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Private Guards Fire on Taxi; Three Iraqis Hurt, Police Say    [

    Gates: Security Contractors Conflict With US Mission in Iraq
    By Peter Spiegel
    The Los Angeles Times

    Friday 19 October 2007

The Defense secretary says guards who protect clients at any cost are working 'at cross-purposes' with soldiers trying to gain Iraqis' trust.

    Washington - The behavior of private security contractors in Iraq is in direct conflict with the goals of the U.S. military, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Thursday in an unusually frank critique, adding that the guards' mistreatment of Iraqis is hindering Pentagon efforts at winning hearts and minds.

    Gates said at a Pentagon news conference that he planned to meet with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in coming days to iron out new regulations governing the conduct of the estimated 8,500 armed guards working for the Pentagon and State Department in Iraq.

    Last month, the Defense secretary sent a five-man team to Iraq to investigate contractor oversight after the high-profile killing of 17 Iraqis in a Baghdad shooting involving Blackwater USA, the private security contractor hired to protect U.S. diplomats.

    Although Blackwater works for the State Department, the Pentagon employs the vast majority of such hired guns in Iraq - about 7,300 - and Gates within days ordered commanders in the country to be more aggressive in using military law to discipline contractors in their areas of responsibility.

    Pentagon officials have said Gates also is considering a proposal to put the security contractors under a new Baghdad-based military command so Pentagon officials would have more direct oversight of their actions.

    Gates did not publicly advocate such a restructuring Thursday, but he suggested he was planning a more extensive review of how the U.S. regulates the private security guards.

    Gates said the mission of many contractors in Iraq - to protect their U.S. government employers regardless of other consequences - was "at cross-purposes to our larger mission in Iraq."

    The larger mission includes persuading "more and more Iraqis [to] see the coalition forces as their friends and their allies," he said.

    "As I see it, right now those missions are in conflict, because in the objective of completing the mission of delivering a principal safely to a destination, just based on everything I've read and what our own team has reported, there have been instances where, to put it mildly, the Iraqis have been offended and not treated properly," Gates said.

    The Pentagon's increasingly critical scrutiny of its contractors contrasts with the response by the State Department, which for weeks after the Sept. 16 shooting defended Blackwater's behavior in Iraq. This month, however, Rice ordered a complete revamp of its policies governing Blackwater's operations, ordering all convoys to include U.S. government monitors and video cameras to record actions taken by the guards.

    The State Department has ordered a separate review of its oversight of Blackwater and its two other private security contractors in Iraq, DynCorp International and Triple Canopy. Although Gates said he did not believe there were conflicts between the departments' reviews, he said he would meet with Rice to iron out any differences.

    Relations between the active-duty military and private security contractors, long strained because of soldiers' perceptions that the armed guards undermine their mission, has become increasingly uneasy, with military officials accusing the contractors of recruiting away their best personnel.

    Erik Prince, Blackwater's chief executive, testified before a congressional hearing this month that his company does not actively recruit soldiers in uniform.

    But at a meeting with military writers Thursday, the Army's top personnel official said the service was being forced to constantly raise retention bonuses for technically skilled service members to keep them from leaving the military for contractors.

    "It takes about 10 years to build a major, but it takes decades to build these highly, highly skilled special operators, and those are the ones who are the most attractive to the contractors," said Lt. Gen. Michael D. Rochelle, the Army's deputy chief of staff for personnel, referring to the Army's elite Special Operations units. "It's almost impossible to be fully competitive."

    Gates has asked military lawyers whether it is possible for the Pentagon to include noncompete clauses in its contracts with private security firms that would bar firms from recruiting among active-duty units. He has not decided whether to impose such requirements.

    In Iraq, Blackwater works for the State Department, not the Pentagon. The firm is employed by the Defense Department elsewhere overseas.

    Despite Gates' conclusion that private security firms are undermining the U.S. military mission in Iraq, he continues to believe that the U.S. government needs to employ the armed guards there, arguing that using soldiers to take over their roles would pull resources away from more important goals.

    "It would require an enormous commitment of American troops . . . to assuring the security of our diplomats and civilians working in Baghdad and the rest of Iraq, as opposed to working the security situation for Iraq more broadly," he said.

