September 21, 2007

Blackwater Returns Amid Questions About Private Contractors

UPDATED.

Blackwater USA, the private security contractor involved in a Baghdad shooting incident last weekend, is reportedly going back to work as normal this weekend.

Activity from the company had been suspended after an incident Sunday, during which U.S. and Iraqi officials agree that eight or more Iraqi civilians were killed by Blackwater guards who were trying to protect a diplomatic convoy. But that's where the stories diverge: U.S. officials claim the guards were responding to an attack on the convoy. (An American report is still pending, and officials are refusing to comment until the investigation is complete.)

The Iraqi government, on the other hand, claims the attack was unprovoked. In a new report on the incident, which the New York Times obtained yesterday, Iraq's Ministry of Interior says guards immediately began firing on a car that drove through a signal to stop in Baghdad's Nisour Square.

"The Blackwater company is considered 100 percent guilty through this investigation," the report concludes.

The report weighs in on the future of private security operations in Iraq, too. It recommends that all the private security companies operating in Iraq should be scrapped and replaced with local firms. Furthermore, it calls for ending the practice of granting immunity from Iraqi prosecution to independent contractors operating in the country.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters today that she has ordered "a full and complete review" of how the department is "conducting [its] security details" for U.S. diplomats in response to the Blackwater incident. "I take very seriously, and called up" Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki "to regret the loss of life," she said after returning to Washington from a Mideast trip.

Reuters and the Times both have more on the current situation, and Slate has a long-form piece on private contractors in Iraq.

Posted at 2:33 PM
Posted to: Iraq, Middle East
Share via