BAGHDAD, 22 September 2007 — Despite opposition from Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki, US security company Blackwater was back on the streets of Baghdad yesterday, four days after being grounded over a fatal shooting incident.
Maliki, meanwhile, was in the firing line over a damning report by the US Embassy made public yesterday detailing corruption plaguing his government, which said the attitude of his office to tackling the problem was “openly hostile.”
Blackwater guards, whom a furious Maliki wanted replaced after they opened fire in Baghdad killing 10 people, were yesterday protecting US personnel on limited missions, US spokeswoman Mirembe Nantongo told AFP.
“We have resumed limited movement today. It is very limited and all missions need to be pre-approved,” she said. “The decision was taken by us in consultation with the Iraqi government. All convoys will be protected by PSDs (private security details). Yes, it is Blackwater.”
The US Embassy ordered all staff confined to the highly protected Green Zone in Baghdad on Tuesday following Sunday’s shooting into a crowded square by Blackwater guards escorting a US civilian convoy through the capital.
Iraqis say civilians were killed, while Blackwater insists the convoy it was guarding came under attack by insurgents. Maliki demanded that Blackwater be replaced for the security duties. The firm provides guards for US officials and civilian employees in the war-torn country. The issue is expected to be on the agenda when Maliki holds talks in New York next week at the United Nations General Assembly.
The United States has promised to investigate the deaths and along with Iraq announced Wednesday it had also set up a joint commission to gather the facts about the shooting and make policy recommendations on security in Iraq.
Many departments, it says, are controlled by criminal gangs and militia while Maliki’s office has shown an “open hostility” to allowing independent investigators to probe corruption cases.
Meanwhile, two aides to Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani were killed in shootings within hours, prompting his Basra followers to boycott Friday sermons in protest amid fears that an internal Shiite power struggle was increasingly targeting Iraq’s top Shiite cleric. Sistani’s followers in Basra, 550 kilometers southeast of Baghdad, refused to attend Friday sermons in their mosques, denouncing the latest assassinations of the cleric’s associates, an aide said.
Sistani’s representative in the Diwaniyah province, Ahmed Barqaawi, was gunned down while driving home to the city of Diwaniyah, about 130 kilometers south of Baghdad, police officials said. Hours earlier, one of the cleric’s representatives in the Basra area, Amjad Janabi, was killed along with his driver in a shooting west of the southern city, police said.
The deaths bring to at least five the number of Sistani aides slain since early August but it remains unclear if the killings reflect internal Shiite disputes or are the work of Sunni insurgents opposed to the vast influence enjoyed by Sistani over Iraq’s Shiites and politics since Saddam Hussein’s 2003 ouster. Sistani’s office in the holy city of Najaf declined to comment on the latest slayings. Basra Gov. Mohammed Al-Waili called on the government to step up measures to protect clerics.