 

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    Private Guards Fire on Taxi; Three Iraqis Hurt, Police Say
    By Steve Fainaru and Amit R. Paley
    The Washington Post

    Friday 19 October 2007

    Baghdad - Two men and a woman were wounded Thursday in a quiet Kurdish village in northern Iraq when guards from a British security company raked a crowded taxi with automatic weapons fire, local police said. It was the third shooting of Iraqi civilians by a private security firm in the past month.

    A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said the guards were employed by Erinys International. The British firm provides security for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers under a contract that has paid the company about $175 million since 2004, $125 million more than originally budgeted. The contract is set to expire next month after Erinys failed to win renewal.

    The Erinys guards were traveling in a convoy of three armored sport-utility vehicles on the main street of Qara Hanjiel, a village about 22 miles east of the northern city of Kirkuk. The vehicles were in an area bounded by concrete dwellings, restaurants and stores when they encountered the taxi, which was filled with five Kurdish civilians, according to local Iraqi police and the vehicle's passengers.

    Navy Capt. Vic Beck, the military spokesman, said Erinys reported that the guards opened fire after the vehicle approached "at a high rate of speed" and that one person was wounded. The guards issued a series of warnings before shooting into the vehicle, "which resulted in the alleged injury to a civilian occupant," Beck said.

    An Erinys spokesman in Washington said he had no information on the incident.

    Iraqi police and passengers said that the shooting was unprovoked and that three people were wounded. After the initial volley of bullets, they said, the Erinys guards continued firing to prevent a passenger from getting out of the taxi and later refused to speak to Iraqi police.

    "Those are wild monsters, criminals and killers who shot us even though we did not obstruct their way and we are in a safe area where there is no al-Qaeda or terrorists," said Singer Moulmood, 24, an employee of a Kurdish television station, who was wounded in the shoulder while sitting in the back seat. "The Americans are responsible for this act by this security company because they are supporting them."

    The two other wounded passengers were Zarak Nouri Qadar, 35, who was shot in the right eye while in the front seat; and his brother Yara, 28, who was struck in the neck and hand, which he had raised to protect himself. A Washington Post special correspondent counted three bullet holes in the windshield of the orange-and-white taxi, two on the hood, one in the passenger-side door and one in the roof.

    The private security industry in Iraq has come under scrutiny following a Sept. 16 shooting in Baghdad in which the Iraqi government says guards employed by Blackwater Worldwide killed 17 civilians. On Oct. 9, guards from Australia-based Unity Resources Group, killed two women on a crowded Baghdad street.

    In each case, the companies said their guards opened fire after a car approached in what was perceived to be a threatening manner. The cases are under investigation.

    The three companies work in support of the U.S.-led coalition but fall under separate operating authority. Erinys operates under a Defense Department contract, placing the company under U.S. military command. The military said it would investigate the case according to U.S. military regulations.

    Blackwater is a State Department security provider, subject to that agency's regulations. Unity provides security for RTI International, a research and technology firm under contract to the U.S. Agency for International Development, a taxpayer-funded agency affiliated with the State Department.

    Because Erinys did not remain at the scene of the shooting, Iraqi authorities were unable to identify the firm, they said. The passengers reported only that the SUVs had lion logos, the Erinys company emblem, affixed to their doors.

    Elsewhere in Kurdish northern Iraq, hundreds protested the Turkish parliament's approval of a measure authorizing a military incursion into Iraq to stop attacks by rebels. In Irbil, protesters carried Kurdish flags and signs that read "No to a military solution" and "Protecting Kurdistan borders is a national duty."

    Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said he anticipates limited Turkish airstrikes on Kurdish separatists in the north of the country, and he called for the rebels to leave as soon as possible. "To talk about a major military offensive and major cross-border incursion, that I do not expect," he told the Reuters news agency.

    In Baghdad, residents braced for violence after reports that Saddam Hussein aide Ali Hassan Majid, known as Chemical Ali, was expected to be hanged shortly, along with at least one other top Baath Party official. Majid has been sentenced to death for his role in the so-called Anfal campaign in the late 1980s that killed more than 100,000 Kurds.

    Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi said the executions could not take place until there was agreement between top government officials over rulings by Iraqi courts dealing with the case.

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    Special correspondents Zaid Sabah and Naseer Nouri and other Washington Post staff in Iraq contributed to this report.