Battling back against the 'human jackals'

THEY were a fearsome presence in the bar of Baghdad’s Andalous Hotel - gruff Southern accents, wraparound shades, and guns as permanent as the tattoos on their bulging biceps. But last Wednesday, within hours of the horrific murders of four of their colleagues in the Iraqi town of Fallujah, the shadowy posse of private US bodyguards were nowhere to be seen.

Despite the arsenal of weapons they kept in their rooms, despite the bullet-proof vests and the "ready for anything" bravado, the orders from head office were clear: leave the hotel immediately and continue operations from the safety of Green Zone, the formidably-defended Coalition HQ in the centre of the city.

The feeling that not even heavily-guarded hotels are now secure enough for their personnel is a sign of just how uncomfortable some US security firms are after the deaths of their countrymen on the streets of Fallujah last Wednesday. Most are no strangers to violence, having served as special forces soldiers in countries such as Afghanistan, Bosnia, and other places they usually politely decline to name. Yet as the men working for US company Blackwater Security learned the hard way, working without a uniform on can be even more dangerous. As mercenaries in the world’s dirtier conflicts have known for centuries, captured guns-for-hire cannot even expect the right to a dignified burial.

Last night, four days after the men’s burned and dismembered bodies were strung up on a bridge, American military might was poised to bring Fallujah’s brief spell as a no-go area to an end. Up to 4,000 locally-based US Marines, whose original mission was to woo locals with a $500m humanitarian aid budget, were preparing to roll in with full battle armour on. Even Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, the normally impassive Coalition spokesman in Baghdad, seemed to be relishing the prospect. Declaring Fallujah "the town that just doesn’t get it", he vowed to "hunt down the people responsible for this bestial act". He added: "It will be at a time and a place of our choosing. It will be methodical, it will be precise and it will be overwhelming."

Paul Bremer, Iraq’s mild-mannered civilian governor, sounded even angrier. Yet his description of the killers as "human jackals" - language more familiar to his old adversary Saddam Hussein - was not surprising. As he spoke, he was surrounded by bodyguards from Blackwater Security who provide his own round-the-clock protection. But for many Iraqis, including some who welcomed the Coalition forces, condemnation of the incident stretched only to the way the bodies were treated. Unlike the Coalition forces, who with their uniforms, name badges and set missions are at least a known quantity, the shadowy, secretive manner of many of the private security staff in Iraq has made them a particular target of resentment.

Most locals, eyeing the security men’s civilian clothes, four-wheel-drives, and state-of-the-art weaponry, automatically label them ‘CIA’, despite the fact that the vast majority do nothing more than look after businessmen. Yet their refusal to explain their missions to anybody - even fellow Westerners are often given a polite brush-off - has does little to endear them to a population already gritting its teeth under occupation.

"Having soldiers here is one thing - you know who they are, why they’re here, and if you talk to them politely they’ll usually talk back," said Amir al Nasiri, a taxi driver. "But these guys - they just drive around with their wraparound shades, sleeveless T-shirts and big guns thinking they’re Rambo and acting like they own the place. I don’t mind the Americans being here, but I wish they hadn’t invited their friends."

In what remains effectively a lawless country, most of the private security contractors are indeed a law unto themselves. While respectable companies only employ staff with clean records, ex-Serbian and Croatian paramilitaries, apartheid-era South African policemen, and Chilean soldiers from Pinochet’s days have all come through Iraq’s still unpoliced borders to seek work. A lack of monitoring means misdemeanours go largely unreported, but already many British security firms, who traditionally enjoy the best reputation, have expressed worries about some of their colleagues’ waywardness.

"For some people it’s just a chance to go around with a loaded gun in a way they couldn’t back home," said one. "I once heard guys actually laughing about how they shot out the tyres of an Iraqi bus after it cut them up on the road - it was appalling. Others mean no harm but just don’t have the right attitude - they drive aggressively on the roads, pissing people off, and refuse to stop at Iraqi police checkpoints. How are those policemen supposed to know they’re not suicide bombers?"

