From Volume 84, Number 2 (January 2011)
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On September 16, 2007, allegedly without any provocation or justification, personnel from the security firm formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide1 fired into Baghdad’s crowded Nisoor Square and killed seventeen Iraqi civilians. To date, neither the firm nor its employees have been held accountable for this incident. Moreover, a report issued by a U.S. House of Representatives oversight panel in October 2007 indicated that “Blackwater employees had been involved in at least 196 firefights in Iraq since 2005, an average of 1.4 shootings per week.” The report also stated that in 84 percent of these incidents, Blackwater personnel were the first to fire even though, by contract, they were allowed to fire only in self-defense.
Unfortunately, Blackwater is neither the first nor the only security firm to commit human rights abuses. In the late 1990s, personnel from another security firm, DynCorp International, allegedly bought women and girls as sex slaves while deployed in Bosnia. The only punishment rendered on the personnel responsible for these human rights abuses was the termination of their employment contracts. Moreover, despite these allegations, the firm later received a contract in Iraq worth $250 million.
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