operate outside Iraqi law, a privilege extended to them by Americans officials while Iraq's government was still under American administration. Blackwater, which guards all top American officials here, had its work suspended, and Iraqi officials agreed to rewrite the rules to make the companies accountable.

    "We do understand that the security companies are subject to high levels of threat and they do a good job at protection, but this does not entitle them to immunity from Iraqi laws," Mr. Dabbagh said. "This is what the Iraqi government would like to review."

    He said the Iraqi and American governments had set up a joint committee to investigate the deaths.

    American Embassy officials had said Monday that the Blackwater guards had been responding to a car bomb, but Mr. Dabbagh said the bomb was so far away that it could not possibly have been a reason for the convoy to begin shooting.

    Instead, he said, the convoy had initiated the shooting when a car did not heed a police officer and moved into an intersection.

    "The traffic policeman was trying to open the road for them," he said. "It was a crowded square. But one small car did not stop. It was moving very slowly. They shot against the couple and their child. They started shooting randomly."

    In video shot shortly after the episode, the child appeared to have burned to the mother's body after the car caught fire, according to an official who saw it.

    In interviews on Tuesday, six Iraqis who had been in the area at the time of the shooting, including a man who was wounded and an Iraqi Army soldier who helped rescue people, offered roughly similar versions.

    The Iraqi soldier, who said he was standing at a checkpoint on the edge of the square, said he thought the convoy believed the small car was a suicide bomber and opened fire. According to the wounded man, recuperating in Yarmouk Hospital, the car with the family was driving on the wrong side of the road.

    The convoy began throwing nonlethal sound bombs, several witnesses said, to keep people in the area away. That drew fire from Iraqi Army soldiers manning watchtowers that are part of an Iraqi Army base on the square. Iraqi police officers, witnesses said, also appeared to be shooting.

    The Iraqi soldier, who did not give his name but said he was from a company of Iraqi commandos, said he saw another soldier trying to motion to the convoy to move on, but he was shot as well.

    Sean McCormack, the spokesman for the State Department, said in a briefing that contractors "are subject to Department of State rules of engagement."

    "These are defensive in nature," he said. When contractors and employees are attacked, he added, they "will respond with graduated use of force, proportionate to the kind of fire and attack that they're coming under."

    The Iraqis' accounts have not been verified, but the anger in their telling served to reinforce the feeling among Iraqis here that private security companies care little for Iraqi lives. In a war where perceptions are paramount, the effect is poisonous.

    "They are more powerful than the government," the Iraqi soldier said. "No one can try them. Where is the government in this?"

    For Safaa Rabee, an engineer in Newcastle, England, whose 75-year-old father was shot dead while driving home from grocery shopping on Aug. 13 in Hilla in southern Iraq, the immunity was particularly galling. Mr. Rabee said his father had pulled over and waited as a convoy of sport utility vehicles zoomed past, lights and sirens flashing, a familiar routine for Iraqis, but when he pulled back out, guards in the last car of the convoy opened fire.

    Mr. Rabee and his brother discussed it with the Hilla police chief, who said the convoy was an American diplomatic one from Najaf, another southern city, and also with a sympathetic American colonel, who offered small financial compensation.

    The police chief said the security guards in the convoy were Blackwater, Mr. Rabee said, though he does not know for sure if that was the case.

    "I said to him that I'll follow the killer anywhere in the world, even in American law," Mr. Rabee said by telephone from England. "He said: 'I understand you are angry but you can't do anything. They're under our protection.' I said, 'Do you think that's fair?' " For the family, Mr. Rabee said, the killing felt no different from that of Mr. Rabee's brother, the owner of a fish farm, who was executed by militants just south of Baghdad in 2005. The family pursued the case against his father's killers in court, but the case was closed.

    In the clubby atmosphere of private security firms in Iraq, senior members of rival companies are often reluctant to criticize Blackwater.

    But among the rank and file of security contractors, Blackwater guards are regularly ridiculed as cowboys who are relentlessly and pointlessly aggressive, carry excessive weaponry and do not appear to have top-of-the-line training.

    Passing Blackwater convoys sometimes intimidates even Westerners, who fear coming under attack if they make a wrong move.

    The Iraqi government said it had revoked Blackwater's license. But it appeared that the company had not possessed one in many months, according to a security official in Baghdad, but had begun work on getting one in spring of 2007.

    The Iraqi government has changed hands several times, throwing up new hurdles for companies to register, and by the fall of 2006, when the process changed again, many simply stopped trying, the official said. Currently, about 25 companies are formally licensed, the official said. Blackwater is not among them.

    One private security official said Blackwater had been at odds with the Ministry of Interior over licensing, and drew more ill will when a guard killed a ministry bodyguard some time ago.

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    Khalid al-Ansary, Sahar Nageeb and Kareem Hilmi contributed reporting.

 

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    Go to Original

    Diplomatic Convoys Curtailed in Iraq
    By Robert H. Reid and Matthew Lee
    The Associated Press

    Tuesday 18 September 2007

    The United States on Tuesday suspended all land travel by U.S. diplomats and other civilian officials in Iraq outside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, amid mounting public outrage over the alleged killing of civilians by the U.S. Embassy's security provider Blackwater USA.

    The move came even as the Iraqi government appeared to back down from statements Monday that it had permanently revoked Blackwater's license and would order its 1,000 personnel to leave the country -- depriving American diplomats of security protection essential to operating in Baghdad.

