Blackwater gets OK to resume escorts

baghdad -- The security company Blackwater USA was approved Friday to resume escorting American officials in Baghdad, just days after the fatal shooting of 11 Iraqis galvanized the Iraqi government over the company’s conduct and the immunity its employees enjoy from Iraqi law.

The decision by the U.S. Embassy came despite Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s insistence that the State Department sack the company and his government’s demand that Blackwater and other such security firms be stripped of the immunity granted them in 2004 by L. Paul Bremer III, the administrator of the former U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority.

“This morning, we resumed taking requests for movements. The idea was to have limited movements outside the Green Zone. Obviously this was a step taken in consultation with the Iraqi authorities,” said embassy spokeswoman Mirembe Nantongo.

A senior Iraqi lawmaker, Sami Askari, said officials would be informed of Blackwater’s whereabouts, but Nantongo denied that the embassy would be providing them precise details of their missions.

“This time they will be restricted; they will be required to inform the Iraqi government about their movements until the end of the investigation,” said Askari, an advisor to Maliki.

The embassy announced Tuesday that it had forbidden U.S. officials to travel outside the Green Zone, the fortress-like enclave harboring the Iraqi government and the diplomatic community, citing the increased threat of attacks after the incident involving Blackwater.

The U.S. and Iraqi governments have been in consultation since Sunday, when a Blackwater security detail killed 11 people in Nisoor Square in west Baghdad’s Mansour district.

A preliminary Iraqi government investigation, carried out by the Interior Ministry, found that the armed guards had fired on Iraqi civilians without provocation. In turn, Blackwater and the State Department have said the security detail had been fired upon.

Nonetheless, nearly a week into the dispute, which has seen an unprecedented stand by the Iraqi government over the conduct of private security firms, Iraqi officials have retreated after initially declaring that they would take away security contractors’ immunity.

Instead, the prime minister agreed Wednesday that a joint Iraqi-U.S. commission would review the status of security contractors and also receive the results of an Iraqi and U.S. military investigation.

The investigation of the incident Sunday has been complicated by the involvement of the embassy’s own diplomatic security agents, who work with and supervise Blackwater. The embassy’s security department has been accused by some diplomats of having failed to challenge Blackwater over questionable episodes.

Peter W. Singer, a Brookings Institution expert on security contractors, was skeptical about whether the joint commission would change the rules and hold Blackwater accountable for any misconduct in Iraq.

“Based on the past track record, I don’t have a lot of evidence to base that hope on, but maybe this [event] changes the game,” Singer said.

Singer criticized the embassy’s insistence on conducting its own investigation, parallel to the Iraqi government’s inquiry.

“It is utter silliness. All it does is guarantee we will have two versions of the story, and further the disconnect and sense of double standards,” he said.

‘Complete review’

In Washington, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday that she had ordered a “full and complete review” of procedures for providing security to U.S. diplomats. Rice said she issued “directives” to State Department officials to study all facets of security practices.

The review will examine the role and function of private security guards and their “rules of engagement,” department spokesman Sean McCormack said later at a briefing.

While announcing the review, Rice also made a point of defending Blackwater personnel.

“We have needed and received the protection of Blackwater for a number of years now, and they have lost their own people in protecting our own people -- and that needs to be said -- in extremely dangerous circumstances,” she said.

She also noted that she had called Maliki to express her regret at the loss of life in the Sunday incident.

Singer said contractors such as Blackwater have damaged the U.S.-led effort to woo Iraqis away from Sunni and Shiite Muslim extremists.

“It has hindered rather than helped us in the counterinsurgency,” he said.

The animosity was evident at Friday prayers in the Shiite shrine city of Najaf, where a senior cleric railed against Blackwater and warned Washington that apologies like that made by Rice were not enough.

“It is important that these companies be regulated by the law, and therefore an apology from Rice is not enough. Thousands of Iraqi children, women and elderly have been killed -- as the Americans put it -- by accident,” cleric Sadruddin Qubanchi said.

Civilian contractors also doubted that any justice would be done.

“We think it’s hard to give Blackwater the benefit of the doubt,” one contractor said on condition of anonymity. “Even among their peer group, we are also tired of having guns pulled on us and being generally abused.”

Against the backdrop of the Blackwater controversy, military officials said Friday that there had been an increase in the number of Baghdad areas under the control of U.S. forces, but acknowledged that Iraqi troops were taking the lead in less than one-tenth of the city’s neighborhoods.

“The level of violence is way, way down,” Army Maj. Gen. Joseph Fil Jr., the divisional commander in charge of U.S.-led forces in Baghdad, said during a teleconference with Pentagon reporters. “And perhaps more significantly, the ability of the Iraqi security forces to control their own neighborhoods . . . is growing.”

The control phase

In Baghdad, U.S. troops move into neighborhoods, take control, and eventually turn them over to Iraqi units. Fil said 46% of neighborhoods were in what he termed the control phase, with the U.S. military leading a joint effort with Iraqi troops, up from 42% in June and 19% in April.

However, about 8% of neighborhoods are being “retained,” or held, by Iraqi forces, with U.S. forces in those areas taking a supervisory role, he said.

The pace of the turnover has been a subject of debate within the military.

Some skeptics of the strategy have said the U.S. is moving too slowly in handing responsibility to the Iraqis. But military officials in Baghdad caution that moving faster could jeopardize security gains.

Fil said more neighborhoods could be turned over but that Iraqi forces were not yet adequate to handle the responsibility.

“The fundamental question: Are the Iraqi security forces sufficient to truly protect the city? I do not believe they are,” Fil said, noting that the Iraqi forces are being expanded.

Fil also complained that attacks by Shiite militias were continuing in some neighborhoods, despite a call to stand down by radical cleric and Shiite leader Muqtada Sadr.

In the southern port of Basra, Shiite followers of the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani canceled Friday prayers to protest the killing of six of the leader’s aides across southern Iraq since June.

Since British forces started withdrawing from bases inside the city this month, Basra has seen an increase in violence as various Shiite factions battle for influence. On Thursday, gunmen killed Sistani aide Sheik Amjad Janabi in the southern oil city, and a second Sistani representative was shot down in Diwaniya, another southern city.

Separately, a U.S. soldier died and another was wounded Thursday in a bomb blast in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad, the military said Friday, bringing to 3,795 the number of American troops killed in Iraq, according to icasualties.org.

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Times staff writers Julian E. Barnes in Washington, Raheem Salman, Said Rifai and Saif Hameed in Baghdad and special correspondent Saad Fakhrildeen in Najaf contributed to this report.