Sidney Blumenthal: How a little-known rule let loose the dogs of war

Mercenaries, murder and mayhem: How a little-known rule promulgated by the Bush administration in Iraq let loose the dogs of war
by Sidney Blumenthal


On June 27 2004, the day before the United States was to grant sovereignty to a new Iraqi government and disband the coalition provisional authority, Paul Bremer, the US proconsul, issued a stunning new order. One of the final acts of the CPA, Order 17, declared that foreign contractors within Iraq, including private military firms, would not be subject to any Iraqi laws - "all International Consultants shall be immune from Iraqi legal process," it read. "Congratulations to the new Iraq!" Bremer said moments before flying out. His memoir, My Year in Iraq, neglects to mention Order 17.

The author of Order 17 was a CPA official named Lawrence Peter, who oversaw the Iraqi ministry of interior. As soon as the CPA was dissolved, the private security company association of Iraq hired Peter to act as its liaison and lobbyist there. The new Iraq included a revolving door.

Thus, in the process of granting Iraq sovereignty, the Bush administration eviscerated it. Order 17's grant of immunity to contractors guaranteed that more than half of the foreign presence on the ground - for US-paid contractors outnumber US military personnel - would operate for all intents and purposes beyond the law. Order 17 also undercut the authority of the US military, frustrating command and control of the battlefield and upsetting sensitive counterinsurgency strategies. Order 17 meant that the monopoly of violence was fractured and outsourced to those not subject to the law. By unilateral fiat Order 17 uniquely created a red zone of impunity covering the entire country.

A radical break with US policy, such an order had never been promulgated before. Order 17 should not be confused with a status of force agreement negotiated with sovereign nations such as South Korea. Those agreements are subject to complex bargaining and mutual assurance. Nor are contractors subject to the uniform code of military justice because, after all, they are not in the US military. Nor has the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act of 2000 been brought to bear on contractors in Iraq. That act applies only to those working for the department of defence and is rarely used, if at all. The contracts for private military firms have been funnelled through the state department, thereby exempting them from the MEJA. (The only case brought under the MEJA against a contractor in Iraq was for one who had raped a US reservist in her trailer.)

Of the mercenary companies, Blackwater has earned a special status as one of the least controllable and aggressive, ferrying through the battle space without coordination with US forces. Time and again, Blackwater has triggered incidents undermining US strategies and endangering military forces. In 2004, four Blackwater men brazenly drove through the insecure city of Fallujah, were quickly cornered by a mob, were killed and burned and their charred bodies hung from a bridge. In the ensuing outcry, US forces were ordered to encircle the city, attack, withdraw and attack again, eventually levelling it. In 2006, a drunken Blackwater mercenary murdered a bodyguard for the Iraqi vice president and was spirited out of the country with US embassy complicity, paid off and never prosecuted. Under Order 17, no law applied.

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