Alongside the 137,000 United States troops serving in Iraq there are tens of thousands of private security personnel performing ancillary military, escort and quasi-policing tasks for the US army and other agencies.
This week their role has been highlighted by the controversy over how 11 Iraqi civilians died last Sunday when employees of Blackwater, the best-known mercenary firm involved, opened fire on them. The Iraqi government withdrew a threat to suspend its licence amid a welter of confusion over their precise legal status.
Blackwater employs about 1,000 people in Iraq, mainly to protect US diplomatic staff at the Baghdad embassy. The firm has been paid an estimated $750 million in fees since 2004 through a murky and uncompetitive process of tendering. The same opacity applies to the 28 other foreign security contracting companies working in Iraq to protect embassies and reconstruction projects, guard diplomats and aid workers, escort supply convoys, conduct intelligence and even interrogate prisoners. In return for high fees and short contracts these firms are usually prepared to accept job insecurity and to forego the medical and social benefits available to the full-time military. Commanded by highly-paid former US or British officers, they have a much more lowly rank and file.
According to an ordinance passed by the US Coalition Provisional Authority under Paul Bremer in 2004 security contractors have complete immunity from prosecution under Iraqi law. Their activities also appear to be immune from US military law. Effectively, they are above the law, as became clear this week when the Iraqi government attempted to mount an inquiry into this incident. Nor is it clear what lines of command they operate under, or what the rules of engagement are when they open fire. They supply ancillary soldiering on the cheap, filling out the disastrously under-staffed US military occupation army with an unaccountable mercenary force. Conveniently, the casualties these security companies incur do not fill out the mounting number of military funerals and injuries which remind US voters of the war's human cost.
Some estimates put staffing of these ancillaries ahead of the current 167,000 US troops in Iraq, but a more realistic figure of 60,000 seems in order. Either way, Sunday's incident has put them in the media and political spotlight in Iraq, the US and internationally. This is as it should be. The Iraqi government is struggling to assert its authority and establish more effective military and bureaucratic structures and must gain legal control of these mercenary hybrids.