The Paid (and Protected) Terrorists

Maraming nagdududa kung ang ganitong tipo't (Blackwater) pamamaraan na ang ginagamit sa pagpapatahimik ng mga kritiko at counter insurgency ng Malakanyang. Hindi rin tayo magtataka kung bakit ganoon ka sikreto't kasopistikado ang political killings na hanggang ngayo'y nangangapa sa dilim ang mga ahensya ng gubyerno (ex Commission on Human Rights-CHR). Kung ganito na ang klase ng labanan sa Pilipinas, walang kaduda-dudang hindi malalaglag sa top ten (top 10) ang Pilipinas sa talamak na extra-judicial killings sa mundo.
(Above photo shows Filipino armed personnel in An Numaniyah, Iraq www.ellentordesillas.com/.../2006/07/iraqjp.JPG)

Bukud sa GUN for HIRE, PRIVATE ARMIES (political clans), "secret marshall" at iba pang criminal syndicates na maaring may koneksyon, may sabwatan at gamitin ng ilang matataas na Generals sa AFP kontra kaaway sa pulitika, ang CAFGU-militia ang magbibigay dagok sa lumalalang HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION ng gubyernong Arroyo. Hindi rin tayo magtataka kung bakit nagpapatuloy ang kaduda-dudang pagpapasabog at pambobomba na kadalasa'y ibinibintang palagi sa Abu Sayaff at Jemaah Islamiya, mga tukuy raw na mga terorista ng bansa.

Papakumplika na ang sitwasyon ng mundo, hindi lang NAPOCOR, TRANSCO, MWSS, PAL at PETRON, pati counter insurgency ay pina-privitized na.

- Doy Cinco / IPD
Oct 8, 2007
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By Ghali Hassan

07 October, 2007
Countercurrents.org

On Sunday 16 September 2007, at least 28 innocent Iraqi civilians, including women and children, were murdered by Blackwater mercenary army. The cold-blooded massacre was an unprovoked violence designed to terrorise and strike fear among the Iraqi population living under murderous Occupation. (photo:Mercenaries: Privatizing War / dusteye.wordpress.com)

According to Iraqi police, survivors of the massacre and numerous witnesses, the Sunday attack at al-Nisoor Square was unprovoked and deliberate. It is just one of countless cold-blooded massacres of Iraqi civilians by U.S. forces and foreign mercenaries (“private security contractors”). These massacres were not isolated “incidents”, a euphemism used by the U.S. Government and Western media to describe the murder of innocent Iraqi civilians by U.S. forces and foreign mercenaries. These crimes are virtually an every day unprovoked occurrence, and have inflicted “significant casualties and property damage” on the Iraqi civilian population.

There are more foreign mercenaries than foreign soldiers. Their number range from 160,000 to 180,000, working in more than 180 mercenary firms. Some of the mercenary firms (e.g. Titan and CACI International) involved in torture, abuses and even murder of Iraqi prisoners and Iraqi detainees at U.S.-run prisons, including Abu Ghraib.
Of the mercenary firms, Blackwater is the largest of the U.S. State Department mercenary firms – the others are DynCorp and Triple Canopy -, with an additional contract worth $15 billion from the Pentagon. Blackwater is deeply embedded in the Bush Administration through its strong ties to the Republican Party and the Evangelical Christians. Blackwater mercenaries are America’s Brownshirts, and according to author Naomi Wolf; “most [Americans] don't know that Blackwater has a mandate to start operating in the U.S., and in fact they have already done” so in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans. (photo: www.commondreams.org)

In addition to foreign mercenaries, the U.S. Administration has created, armed and finance local militias to foment civil strife and divert public attention and the Resistance away from the Occupation. The U.S. administration encourages and uses the violence to destabilise not only Iraq, but also the entire region and justify U.S. military presence and the ongoing Occupation of Iraq.

According to a memorandum prepared by U.S. congressional House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Blackwater’s mercenaries have been involved in 195 acts of violence from 01 January 2005 through 12 September 2007 (citing Blackwater’s “incidents reports”). This is an average of 1.4 shooting per week. However, a former Blackwater mercenary who spent three years in Iraq, told NBC News, his 20-man team averaged “four or five” deliberate shootings a week, or several times the rate of 1.4 shootings a week reported by the company. The Memorandum noted that, in most cases (84 per cent), Blackwater mercenaries were found to have acted unprovoked and deliberately murdered Iraqi civilians.

