Arab Oil States May Privatise Their Defence Systems; Improve On The US Experience In Iraq.

KUWAIT - The defence ministry here is sounding out private security companies in the West on the possibility of hiring their professional soldiers. The ministry will take a limited number of soldiers from each firm to test the system. Most of the companies being approached have fielded private armies in Iraq, working as security guards for US and other foreign companies that have won lucrative reconstruction contracts from the American authorities.

Qatar, which aims to become the world's biggest exporter of LNG and GTLs by 2015, may become one of the main customers of such security companies. The UAE may resort to private armies as well. Even Saudi Arabia may require private armies, as some of the US security firms employ former Special Operations Forces, Green Berets, Delta commandos, etc.

The US became a trend-setter for the rich Arab Gulf states after its armed forces invaded Iraq in 2003. The US occupation authorities have outsourced many of the private security companies, not only for bodyguards but also for the military's food and laundry services. However, some these people are said to have been involved in atrocities (see overleaf).

The US started outsourcing catering and laundry services from private companies in the 1990s. Now it outsources the actual fighting. That is what the Pentagon is perilously close to doing in Iraq. The grisly deaths of four American security contractors in Falluja on March 31 underscored America's reliance on hired guns. After the 130,000 American troops, the nearly 20,000 people employed by private security firms now form the second-largest contingent - surpassing the British - in the "coalition of the willing".

Private armies have become quite expensive, however. A private guard's services in Iraq now cost as much as $1,500 per day. Some of the more experienced guards, mainly former commandos in the US and British armies, insist on an annual contract in Iraq; they pay an important part of the contact's value as a life and health insurance premium. Most such contractors have named their dependents as beneficiaries.

As an article in the International Herald Tribune (IHT) put it recently, the benign term "security guard" being used in Iraq does not convey the true role of these armed men. They are hardly sitting behind desks and signing visitors into office buildings, and not all of them are doing what would be more appropriate tasks, like guarding oil wells. Hired guns are charged with the security of the occupation authority's headquarters in Baghdad, and of Paul Bremer 3rd, the chief of the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA).

The American armed forces and civilian administrators in the CPA are not the only ones resorting to such mercenaries. After Bremer dissolved Saddam's 400,000-strong armed forces in May 2003, many of these have become mercenaries contracted by various Iraqi political or religious parties. The Shiite mercenaries are working mostly for Shiite religious figures. The professional Sunni soldiers are working for various Sunni religious figures or parties in Iraq's Sunni Triangle.

This triangle has become the most lethal part of Iraq, where American soldiers are concerned, with Falluja being the main battle zone. A city of about 300,000 people, mostly Sunni but partly Shiite, Falluja has become known as "the Stalingrad of Iraq".

Contractors from Blackwater USA, the employer of the four Americans killed and mutilated in Falluja on March 31, last month fought a full-fledged battle with the Shiite militants in Najaf. They were even able to call in a company-owned helicopter for air cover. But contractors working for Western companies like Blackwater are far more expensive than Iraqi mercenaries. The latter are being paid between $50 and $500 per day per fighter, depending on the person's experience and motivation. For example, mercenaries working for Wahhabi groups within the Sunni Triangle, which includes Baghdad, can be paid as much as $1,000 per person; and he can get more as a reward for killing an American, or a European.

On the other hand, most Wahhabi volunteers having moved from Saudi Arabia to the Sunni Triangle are fighting almost free of charge. Many of them are even contributing their own money for the "cause" and are affiliated to Osama Bin Laden's Qaeda (see the Wahhabi background in Saudi Arabia and other parts of the Muslim world in the RIM survey of this week's Diplomat Package).

Called Jaysh Al Mahdi (the army of the hidden or missing Imam), this is a private force for the young Shiite theologian Muqtada Al-Sadr. His forces are said to be paid with money coming from Iran, through the Qom-based Ayatollah Haeri. Of Iranian origin, Haeri used to be an assistant to Muqtada's father, who was executed together with two of his sons in 1999 by Saddam Hussein's Baathist forces.

After that massacre Haeri fled to Iran and settled in Qom. But soon after the US-led forces completed their invasion of Iraq, with the toppling of Saddam's statue in the main square of Baghdad on April 9, 2003, Haeri was said to have issued a fatwa appointing Muqtada as his representative in Iraq. Reportedly, he has since been sending him money regularly. On April 11, 2003, the US-backed Shiite theologian Abdel Karim Al-Khoui (or Khou'i) was stabbed to death in front of Imam Ali's shrine in Najaf and his body was dragged to a point near Muqtada's house. Later an Iraqi judge issued a warrant to arrest Muqtada on the charge of involvement in the murder of Khoui, who was returned from London by American special forces.

Muqtada is the great grandson of Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Al Sadr, who led the first Shiite revolt against the British occupation forces in Iraq in 1920. Muqtada's father collaborated with Saddam's Baathist regime and, as a result, Saddam promoted him to the rank of Grand Ayatollah. But Saddam's regime turned against the ayatollah in 1999 as the latter had begun to encourage Shiite militancy.