Blackwater kicked out but not forgotten

(Photo: Private security groups say Iraqi Police and Army have treated them with more disdain at checkpoints since the 2007 Blackwater incident.)

They are perhaps the most hated Americans in Iraq.

Blackwater private security has long come to both represent the worst of American wanton destruction, and immunity to Iraqi law.

Most of the anger stems from the Blackwater guards accused in the 2007 shooting deaths of 17 Iraqis in Baghdad's Nisour Square. A U.S. judge recently dismissed criminal charges against five of the guards based on testimonies of the incident that were given under immunity.

Scott Horton, an international legal expert, theorized the State Dept. deliberately sabotaged its own investigation by gathering the shooters statements under immunity and then allowing it to be used as testimony in criminal charges against them. The idea being, none of the powers in the Justice Dept. wanted these guys tried in U.S. courts.

Iraqis are furious with this whole show, obviously. Even after VP Biden personally flew here to vow to the Iraqi government that U.S. courts will appeal the decision, it all smells of stalling. And the Maliki administration, never above bringing whatever impassioned issue it can into the national elections, has ordered all private security guards who formerly worked with Blackwater to leave the country or face arrest, the Wash Post reported today.

"It applies to about 250 security contractors who worked for Blackwater in Iraq at the time of the incident," Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani told the Associated Press.

But there are no former Blackwater left in Iraq, say private security who guard the same State Dept. clients as Blackwater used to. They say the security world in Iraq knew this order was coming months ago, and even the Blackwater helicopter teams have been cleared out by now.

(Photo: Iraqi Police in Ramadi. Police are known to give private security a hard time at checkpoints. A few months ago, a stand off at one of the entrances to the International Zone resulted in the capture of a security team and allegations of Iraqi forces beating them, before they were released.)

Back story of Nisour Square incident

The untold story is- the Blackwater team was actually leaving a USAID project compound headed towards the International Zone, on Sept. 16 2007 minutes before the shooting began.

I have lived on this compound on and off for a year. The private security company here is an American company, as the State Dept. requires, but the personnel are almost entirely South African and proud of it. They considered Blackwater a bunch of yahoos even before the incident.

(Diagram of the Nisour shooting.)

As more than one of these guys have said, the day of the incident, the South Africans told the Blackwater team repeatedly that it wasn't a good time to travel off the compound. A bomb had just detonated by the gargantuan unfinished mosque across the street.

The story goes the Blackwater team brushed off the warnings and offers to stay put, and road out the compound gates towards Nisour Square, that this hubris sealed their fate- sinking the company's billion dollar contract in Iraq and senselessly killed 17 people, where it has been proven time and time again no shots were fired at them.

(I haven't been able to confirm this compound story with the official reports. Other security teams confirm it's true. Some official reports say the Blackwater team was headed from the Green Zone towards the compound, instead of away from it. The NYT confirmed the bombing by the Rahman mosque.)

Blackwater penance?
Meanwhile, journalist Jeremy Scahill interviewed the father of a 9-year old victim of the Blackwater shooting. The father- Mr. Kinani recalls opening the back door to his car after the shooting stopped, only to see his son's head slump over and watch his brain spill out onto the ground.

(Ali Kinani, age 9, killed in the Nisour Square shooting. See video.)

He also said the State Dept. offered him a $10,000 condolence payment, which he took, then donated $5,000 to a family of a U.S. soldier who'd been killed in Iraq. He said he always supported the U.S. Army's ouster of Saddam, and couldn't understand why Blackwater claimed his son may have been killed by a stray Army bullet.

A few years later a Blackwater country manager offered Mr. Kinani a $20,000 payment, and he refused to take it, saying all he wanted was a public apology from Blackwater's founder, Erik Prince, for the death of his son.

"We don't apologize," the country manager said. Mr. Kinani is currently suing Blackwater and the shooters involved in U.S. courts.