Blackwater Ban "Inevitable"

[goodhue]

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/09/blackwater-back.html

Blackwater Ban "Inevitable"
By Noah Shachtman September 17, 2007 | 2:16:29 PM
Categories: Mercs

"It was inevitable," That's P.W. Singer's reaction to the Iraqi government " banning" military contractor Blackwater from the country. For years, no one has followed the rise of these privatized soldiers more closely than Singer, a Brookings Institution Senior Fellow and author of the ground-breaking Corporate Warriors. Companies like Blackwater have been roaming Iraq without oversight or management for years. Of course the Iraqi government was going to lose patience. Here is Singer’s take:

Details are still fuzzy on the incident that lead the Iraqi government to act against Blackwater. But it may be almost irrelevant to the results. Initial reports from the U.S. embassy are that a Blackwater USA convoy that was guarding State Department employees came under fire in the Mansour district in Baghdad. A vehicle was disabled and a lengthy gun battle broke out. Witnesses are reporting that it lasted at least 20 minutes. The Iraqi Interior Ministry is reporting that 8 Iraqi civilians were killed and 13 wounded in the crossfire. There will likely be lots of claims back and forth about whether the shootings were justified or not, whether who was killed were primarily insurgents or civilians, etc. and likely everyone will have their own spin. It will be interesting to see whether any video finds its way out.

The only thing we do know is that the Iraqi Government is not happy it all, with the Iraqi Prime Minister (who is Shia, so no pre-disposed to covering up for a Sunni attack) blaming the killings on the company’s employees and describing it as a “crime.” The Iraqi Interior Ministry says it is pulling the license of the company to operate in Iraq and will try to prosecute any foreign contractors found to have used excessive force in the Sunday shooting.

Still, even before all the details come to light, a few things are clear:

* * *

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/09/blackwater-back.html

[goodhue]

1. 1) It was inevitable.

1) It was inevitable. Private military contractors have been involve din all sorts of questionable incidents, since the very start of the Iraq enterprise. U.S. military officers frequently expressed their frustrations with sharing the battlefield with such private forces operating under their own rules and agendas, and worry about the consequences for their own operations. For example, Brigadier General Karl Horst, deputy commander of the US 3rd Infantry Division (responsible for Baghdad area) put it tellingly two years back, “These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff. There’s no authority over them, so you can’t come down on them hard when they escalate force. They shoot people, and someone else has to deal with the aftermath.”

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/09/blackwater-back.html

[goodhue]

2. 2) Pay attention to the politics.

2) Pay attention to the politics. The underlying politics to this are important to understand. Private contractors are a visible and especially disliked part of the US presence in Iraq. So a good way for Iraqi government officials, who are often depicted as stooges of the US, to try to burnish their nationalist credentials is to go after the contractors. They can look like it is standing up to the big bad outsiders, but not do so against US troops. As AFP noted, “Monday's action against Blackwater was likely to give the unpopular government a boost, given the contractors' widespread unpopularity.”

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/09/blackwater-back.html

[goodhue]

3. 3) That it was Blackwater is unsurprising.

3) That it was Blackwater is unsurprising. As illustrated by the examples listed above, Blackwater is not the only company working in Iraq. Indeed, the L.A. Times recently reported that there may be over 160,000 private contractors working in Iraq, as many as the overall number of US forces even after the “surge.” However, Blackwater has been one of the most visible, for an industry that typically tries to avoid the limelight. So, if an example was going to be made, it was a likelier target than say, for example, an unknown British or Bulgarian company.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/09/blackwater-back.html

[goodhue]

4. 4) This is what happens when government fails to act

4) This is what happens when government fails to act. The problems with the absence of oversight, management, doctrine, and even law and order when it comes to private military contractors have been known for a while. Heck, I wrote a book about it back in 2003, before the Iraq invasion. While the industry has boomed, vacuum of policy and strategy has continued for years. In June 2006, fore example, the Government Accountability Office reported that “private security providers continue to enter the battle space without coordinating with the U.S. military, putting both the military and security providers at a greater risk for injury.”

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/09/blackwater-back.html

[Kagemusha]

5. What makes you think Blackwater's going to really be banned?

What, the sovereign Iraqi government is going to make them? When they're working directly for the State Department? Who'll save their butts from the insurgents then?

And yes, there are real insurgents who do know how to fire real bullets at American diplomats, too.

[goodhue]

6. Are you asking me, or P.W. Singer?

P.W. Singer's take is explained pretty thoroughly . . .

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/09/blackwater-back.html

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/09/blackwater-back.html

[Kagemusha]

8. Either one of you will do. This is wishful thinking.

I understand it's inevitable that the Iraqi government would TRY to ban Blackwater.

The Iraqi government SUCCEEDING is another matter, and for reasons better explained by Larry Johnson, succeeding is not very likely. (Edit: Proper blog link: http://noquarterusa.net/blog/

[goodhue]

9. You can contact Mr. Singer at the Brookings Institute . . .

It's not my thinking here but rather his.
http://www.pwsinger.com/contact.html

If you were to read his piece you will see that he is not necessarily predicting Blackwater's departure . . .

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/09/blackwater-back.html

So, in the short term following such a market failure, we will likely have to either 1) ignore the Iraqis’ wishes and just keep on using Blackwater contractors as before, 2) find another company to step in and quick-fill take on these roles in lieu of the firm, or 3) negotiate with the Iraqis to find terms under which the firm might continue to carry out the operation (such as promising a joint investigation, payments to civilians etc.). Obviously, none of these is a great solution in the short term and none solve the long-term problems. But those are the terrible cards we have in our hands right now. But again, we can’t blame anyone else for having such bad cards when it comes to military outsourcing. We dealt these cards to ourselves.

[Kagemusha]

10. Well then Mr. Singer is engaged in wishful thinking.

I'm not important enough to warrant his attention for a microsecond, so I won't be contacting him, but he's over-estimating the importance of the Iraqi government's wishes. I do not confuse what say a sovereign government should have with the say that this government has in reality. The two are not remotely identical.

[goodhue]

11. I think he was merely saying the "ban" which occurred today was inevitable

Nothing in his article says otherwise. Did you read it?

[Kagemusha]

12. The parts you quoted said and implied more.

I'm not going to play the fallacy by authority game with you, sorry. If I'm wrong that this is not and will not be a ban, but an attempt to ban that will soon fail, the evidence will be in the news tickers.

[soothsayer]

7. Iraqi gov just needs to lead a couple of 'em to the gallows and the rest will be more careful

(not the amerikun ones of course, but the foreign mercs---say the chilean deathsquad guys or whatnot)