Instead of coalition soldiers, private companies are increasingly taking charge of security in Iraq. Karim El-Gawhary reports on mercenaries in modern dress In earlier days, they were simply called mercenaries, and they were usually linked with some distant war in the bush. Recruitment was secret, on the rim of legality. Today, these warriors for sale present themselves as modern, advertising on websites as "Global Elite Troops" or "consultants" for "international strategic security", performing "risk management" or "aggressive security". Internationally active private security companies are in fashion. Whether it be the guarding of persons, the protection of property or escorting convoys, one year after the war on Iraq their services are especially in great demand in occupied Mesopotamia. The Bush administration desperately wants to bring at least some of the boys back home during the forthcoming election campaign, while other countries hesitate to send their own troops to face Iraqi guerrilla fire. Some, like the Spanish, are even set on withdrawal. The recruitment of Iraqi policemen is understandably proceeding rather tentatively. Therefore one task or another, such as shipments of money or the guarding of hotels, is handed over to private companies. Additionally, private businesses and aid organisations have to organise their own protection. Even at the UN, private security companies can participate in tenders for the protection of the employees of the world organisation, in case they should return to the Iraqi danger zone. Over a dozen of private security companies, known as "private military contractors" (PMCs), are active in Iraq, and have in turn subcontracted many more less known companies. According to estimations, there are up to 20,000 private security consultants, bodyguards and other armed protectors active in Iraq. Hence, private security services are the second largest ally of the US-occupation administration, even ahead of the British army. Men of the company Custer Battles are guarding the international airport in Baghdad. The South African/ British company Erinys is responsible for the protection of oil fields and pipelines and has received a $100 million contract for sustaining a private unit of 14,000 troops Iraqi. The British company Global Risk Strategies has taken on the safeguarding of the American-led occupational administration. Their British rival ArmorGroup is employed by private US-corporations like Bechtel and KBR for the protection of their engineers, and another security company, DynCorp, from North Virginia, is training the new Iraqi police. The boundary between military and non-military is becoming blurred. When, for example, a US helicopter was shot down last year in Falluja, a private American security company was drafted to make the area safe and conduct the rescue. The employers usually keep a low profile: "We do not talk about things because our customers don't want it," is everything that Jason McIntosh has to say as spokesman of San Diego-based Application International Corp, which is to train Iraqi policemen and soldiers. On the ground, the men with short hair and obligatory sunglasses talk reluctantly about their work. They sport khaki-colored photographer's vests and sometimes even openly display their guns. Only the name-badge -- obligatory for soldiers -- is missing on the person of private warriors. In their four-wheel jeeps, without company names, they race through the streets. Occasionally, you find them friendly, and sometimes less friendly, at the entrance to the hotels where they check your bags. The business with the PMCs is very good. According to David Clardige, the manager of Janusian, a London-based PMC, British security companies quintupled their turnover during the Iraqi occupation from $320 million to $1.8 billion. By now, private protection counts as the number one British export product in Iraq. Companies such as Global Risk Strategies had merely two employees before the Afghanistan war. Nowadays, a thousand guards work for that company in Iraq. Not only private corporations but also official development projects must take the private security factor into account. The Program Management Office, which is responsible for the budget-allocation of the US development aid in Iraq, has recently revised its calculations from seven to 10 per cent for every development project. Representatives of Blackwater, a US-based corporation responsible for the personal security of US occupation administrator L Paul Bremer, even say that for some development projects as much as a quarter of the budget is spent on PMCs. The British taxpayer is also asked to pay up. The Ministry for International Development in London has already spent $45 million on private bodyguards, armed escorts and security consultants. The latest $43 million contract was won by the company Control Risk, which shall now protect 150 British civil servants and employees of private British corporations with 120 private security men. The business pays well on an individual basis too. The British commando unit SAS is complaining meanwhile to have lost many