IT has taken eight years but at last, sentences have been handed down to the four Blackwater guards who slew 14 Iraqi civilians in Nisoor Square in 2007. One of them, Nicholas Slatten, found guilty of murder, was given life. The other three, convicted on the lesser charge of manslaughter, were each given 30 years. Many Iraqis will feel that all four ought to have been convicted of cold-blooded murder and been sentenced to death. As one relative asked, what was the difference between these criminals and terrorists? And therein lies a key issue, which explains why from the start, there was a quiet reluctance, particularly from the US military and intelligence establishment, to have these men prosecuted. The difference from the point of view of the US forces in Iraq was that private security firms such as Blackwater were an extension of the military. It was clear in the minds of top US commanders that the role of the private security firms was to free up the military from day-to-day guard duties to allow them to get on with combat operations. On paper, having what was effectively a second, albeit nominally civilian force in the country seemed to make sense. In reality is was a recipe for disaster, of which the Nisoor Square savagery was only to most high profile example. There were dozens of civilians contractors vying for contracts to provide everything from close personal protection to guarding all kinds of offices, plants and even military bases. The big deals went to the big companies like Blackwater but the small fry, sometimes run and staffed by military wannabes with no genuine army background, grappled for lucrative contracts, on occasion taking their bitter disputes to the US courts. Real US soldiers regarded the private armies with contempt, not least because they were drawing fabulous salaries compared with standard US army pay. Middle-ranking officers were infuriated that while the private armies were often plugged into the military communications network, they generally refused to be part of any chain of command. Arrogant, responsible to no one, the civilian security contractors were a catastrophe waiting to happen. Their presence added to the instability into which the Bush/Blair invasion had plunged Iraq. They were yet another example of the lack of foresight that characterized the whole occupation. There was much initial talk about winning Iraqi “hearts and minds”. Yet that thinking went no further than the fatuous assumption that, freed of the Saddam Hussein dictatorship, Iraqis would welcome their invaders warmly and quickly conform to entirely alien US democratic principles. Yet from the get-go the Americans created the opposition that would tear Iraq apart by firing all the Iraqi police and army. At a stroke the law of the jungle was created with the US military struggling to maintain order in a country whose people and tensions it barely understood. This terrible miscalculation generated the further disaster of calling in the private security contractors to help. These people had no interest whatsoever in the rebuilding of Iraq. They were there purely for the big money. Ordinary Iraqis represented nothing to them, except a potential threat. In such circumstances the slaughter in Nisoor Square became almost inevitable. The men who pulled the triggers that day have now paid the price. But their corporate bosses and the politicians who deployed them, still walk free.
