Blackwater Mercenaries : CPA Order 17

Blackwater is a well connected US security and personal protection company that has trained the world’s largest private military mercenary force. The Blackwater mercenaries have gained enormous power and influence during the Bush administration’s invasion and rule of Iraq.

Blackwater has received contracts from the US Department of State totaling over 600 million dollars to provide security to US VIPs in Iraq and has reportedly recently signed additional contracts to provide security worth several hundred additional million.

Founded in 1997 by a former US Navy Seal Blackwater has attracted top notch highly trained former military special forces, Navy Seals, and Delta Force types, as it pays very well for those with highly developed military combat skills. A Blackwater employee can make five to ten times the pay rate of US military personal for performing basically the same duties. As far as I know Blackwater has not lost a single VIP while that VIP was under their protection.

While this is an outstanding record in such a dangerous environment as Iraq and Afghanistan, Blackwater has been involved in several incidents in which they have been accused of being trigger happy and of using excessive force.

Blackwater executives point out that earning a high income by serving with Blackwater is not without risk. Blackwater has had over 30 of their security personal killed in Iraq, which indicates that at times they have little choice but to shoot it out against insurgent forces.

Blackwater has been in the Iraqi and world news lately for allegedly gunning down anywhere from 11 to 28 Iraqi civilians, the reports vary widely, in a shoot out last Sunday at a Baghdad intersection. The North Carolina-based company, which has been hired by the US State Department to guard American diplomatic staff in Iraq, as well as to provide security to visiting VIPs such as visiting Congressmen, has said its employees acted in self-defence.

The Iraqi government at first issued an order for Blackwater to suspend operations in Iraq stating the the company acted recklessly and fired upon Iraqi civilians without any provocation, but quickly backpedaled as the US Department of State quickly came to the aid of its client.

Blackwater is just one of many US backed organizations, including the US military, that have been placed out of reach of Iraqi law by Order 17.

One of Paul Bremer’s final acts in his role as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in occupied Baghdad was to sign a document that is a throwback to the age of colonialism. The fact that the US under the guise of promoting freedom and democracy could force such a one sided document down the Iraqi’s throat shows who was and who truly still is in control of a “free Iraq”.

The following is an except from an article at Tomdispatch which discusses Order 17 in some detail.

In Order 17 “all foreigners involved in the occupation project were to be granted “freedom of movement without delay throughout Iraq,” and neither their vessels, vehicles, nor aircraft were to be “subject to registration, licensing or inspection by the [Iraqi] Government.” Nor in traveling would foreign diplomat, soldier, consultant, or security guard, or any of their vehicles, vessels, or planes be subject to “dues, tolls, or charges, including landing and parking fees,” and so on. And don’t forget that on imports, including “controlled substances,” there were to be no customs fees (or inspections), taxes, or much of anything else; nor was there to be the slightest charge for the use of Iraqi “headquarters, camps, and other premises” occupied, nor for the use of electricity, water, or other utilities. And then, of course, there was that “International Zone,” now better known as the Green Zone, whose control was carefully placed in the hands of the Multinational Force or MNF (essentially, the Americans and their contractors) exactly as if it had been the international part of Shanghai, or Portuguese Macao, or British Hong Kong in the nineteenth century.

Promulgated on the eve of the “return of sovereignty,” Order 17 gave new meaning to the term “Free World.” It was, in essence, a get-out-of-jail-free card in perpetuity.”

You can read Order 17 in it entirety as a PDF document.

While it is a document full of legalese you will quickly understand that in Iraq the US gave itself and it’s contractors the absolute right to do what they want, when they want, take what they want, kill who they want, imprison whomever they want, and that is just the way it is in “free Iraq”.

And you wonder why so many Iraqis hate us? Read the document. How would you react to a foreign occupying power forcing such conditions upon you and your nation?

Order 17 sums up the US interest in Iraq. To take what we want as a colonial power. Is that an altitude and position that America should have in the 21st century? Read the document. What do you think? Is this a form of freedom and democracy that any people anywhere would embrace?

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