It is not perhaps surprising then, that the Blackwater team’s deaths met with such frenzied jubilation. Details of the incident are sketchy - the company has declined to give any details - but it appears they were providing tail-end protection for a food convoy driving through Fallujah.

As their two four-wheel-drive cars roamed down the dirty, litter-strewn dual carriageway that passes for the city’s main drag, it would have been the usual drill for high risk areas: machine pistols at the ready, bulletproof jackets on, and absolutely no stopping, even if you knock a child off his bike.

Then, glancing into his rear-view mirror, the driver of the front car would have seen what the industry nicknames an "oh, f*** situation", as the vehicle behind him - always the most vulnerable - exploded into a fireball from a grenade strike. As the front car U-turned, for what they probably knew would be a doomed rescue bid, they were hit by a hail of gunfire on all sides. Then, with the attackers themselves gone, groups of teenagers set the cars alight before laying waste to the occupants’ dead bodies.

A blackened arm was tied to a brick and strung on a telephone pole, while in full view of TV cameras, two bodies were hung from a metal pontoon bridge over the Euphrates and left dangling over a crowd of celebrating Iraqis. Despite the worldwide shock the images produced, and the ominous comparisons with the ill-fated US mission in Somalia, this was not the first time that the spilling of foreign blood has fuelled a carnival atmosphere. Four months ago, locals in the normally peaceful region of Hillah danced on the bodies of eight murdered Spanish intelligence officers.

Yet in Fallujah, it was merely the most savage moment in a year-long campaign of violence that has defied all American efforts to stop it, either by carrot or by stick. US Army commanders blame the city’s strong links to the old regime: its hundreds of mosques, which spike an otherwise drab, low-rise skyline, follow Saddam’s Sunni Muslim faith, and under his patronage its population went from scraping a living as salt sellers to plum jobs in the military and government.

The same US Army commanders are less keen, however, to recall the incident in Fallujah last April, when nervous US troops shot dead nearly 20 protesters after coming under fire during a demonstration outside one of their bases. In a country that still runs on tribal codes of honour and revenge, it obliged not hundreds, but tens of thousands of locals to repay the debt in kind.

Belatedly, local US commanders made "blood money" compensation payments to the families of the bereaved, but by then the battle lines for a turf war that has claimed scores of lives on either side had already been indelibly drawn. "Many think the whole insurgency against the Americans stemmed from that one incident," said Majid Nassi, a Fallujan who recently moved to Baghdad to escape the trouble. "The Muqawama [resistance fighters] saw their chance, went to Fallujah, and stirred it up from there. The Americans will never win it back now."

As the US Army considers its response, the private security companies are pondering theirs. Few are jumping on flights home - other killings in the past few months alone saw the fainthearts leave, and $1,000 a day salaries are not given up lightly. But some US companies are threatening to hit back with increased firepower - much to the concern of their more softly-softly British counterparts. American Malcolm Nance, 42, a private security consultant working with charities and businessmen in Iraq, said: "I think we will see companies begin to carry grenades and use much heavier weaponry. We are facing an enemy that uses grenades, rockets and heavy machine guns: people here feel they need the equivalent firepower. The Coalition doesn’t allow security companies to use such weapons, but in a country like Iraq they’re easy to buy."

Ex-Welsh Guardsman Harry Legge-Bourke, of British security company Olive, which lost two members of staff in Mosul last week, is alarmed at the prospect. "It is useless from a tactical point of view - a grenade is no use in an open space - and it sends out completely the wrong message. What will happen if somebody uses one if there’s trouble in a crowd and innocent people get hurt? Not only is it not permitted by Coalition policy, it would totally destroy any hearts-and-minds efforts. The best tactics are not more firepower, but good intelligence and careful planning to avoid things happening in the first place."

The key question for the Coalition has been whether the Fallujah killings will spark a "Mogadishu moment" - a point of sudden revulsion when Americans lose their heart for a war, as happened in Somalia in 1993, when a mob dragged the body of an American soldier through the streets of Mogadishu.