Almost all Blackwater crimes against Iraqi civilians went unnoticed and most of the crimes were covered-up and forgotten. According to the House Committee memorandum: “The State Department's primary response was to ask Blackwater to make monetary payments [and] to put the ‘matter behind us’ rather than to insist upon accountability or to investigate Blackwater personnel for potential criminal liability”. Blackwater is also involved in writing-up the Sate Department’s initial report “investigating” the September 16th cold-blooded massacre of Iraqi civilians in Baghdad. The aim seemed to cover-up and conceals the murder of innocent Iraqi civilians by foreign mercenaries protecting Occupation officials.

The U.S. (Bush) Government pays Blackwater $1,222 per day for one Blackwater “Security Specialist”, which “amounts to $445,891 per contractor” per year. In addition, mercenaries use the latest and most lethal weapons. According to Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: the Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, foreign mercenaries in Iraq are even using “experimental ammunition” that U.S. forces are not allowed to us. The bullets which made of “blended metal” are designed to shatter on impact, creating “untreatable wounds” and completely destroying that section of the victim’s body. Foreign mercenaries are not subjected to any Iraqi laws, and immune from prosecution.

Immunity from prosecution for crimes committed in Iraq, including killing Iraqi civilians, is not coincident. The so-called Order 17, issued by U.S. Proconsul, Paul Bremer in June 2004 – as a reminder of Iraq’s fake sovereignty under murderous Occupation –, grants sweeping immunity to foreign mercenaries and outlaws working for the Occupation in Iraq. Order 17 is simply a licence to kill. With a U.S.-installed puppet government in Baghdad, the murderers of Iraqis civilians will remain unpunished and protected, unless Order 17 and the likes are abolished. The puppet government has acknowledged that “Iraqis do not understand how a foreigner could kill an Iraqi and return a free man to his own country”. What a shameful country?

In April 2004, Blackwater mercenaries were involved in indiscriminate shooting of peaceful Iraqi protesters in Najef. The crimes weren’t even reported. A video (America’s Private Army) on YouTube shows a Blackwater thug describing Iraqi civilians they are murdering as “fuckin' niggers”. In a 2005 video posted on GlobalResearch, British mercenaries were shown shooting at Iraqi civilians “for entertainment”. So far, no one has been brought to justice for killing Iraqi civilians, and all those who committed crimes against Iraqi civilians have been smuggled out of Iraq.

Furthermore, in March 2003, Iraqis killed four Blackwater mercenaries in Fallujah in retaliation for the killing of 18 Iraqi civilians, the U.S. army took revenge. In April 2004, the City of 300,000 people was besieged by U.S. marines and their collaborators. As a result of subsequent U.S. attacks lasted several months and a violent invasion in November, Fallujah was deliberately destroyed. More than 6,000 innocent civilians were murdered in cold blood by U.S. marines and collaborators. Today, the City, like many Iraqi cities and towns, remains a ghost town and most of its population are displaced refugees.

Iraqi civilians have become preys for “trigger happy” foreign mercenaries and U.S. troops. The murder of innocent Iraqi civilians has been normalised, and murder charges against U.S. soldiers and mercenaries accused of killing Iraqi civilians have been dropped in order to encourage recruitment of soldiers and foreign mercenaries. More than a million innocent Iraqi civilians, mostly women and children have been killed as a result of this illegitimate murderous Occupation and the 2003 illegal act of aggression perpetuated by war criminals aiming at dominating the world by force. Lets’ not forget that the war on Iraq is a war crime against humanity.

As I write these lines, U.S. occupying troops backed by aircraft attacked a town north of Baghdad at dawn on Friday (05 October 2007), killing at least 25 innocent civilians and injuring more than 28. On Thursday, the U.S. military admitted that it had killed five women and four children in a raid by fighter jets on a house in the small Iraqi village of Babahani. The Pentagon had initially reported the killing of “seven suspected insurgents” in the airstrike on the civilian neighbourhood. Two days earlier, U.S. helicopter gunships attacked a neighbourhood in Baghdad and killed at least seven civilians. The U.S. army in Iraq is in itself a foreign mercenary army differing only from other foreign mercenary armies in that it provides the soldiers with uniforms and use them to protect state power.

Finally, Blackwater’s mercenaries and other foreign mercenaries are part of U.S. military Occupation and therefore are accountable by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. If not; they should be prosecuted in U.S. courts. If Iraq is a “sovereign” state, then any one committed crimes in Iraq should be subject to prosecution in Iraqi courts.

Under the U.S. Federal Criminal Code, which also defines terrorism, the massacres of innocent Iraqi civilians by foreign (Blackwater) mercenaries in Iraq were deliberate acts of terrorism not different from other acts of terrorism.


Ghali Hassan is an independent writer living in Australia.