The savage attack on U.S. civilians in the city of Fallujah is a sign of the violence to come in the countdown to the June 30 turnover of sovereignty to Iraqis, security experts said yesterday.
“April, May and June will really separate the boys from the men,” said one U.S. contractor, a Vietnam veteran who has been in Iraq for several months.
“The violence is going to get worse,” he predicted, echoing numerous security firms’ cautions to their clients operating in Iraq.
The security companies, which are being asked to take on increased responsibility as the U.S. military scales back its presence in Iraq, moved quickly yesterday to reassess their procedures after the gruesome attack near Baghdad on Wednesday on four private security employees.
Strategies being considered included whether to begin using nondescript vehicles rather than highly visible four-wheel-drive sport-utility vehicles, whether to use armored vehicles instead of “soft-skinned” vehicles and whether to drive on the roads at all.
“Is the journey really necessary? Is there another way of conducting the task? These are things we literally look at on a daily basis,” said Alastair Morrison, a British Special Air Service veteran and head of the London-based Kroll Security International, which is working in Iraq.
The four killed in Fallujah were employees of Blackwater USA, which has a contract to escort food deliveries in Fallujah and elsewhere.
But a former senior intelligence officer involved in Iraq said employees of such companies have been used at times to pick up suspects for interrogation by the intelligence community.
“I do know that they go out and pick up this named person and bring him in for interrogation and people like Blackwater are used for that,” said the former officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Two guys per car. It had to be something like that.”
Normally, protective convoys have more than two heavily armed people per car, he said.
The former officer added that the intelligence community in Iraq has ongoing relationships with some companies, most of which hire highly trained former military and law-enforcement officers. “It’s not a freelance thing,” he said.
U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer has vowed to punish those involved in the Fallujah massacre. But the pledge is unlikely to reduce the number of incidents in what has become one of the most dangerous spots in the world to work.
“The graphic images of the unprovoked attack and subsequent heinous treatment of our friends exhibits the extraordinary conditions under which we voluntarily work,” Blackwater USA said in a statement yesterday.
Security experts, most of them with years of conflict experience under their belts, for weeks have been warning about an increase in violence against U.S. and U.S.-related targets in the next three months.
Reports of kidnapping, vehicle hijacking and coordinated assaults are on the rise, according to Centurion Risk Assessment Services.
Drive-by shootings and roadside bombs are killing and maiming people daily. SUVs are a favorite target, and attacks are becoming increasingly violent with the use of small arms, rocket-propelled grenades and homemade bombs, Centurion said in a recent report.
“The threat in Iraq is extremely high,” agreed Mr. Morrison, who was decorated for his role in the rescue of airline passengers held hostage in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1977.
“I’ve never been involved anywhere quite as bad as Iraq,” he said in a telephone interview from England.
With an estimated 30,000 civilian contractors spread around the country and more expected to arrive daily to protect U.S.-funded reconstruction projects, security of both workplace and personnel has become a booming business in Iraq.
But the longer people stay, the greater the danger that they become inured to the daily violence and become complacent, experts say.
“The minute you let your guard down, that’s when something can happen,” the Vietnam veteran said.
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