    "We are not intending to stop them and revoke their license indefinitely but we do need them to respect the law and the regulation here in Iraq," government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told CNN.

    The U.S. order confines most American officials to a 3.5-square-mile area in the center of the city, meaning they cannot visit U.S.-funded construction sites or Iraqi officials elsewhere in the country except by helicopter. The notice did not say when the suspension would expire.

    The Iraqi Cabinet decided Tuesday to review the status of all foreign security companies. Still, it was unclear how the dispute would play out, given the government's need to appear resolute in defending national sovereignty while maintaining its relationship with Washington at a time when U.S. public support for the mission is faltering.

    Polls show Gen. David Petraeus' report to Congress and President Bush's nationally televised address have had little impact on Americans' distaste for the Iraq war and their desire to withdraw U.S. troops.

    Petraeus, America's top commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the top U.S. diplomat here, briefed the British government Tuesday on their recommendations to keep troop levels high.

    Also Tuesday, three U.S. soldiers were killed following an explosion near their patrol northeast of Baghdad, the military said. Another soldier was killed in a vehicle accident in the northern province of Ninevah, the military said.

    Exploiting public rage over the killings of what police said were 11 civilians by Blackwater guards, anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr demanded that the government ban all 48,000 foreign security contractors.

    Al-Sadr's office in Najaf said the government should nullify contracts of all foreign security companies, branding them "criminal and intelligence firms."

    "This aggression would not have happened had it not been for the presence of the occupiers who brought these companies, most of whose members are criminals and ex-convicts in American and Western prisons," the firebrand cleric said in a statement.

    Al-Sadr insisted that the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki prosecute those involved and ensure that families of the victims receive compensation.

    There was no threat by al-Sadr to unleash his Mahdi Army militia in retaliation for the killings.

    However, his statement was significant because it signaled al-Sadr's intention to stir up anti-American sentiment in the wake of the weekend shootings and further undermine al-Maliki's U.S.-backed government.

    Many Iraqis, who have long viewed security contractors as mercenaries, dismissed Blackwater's contention that its guards were attacked by armed insurgents and returned fire only to protect State Department personnel.

    "We see the security firms ... doing whatever they want in the streets. They beat citizens and scorn them," Baghdad resident Halim Mashkoor told AP Television News. "If such a thing happened in America or Britain, would the American president or American citizens accept it?"

    Blackwater is among three private security firms employed by the State Department to protect employees in Iraq, and expelling it would create huge problems for U.S. government operations in this country.

    In a notice sent to Americans in Iraq, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad said it had taken the step to review the security of its personnel and possible increased threats to those leaving the Green Zone while accompanied by such security details.

    "In light of a serious security incident involving a U.S. embassy protective detail in the Mansour District of Baghdad, the embassy has suspended official U.S. government civilian ground movements outside the International Zone (IZ) and throughout Iraq," the notice said.

    "This suspension is in effect in order to assess mission security and procedures, as well as a possible increased threat to personnel traveling with security details outside the International Zone," said the notice, a copy of which was provided to The Associated Press by the State Department in Washington.

    The two other firms, both of which are headquartered in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, are Dyncorp, based in Falls Church, Va., and Triple Canopy, based in Herndon, Va. Neither has the resources of Blackwater, which includes a fleet of helicopters that provide added security for State Department personnel traveling through Baghdad's dangerous streets.

    In London, Crocker told reporters that "an investigation of that incident is under way and it would be premature to comment until the investigation is finished."

    Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, who announced the Blackwater ban, said Tuesday the most important issue now is "to find the best ways to put new regulations and conditions by the Interior Ministry on the work of security companies."

    A 2004 regulation issued by the U.S. occupation authority granted security contractors full immunity from prosecution under Iraqi law. Unlike American military personnel, the civilian contractors are also not subject to U.S. military law either.

    Hassan al-Rubaie, a member of the parliament's Security and Defense Committee, said an investigative committee has been formed to consider lifting the contractors' immunity.

    Some private security officials have blamed much of the confusion surrounding the work of the contractors on inefficiency and corruption within the Iraqi government -- especially the Ministry of the Interior.

    Many security companies have tried to obtain weapons permits from the ministry, only to find the rules constantly changing. That forces security guards to choose between venturing into the streets without protection or running the risk that their weapons might be confiscated at a checkpoint.

    U.S. officials arranged an extension of the deadline for weapons permits until the end of the year, although procedures for obtaining them remain unclear.

    Blackwater and other foreign contractors accused of killing Iraqi citizens have gone without facing charges or prosecution in the past. But the latest incident drew a much stronger reaction by the Iraqi government.

    Unlike many deaths blamed on foreign contractors, Sunday's shootings took place in a crowded area in downtown Baghdad with dozens of witnesses.

    Details of the incident remain unclear.

    Blackwater says State Department personnel came under attack from insurgents and that its guards returned fire. Iraqi police say a car bomb exploded near a State Department convoy and that Blackwater guards opened fire. Khalaf said 11 people were killed.

    Yassin Majid, an adviser to al-Maliki, said the killings had deeply embarrassed the Iraqi government and forced it to act against Blackwater -- even before a full investigation had been completed.

    "They were not subjected to the kind of attack or shooting ... that required a response of this intensity that led to the death of civilians," Majid said. "This incident embarrassed the government and also embarrassed the American government."

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    Lee contributed to this report from Washington.