The question of mercenaries
By Patrick Kelley
Originally published 02:10 p.m., September 20, 2007
Updated 02:10 p.m., September 20, 2007
DOES THE government in Baghdad have the right to ban Blackwater USA, an American company, from doing business in Iraq? Blackwater is one of three private security companies that have contracts to protect employees of the U.S. State Department in Iraq.
On Sunday, a Blackwater-protected convoy was moving through a busy public square in Baghdad when a car bomb exploded. U.S. officials said the blast was followed by small-arms fire. Blackwater employees opened fire.
Reports from official Iraqi sources said that the security contractors killed 11 to 20 civilians. The next day, the Iraqi government accused Blackwater of using unnecessary force and banned the company from operating in the country. On Tuesday, the Iraqis began back-pedaling on the ban, indicating that it was only temporary, but saying it would review the status of all the foreign private security companies that operate in Iraq.
Blackwater and like companies are about as far as it is possible to be from the stereotypical image of rent-a-cops. They can field heavily armed teams of highly trained warriors. These companies are, in essence, mercenary armies. Blackwater sells not only the expertise of its employees — many of them former members of elite military forces — but also armored vehicles that offer better protection than the vehicles supplied to soldiers and Marines in Iraq.
Americans have had trouble with the idea of mercenary soldiers since the Revolutionary War, when the British hired Hessians to do some of their fighting in the colonies. The Americans hated the mercenaries, who fought not out of loyalty to the British crown, but merely for money.
The employees of Blackwater, Dyncorp, Triple Canopy and other private companies collect high salaries to risk their lives in a war zone, but they are not part of the U.S. government. Their loyalty must be to the contract, not to the Constitution or the rules of war.
These employees may be accomplished warriors and they may be sterling human beings — but they are not U.S. soldiers and they are not under military control and discipline. But their employment by government agencies makes them de facto representatives of the United States in Iraq and their conduct reflects on all Americans.
Does Iraq have the right to throw them out, if it wishes? If the government the United States created with such urgency in Baghdad is truly the government of a sovereign nation, there can be no question of that right.
A sovereign nation has the right to decide who can and cannot go about its countryside heavily armed.
If the Blackwater employees did shoot indiscriminately on Sunday, perhaps it is best if the Iraqi government goes ahead and imposes its ban.
peter (anonymous) says...
Patrick Kelly deserves be congratulated for posing a question that is breathtaking in its absurdity ("Doing business" is a nice, euphemistic touch, too - this makes it sound like Blackwater could be a company that sells Doobie Brothers CDs). I guess that this was just meant to be an attention getter, since the article that follows is reasonable, although the author neglects to mention that most eye-witness accounts reported in the international media indicate that the American mercenaries were not shot at. Just in case anybody still thinks the answer should not be "yes", let's rephrase the question with a few substitutions. Say there's a foreign embassy in downtown Emporia from "Country X". The hired guards standing at the front door can't speak English, and have shot and killed several civilians (after shouting warnings at them in their own language, of course). Does the government in Washington have a right to ban these guards from doing business in the USA?
September 20, 2007 at 4:56 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )