More Questions Regarding Arrested Mercs in Iraq

December 29, 2011

Tags: Mahmudiyah, mercenary, Patrick Kennedy, Peter King
Posted in: Embassy/State, Iraq, Military

The story of three “security contractors” arrested by the Iraqi Army, held for 18 days without charges and then released after efforts by the World’s Largest Embassy (c) raise more questions than have yet been answered.

Almost all of the information about the case comes from Congressman Peter King of New York. The men, two of them American citizen veterans and one from Fiji, were working for a security firm and were arrested by Iraqi Army forces in Mahmudiyah on December 9 but were not charged with any offense, said King. He went on to say that the three men were detained because the Iraqi military “did not like the ‘mission request authorization’ paperwork that had been issued by the Iraqi Ministry of Interior.”

So, some questions:

–Did the three men work for a State Department contractor? King implies they did, asking “We’re going to have thousands of contractors over there, including many Americans. Can the Iraqis just take them off the street and hold them? This is a terrible precedent.”

–Which firm did they work for? Everything I have read about this case has been very particular not to identify the employer. Were they indeed private employees?

–What were they doing in Mahmudiyah, a rural area south of urban Baghdad? One report says they were “escorting a logistical convoy” and may have gotten stopped at a checkpoint. Who else was in the convoy? What happened to the convoy? Were only the three mercs detained? Why?

–Why did the State Department get involved in their release?

–What was the nature of the State Department’s intervention to free the men?

–Why did the Iraqis really arrest them?

–What is a “mission request authorization”?

And the big money question is… what does this incident have to say about the future of the World’s Largest Embassy (c) and the 5,500 mercs/security contractors they employ in Iraq? Is the Embassy going to spend its time putting out fires caused by the unusual non-so-diplomatic arrangements in Iraq, or is this just a beginners blip?

“We have excellent people at the State Department with management, acquisitions, logistical, security, communications and medical skills,” Patrick Kennedy, who oversees the huge transition portfolio as the undersecretary of state for management said. “We are ready.”

So that’s settled, for now, and at least he did not say “robust.”

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