President Bush and his aides insisted last week that the US would not back away, and White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the killings were "designed to intimidate and roll back the democratic progress and the freedom for the Iraqi people that we are achieving".

"The best way to honour those who have lost their lives is to continue to show resolve in the face of these cowardly, hateful acts," McClellan said. Bush did not speak about the attacks on the day they took place, and instead made his standard assertion that because he confronted Saddam Hussein, "an example of democracy is rising at the very heart of the Middle East... The world is more free and… America is more secure.

"We still face thugs and terrorists in Iraq who would rather go on killing the innocent than accept the advance of liberty. This collection of killers is trying to shake our will. America will never be intimidated by thugs and assassins."

However, retired Marine General Anthony C Zinni, a critic of the Iraq war and former head of the US Central Command who was Bush’s special envoy to the Middle East, said the violence is likely to "scare off international participation", making it more difficult for the White House to attract foreign investment and military resources from other countries. "We’re going to find ourselves increasingly alone in this," Zinni said.

He said the Fallujah attacks will probably lead to a crackdown by occupiers that will result in more anti-American images in the Arab media. The graphic footage threatened to make the bloodshed more vivid for voters in the US. Images of the bodies were instantly available on the internet, and more sanitised footage was shown on television. The graphic nature of the images prompted anchormen on ABC, NBC and CBS to warn viewers that the pictures were disturbing. CBS’s Dan Rather introduced the "gruesome" report by emphasising that it was "not for children’s eyes".

Asked at a briefing whether the deaths threatened to become a "Mogadishu moment," McClellan was robust. "Let me make it very clear that the Iraqi people are starting to realise freedom and democracy," McClellan replied. "We will continue to work with the Iraqi people and stay the course."

The savagery of last week’s incident has cast yet another shadow across the coalition’s attempts to bring peace and reform to Iraq. At present only one thing seems certain: the only armed Westerners likely to enter Fallujah in the near future will be the massed ranks of the US Marines. Whether their former colleagues now working in private security ever drive down its dual carriageway again remains to be seen.

How the fallujah atrocity unfolded

AROUND 10am (0700 GMT) three four-wheel-drive vehicles each carrying two employees of the US firm Blackwater Security Consulting entered Fallujah, a bastion of fierce opposition to the US-led occupation of Iraq.

Sources close to security firms in Baghdad said the three sport-utility vehicles (SUVs) were escorting a truck ferrying food supplies for the US military airbase in nearby Habbaniya.

When they entered the town, the vehicles were spotted by insurgents, who had their faces hidden by scarves and were armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles.

The insurgents opened fire on two of the SUVs.

According to several witnesses, the third vehicle managed to escape when the shooting started.

Two of the vehicles were riddled with bullets. One unsuccessfully tried to make a U-turn.

The first vehicle burst into flames and its two passengers burned inside. One passenger in the second SUV was shot dead, while the second tried to escape but was gunned down.

"The man then fell to the ground and workers who were nearby grabbed their shovels and iron bars to finish him off," one witness said.

Gunmen then fired into the air, urging to people to return home and traders to close their shops.

"Groups of young people aged between eight and 30 vented their rage on the charred bodies of the Americans. They dragged the bodies out of the burnt-out car and hacked them to pieces, yanking off the legs and beating the bodies," the witnesses said.

At 2pm, what remained of the charred bodies after they were dragged from the cars were mutilated and strung from a bridge, according to a photographer working for AFP. Iraqi police who were stationed near the bridge disappeared.

Soon afterwards, some young people took the bodies down from the bridge, placed them on a wooden cart to parade them through the town, shouting "This is a lesson for the occupier."

Later one body was seen headless, and a hand and a leg were strung from an electric pole in the main street.

Some residents shouted, "Down with the occupation, down with America" and "Long live Islam".

One man at the scene, his face hidden by a scarf, vowed that "Fallujah will be the cemetery of the Americans".

Another witness said Fallujah residents finally took away the two burned out four-wheel-drive vehicles to an unknown destination.

He said the bodies, or what remained of them, were "cut up into pieces, with parts thrown into the river or to the dogs".