of their expensively trained soldiers to private security companies. For a four-man team of former SAS-commando soldiers in Baghdad, the one to be protected has to pay at least $5,000 per day. At least $10,000 per month is considered a basic salary for a former British elite soldier working for a PMC. Higher-ranking security consultants begin with an annual salary of $150,000. Depending on nationality, the salary decreases. Former Nepalese Gurka-elite soldiers, like the 700 hired by ArmorGroup, earn only a tenth of that of their white colleagues. An Iraqi put under contract by a PMC earns $150 per month on average. "In the end, they don't seriously withstand an attack," a white British security officer remarked without subtlety or embarrassment. "The Iraqis aren't disciplined," he says. "We teach them and a week later they leave their fate to Allah if no white man keeps an eye on them." Payment also depends on the danger. For especially delicate missions, such as escorts of persons or convoys in the guerrilla stronghold of Falluja, up to $1,000 are paid per day. There, private warriors sometimes move into an area avoided by US soldiers, like the four American security guards from the North Carolina-based Blackwater who were shot in Falluja earlier this month. Pictures went around the world when the dead bodies were, in the most brutal way and by a blood-thirsty mob, dragged behind cars through the town, burnt and dismembered and later hung on a bridge over the Euphrates. Most media spoke rather vaguely about four civilians working for a private company, although Blackwater confirmed the loss of four of their employees on the same day. It is unknown how many deaths here have been so far among employees of PMCs. These fatalities do not appear in the official army statistics of soldiers killed in action. That, too, from the US occupation administration's point of view, is one of the advantages of using PMCs. Only occasionally do PMCs make headlines, and in that case one or another detail about some disreputable personal background of certain private warriors comes to light. A bomb attack on the Shaheen Hotel in Baghdad on 28 January was apparently aimed at the South African/British PMC Erinys that had accommodated its employees there. During this attack, the white South African Francois Strydom was killed. According to reports in the South African press, Strydom had earlier been a member of Koevoet, a formerly disreputable paramilitary Apartheid unit that had until 1980 fought brutally against the independence of neighbouring Namibia. His colleague Deon Gouws who was injured during the attack had formerly been an officer in the Apartheid's secret police Vlakplaas. This latter is on record at the South African Truth Commission for the murder of an opposition leader in 1986. "It is dreadful to know that such people work for the Americans in Iraq," former South African constitutional judge Richard Goldstein was cited as saying in a report in the local press which spoke of approximately 150 former Apartheid security personnel who found new employment in today's Iraq. And last month, the list of employees of PMCs with a dubious background was extended. Blackwater recruited 60 former officers of the Chilean military Junta of Augusto Pinochet and had them trained in North Carolina. "We are combing the last corners of the world for professional employees, and the former Chilean commandos are very professional," Gary Johnson, managing director of Blackwater, states as justification. Will the situation spin out of control? Employees of PMCs are not only targetted by Iraqi guerrillas more frequently. Occasionally, they fire back themselves. Among security companies in Iraq, the story of a privately guarded money transport at the end of last year near the Iraqi town of Samarra is often retold. As it was attacked, mercenaries fired wildly around them and killed eight civilians, among them women and others accidentally passing at the time of the incident. The story was apparently so unpleasant for the US army that, in order to distract attention, it spread reports to the media of a long-lasting gun battle between US forces and guerrillas, during which 58 of the insurgents were allegedly killed. Afterwards, journalists at the local hospital could only confirm the deaths of eight civilians. Especially embarrassing for US occupiers is the fact that there are apparently no rules for the PMCs in Iraq -- not even for the use of firearms. Without legal basis, they claim for themselves the right to set up roadblocks, ask for identity cards, even to arrest and use firearms. "That is a very delicate question," a high-ranking, unnamed occupation officer recently stated. "Which rules apply to them? Are they civilians or soldiers? I don't know what they are or who they are, and I try to avoid them," a colleague of his said. Officially, the occupational administration has not given its view on the legal question of the PMCs despite persistent inquiries. As a former member of US Special Forces working privately today in Baghdad put it: "This is Iraq, and you don't have to account to anyone."
