The following blog is 100% true. I did meet with Erik Prince in his Tyson’s Corner office and the U.S. Army’s killing of an old Iraqi man in Baghdad and the related events are 100% true. Unfortunately, my confrontation of Prince with his security teams damaging behavior in Iraq only occurred in my dreams last night.
In the late 2000s (probably 07 or 08) I met with Erik Prince in his Blackwater headquarters at Tyson’s Corner Virginia to discuss a prospective project in Jordan. At the end of our meeting I confronting him with the bad reputation of his Blackwater team in Bagdad (sadly this was only in my dream but the events are 100% true).
Following the U.S. and British invasion of Iraq, Blackwater provided security in Bagdad to US Embassy staff and foreign contractors such as me. While reporting to the U.S. Treasury, I was paid by USAID and housed and protected as part of the BearingPoint team under the USAID contract. Because of Blackwater’s reputation for a high profile, roughshod approach to security (driving their armored cars wherever—including sidewalks and wrong way streets), BearingPoint had hired a British security firm.
Even when countries are “liberated” their citizens never like the invading army to hang around long. Iraq was no exception. And the U.S. has proved no better (to say the least) than other colonial powers at administering the lands they conquered. The following story from early 2004 of an illustrative incident in Bagdad was told to me by a US Embassy friend, Michael Cole, who was in the middle of it:
“On a residential street between the Green Zone and our destination in Kadhimiya – possibly Mansour, Karkh, or Hurriyah – I heard the young soldier in the gun turret above me yell extremely loudly at someone in the street. I often spent rides like this reading notes or emails I’d printed to prepare for meetings, glancing up frequently to become familiar with routes and landmarks in case I needed to return to the Green Zone alone. I saw the old man the soldier was yelling at as he walked directly into the road. The Humvee was going extremely fast, driving in formation with 2 or 3 others, swerving across the road in formation to prevent civilian vehicles from riding alongside us where they could block our route or gain a clear line of fire to assassinate me. The driver never could have stopped once the man walked into the road. Just as I saw him and realized why the soldier was yelling, I heard and felt each tire on the passenger side where I sat roll over him. I’ve never run over a deer, but I expect the sound is similar. The vehicle was too fast, loud, and heavy for me to hear a scream or bones break, but I heard a crowd behind us scream, and cars honk. I looked around for landmarks so I could file a report and return to the site someday to make amends. The man appeared to have left a small yellow house with a date palm beside a four-lane road.
“I remember the soldiers cussed loudly when we hit the man. Most had Southern accents and sunburned faces. They started the mornings clean except for their gloves, but ended every day covered in dust, with black outlines left by tinted blast goggles. We talked about the incident when we arrived in Kadhimiya and were safe in a walled parking lot. Most of the soldiers were as distressed as I was. We all knew the man was dead, and we believed it was too dangerous to stop and try to help.
“One of the soldiers, possibly a young lieutenant who was my liaison with the security details, explained that the local Forward Operating Base had a process to compensate families of civilians killed by Coalition Forces. He explained that Iraqi tradition permitted compensation in lieu of prosecution even among local persons, and that this was an accepted form of justice. My later study of Arab tribal culture led me to believe Baghdadis could follow the same practice. I submitted my own brief statement to a local colonel or lieutenant colonel, who knew the case and assured me the family was well-compensated for the man’s death. I remember doubting anyone could be satisfied by this, but I was pleased I was not the only person who had submitted a statement. The soldiers did so before me. I tried to estimate what the man’s life could be worth between a Shiite Baghdadi family and the US military, but the normal actuarial items never equaled what I imagined anyone could call justice.
“I asked Iraqi colleagues what to do. They shared my grief. Some shared my anger. Others were dismissive – possibly because I described the man as poor. Most advised me not to go back because there was nothing I could do to help. One lady said I could help in a small way by visiting the family, and that was the advice I decided to accept.
“My interpreter thought it was a terrible, dangerous idea to visit the old man’s family. He said they would kill me. However, he drove me to the site I described to him. He parked a block away, and I walked to the yellow house. One of the man’s relatives spoke English and translated for me. They knew why I was there, and they invited me to sit at a table in their front yard where they drank tea and watched the traffic pass. I told them I did not drive the humvee, but I was a passenger, and that I saw their grandfather, and that I was sorry. One man yelled at me in Arabic about his anger about the conditions in the city during the occupation, of which his relative’s death was just one event among many injustices. I listened, and I agreed. I asked for the man’s name, and they told me. Maybe I wrote it in a notebook that’s now in a box somewhere. I apologized again and held the hands of two men for a moment. The lady who translated told me the man was old, and his death was quick, and it was good of me to come. She said “the officer” had already visited, and her gesture suggested everything was resolved. I was glad they didn’t kill me, but I didn’t believe everything was resolved to anyone’s satisfaction. However, I thanked them for talking to me, and I walked back to my interpreter’s car. I walked up a block and he followed me until we were out of the family’s eyesight from their yard.
“That was that. It was another week in Baghdad, and I didn’t think much of it until I returned home that summer. Sometimes I remember that day when I see a thin, old Arab man, or a man in a grey dishdash, or a deer eyeing the road, or a sandbag beside the road, or plaid cotton with yellow in it, or olive-colored hands, or the shade of a palm over a blacktop, or smell hot tar or dust caked in sweat, which is to say, I think of it often and at unexpected moments. I’m no longer consumed by rage and sadness like I was in 2005, the year following my return home, which I barely remember. Now I remember it as an example of what happens in war, which should be avoided at almost all costs, and with an exhalation of sadness few who I’ve ever met might understand. We all have instances and threads of sadness woven through our memories and consciousnesses, and this is one of mine.”
You can read more of my own experiences there in “Iraq-An American Tragedy-My Travels to Baghdad”
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