Has America gone too far with private security firms?

Al Madina, Saudi Arabia

Mercenaries Part of U.S. 'Plot'

to Destroy the Iraqi People …

"The main objective is the destruction of Iraqi rights … and when we talk of the destruction of rights, it doesn't stop at murder, instability, poverty and the need to flee the country. This also includes mutilating the identity of this people and changing their landmarks."

By Anas Zahid

Translated By James Jacobson

October 19, 2007

Saudi Arabia - Al Madina - Original Article (Arabic)

After the crimes committed against Iraqi citizens by the company “Blackwater,” and after the crime that followed when another private American security firm killed 2 Iraqi women, the Arab media began to take an interest in the issue of private security companies operating in Iraq.

Even before these crimes, the issue had been examined in several documentary films. But perhaps because the Arab media has been unaware of the issue, up to now it had gone largely unexamined within the Arab world.

According to one of the foreign documentaries, the private American security firms operating in Iraq use mercenary guards brought in from poor Asian countries, who are recruited by local agents that have been contracted in their countries of origin. The main reason for choosing or preferring recruits from these countries is their low standard of living, which allows the U.S. firms to keep the cost of services to their employees or mercenaries at the lowest possible level.

The business generates millions for the owners of these companies, without any regard for the human rights of those who work in them. Oftentimes these people don’t even find out about the nature or location of their work until after they arrive on Iraqi territory.

American democracy pays little attention to the lives of the many Iraqis that have fallen victim to the excesses of these companies, which in many instances are the result of the excesses of the American army itself, which relies on tactics similar to those of the Israeli enemy in occupied Palestine.

Before the Eid Al-Fitr [October 12 ], 15 Iraqi women and children were killed as a result of one of these American attacks. Just days before this latest American crime, one of the U.S. soldiers who was accused of murdering an Iraqi civilian over two years ago was acquitted, and another soldier who was accused of abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib was released, after spending only about half his sentence in jail, and only Allah knows how and where the other American soldiers who have violated the rights of hundreds of Iraqis have served their sentences.

It appears, however, that the Iraqi government appointed by Washington, apart from its involvement in massive corruption cases, isn't even slightly interested in the lives of these innocent Iraqi dead, and even Western news reports have raised questions about the relationship of some ministers to extremist Shiite militias and the relationship of some Iraqi lawmakers to al-Qaeda.

The conspiracy is enormous and it has many facets, but the main objective is the destruction of Iraqi rights … and when we talk of the destruction of rights, it doesn't stop at murder, instability, poverty and the need to flee the country. This also includes denying and mutilating the identity of this people and changing their landmarks, which began with the theft of Iraqi antiquities just days after the occupation began.

Indeed, we are confronting a very carefully laid out plan.

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