T. Christian Miller and The Los Angeles Times picks up on an issue that has been percolating for some time now: the 60 or so private security companies under US contract that storm down the roads and highways of Iraq with guns waving do so with little supervision and under even less legal oversight.
“Private security contractors have been involved in scores of shootings in Iraq, but none have been prosecuted despite findings in at least one fatal case that the men had not followed proper procedures,” begins the story.
And it continues:
The contractors function in a legal gray area. Under an order issued by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority that administered Iraq until June 2004, contractors suspected of wrongdoing are to be prosecuted in their home countries. The contractors have immunity from Iraqi courts and have so far not faced American prosecution, giving little recourse to Iraqis seeking justice for wrongful shootings.
“What was my innocent son’s crime?” asked Zahra Ridha, the mother of a 19-year-old shot and killed by security contractors in May. “Is this what we deserve?”
Others have struck the same troubling chord, notably Jonathan Finer of The Washington Post last September. His story begins with a July 14 shooting in Irbil, Iraq of Ali Ismael — an incident I was hounding with less success by telephone after seeing it first reported in a Kudish newspaper.
The story goes that Ismael, his older brother Bayez and their driver pulled into traffic behind a convoy of four Chevrolet Suburbans. The back door of the last vehicle swung open, the brothers said in interviews, and a man wearing sunglasses and a tan flak jacket leaned out and leveled his rifle.
“I thought he was just trying to scare us, like they usually do, to keep us back. But then he fired,” said Ismael, 20. His scalp was still marked by a bald patch and four-inch purple scar from a bullet that grazed his head and left him bleeding in the back seat of his Toyota Land Cruiser.
Irbil police said they believed the convoy was operated by an American security contractor stationed nearby, but a US investigation decided that no American contractors werer involved — despite complaints to the contrary by the Ismaels, other witnesses, and local politicians. The city’s top security official termed the investigation a coverup.
Recent shootings of Iraqi civilians, allegedly involving the legion of U.S., British and other foreign security contractors operating in the country, are drawing increasing concern from Iraqi officials and U.S. commanders who say they undermine relations between foreign military forces and Iraqi civilians.
On thing both Finer and Miller overlook, which just smudges the issue of using private contractors on the battlefield is that there are reports that insurgents sometimes dress and act like private security contractors. With no uniform or color of flag, how the hell do you tell them apart?
