Baghdad Reviewing Security Contractors.

Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh on Sept. 18 said Baghdad was reviewing the status of all foreign and local security companies working in Iraq. Blackwater, an American contractor providing security to top US officials in Iraq, was banned from working by the Interior Ministry after a Sept. 16 shooting to death of 11 Iraqis in Baghdad's area of Mansour in an incident involving an American diplomatic convoy. Later Dabbagh said the ban on Blackwater was temporary. But on Sept. 21 US diplomats resumed travel outside the Green Zone in convoys escorted by Blackwater as the government allowed the American contractor to resume work on a limited scale.

The Christian Science Monitor on Sept. 20 quoted an Iraqi witness as saying on Sept. 16 he was driving towards Baghdad's al-Nusour Circle when he saw a US convoy pass by - two Humvees and five Chevrolet Suburbans. Then, he said, he heard a loud explosion in the direction the convoy was headed. Gunfire erupted. It did not seem to come from the Americans. The witness and other nearby Iraqis fled their cars and took cover behind cement barriers. They watched as two small helicopters - Blackwater USA's signature "little birds" - swarmed the area and began shooting at the street. The firefight infuriated the government and sparked a debate in Washington about the prevalence and privileges of private security companies in Iraq.

Blackwater, founded in 1997 and based in Moyock, N.C., is one of three firms employed by the State Department to provide protection for US missions in Iraq. The others are Dyncorp and Triple Canopy, both based in Washington's Virginia suburbs. Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell on Sept. 17 said the firm's contractors "acted lawfully and appropriately... Blackwater regrets any loss of life but this convoy was violently attacked by armed insurgents, not civilians, and our people did their job to defend human life".

Iraqis bristle at the presence of the private guards, who they claim are little more than mercenaries with no respect for Iraqi lives and less discipline than uniformed US troops. An Iraqi police officer who works in Karada, a mixed sectarian area in eastern Baghdad, says employees of the firms use overly aggressive tactics, crashing into cars and disobeying traffic laws and often rolling over gardens and hitting trees - and never stopping.

A 2004 regulation set by the US occupation officials who then ran Iraq granted US private security firms immunity from prosecution under Iraqi law. Technically, they could be prosecuted in US courts for misdeeds in Iraq under certain circumstances, according to a July Congressional Research Service (CRS) report. But CRS says their prosecution in US military courts could be subject to constitutional challenge. And there are limits - such as the difficulty of collecting evidence - on the ability of US civilian courts to handle such cases. CRS concludes: "It is possible that some contractors may remain outside the jurisdiction of US courts, civil or military, for improper conduct in Iraq".

This legal gray area stems in part from the fact that the Iraq conflict represents the first time the US has depended on private contractors to provide widespread security services in a hostile environment. There are about 20,000-30,000 such guards-for-hire in Iraq - a small fraction of the 182,000 civilian contractors employed by the US for everything from food service jobs to trash collection. Most of the security personnel work for the Pentagon or US intelligence agencies. About 1,400 are employed by the State Department. Of these, some 1,000 are Blackwater employees. About three-quarters of the Blackwater personnel are US citizens, with the rest Iraqis and third-country nationals.

In recent Senate testimony, US Ambassador Crocker said: "There is simply no way at all that the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security could ever have enough full-time personnel to staff the security function in Iraq. There is no alternative except through contracts". Blackwater was founded by former Navy SEAL Erik Prince. Other company leaders are also former military special op veterans. Blackwater describes itself as the most comprehensive such firm in the world. Its detractors say it may be the most aggressive, as well. Blackwater has a tough image in the Wild West atmosphere of today's Iraq.

Security personnel and others who work in Iraq all have stories to tell about Blackwater contractors, known for their devil-may-care attitude on the roads and aggressive tactics. The Monitor said: "Blackwater helicopters swirl through the skies like insects. Distinctive for their spherical glass canopies, and their persistent whine, they inadvertently announce that an official entourage is racing along, somewhere down below".

At least 15 Blackwater employees have been killed in Iraq. Family members of four Blackwater employees who were murdered in Falluja in March 2004, an incident which led to a full-scale US assault on that city, allege the company sent the men into dangerous territory without adequate back-up.

In testimony before the US Congress last February, family members of the men said: "Private military contractors like Blackwater operate outside the military's chain of command and can literally do whatever they please without any liability or accountability from the US government".

Blackwater has also been involved in some notorious incidents, including one last Christmas in which an inebriated off-duty employee shot and killed a guard working for Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi inside the Green Zone.

That the contractors are not subject to Iraqi control may well be an untenable situation. But it would be difficult to ban all of them outright, considering their importance to the US. "Nobody is going to be able to throw the contractors out of there", says David Isenberg of the British-American Security Information Council, adding: "They're the American Express card of the American military. The military doesn't leave home without them, because it can't".