In a 2008 interview Patrick Cockburn, a veteran Iraq war correspondent, describes an incident in which he was one step away of being shot by insurgents. He was traveling from Baghdad to Najaf where Muqtada al-Sadr’s militia was resisting the U.S. Marines. Believing that a serious threat would come from the Sunni Arabs, he chose to wear a red and white kufia in order to be perceived as an Arab from the distance and not be shot at while on the road. However, he had the misfortune of running directly into a militia-controlled checkpoint. Once he was spotted, the heavily armed men dragged him out of the car, ripped of his kufia and started shouting “American spy!”

“They dragged me and two Iraqis out of the car. I and the Iraqis thought: That’s it. They’re going to kill us. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have died in this way.” Fortunately, at the last moment one gunman suggested that the captives should be taken to the Sheikh at the Mosque and let him decide their fate.

“They took us there and then things gradually became better,” Patrick Cockburn said when interviewed by James Zogby on After Words.

Next time, he might not be so lucky.

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The notorious private military firm Blackwater was hired by the CIA to transfer prisoners from Guantanamo Bay to secret prisons in Asia for interrogation, informs the German newspaper Der Spiegel.

The newspaper says it has obtained a memo from two ex-Blackwater employees which writes that the CIA employed “Blackwater and its subsidiaries” to transfer detainees from Guantanamo Bay to “secret detention camps in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan for interrogation.”

The United States have failed to see the evolution of warfare and the political reality of Iraq and Afghanistan before troops moved in. Every war brings changes to society and these particular armed conflicts facilitated the rise of the private military industry. Once the private military firms deployed armed personnel, a series of legal and ethical issues appear: is the employee to be regarded as a soldier or as a civilian? Can private military firms use lethal force? Under what circumstances? If abuses are committed, is the company to be held responsible since it provided weapons and ammunition?

The government failed to provide quick and concise solutions to these problems leading to serious human rights abuses.

In a two-week visit to the United States, the UN Working Group focused on the impact that private security contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq have on human rights. The Group expressed concern about the lack of public information on the contracts as well as poor investigations into human rights abuses committed by the firms.

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