This is how a non-military force composed of contract workers has turned out to be the second-largest armed force in Iraq after the US military. The advantages to the US government are multiple. First, it relieves US troops of thousands of jobs, such as those of mounting guards outside US facilities, driving supplies around the country and providing armed escorts to diplomats and top ranking American officials --- tasks which under normal circumstances should have been assigned to the US military, or to the State Department’s security force.

The financial advantage of delegating part of the war to the private sector is not to be ignored either. Contract workers who are wounded while on the job in Iraq do not come under the responsibility of the Veteran’s Administration. And, private sector workers killed in Iraq do not have to be reported to the American public, therefore keeping the “official” casualty list lower than what it would have been had the US military deployed additional forces.

But “contract workers” is just a polite form of saying “mercenary force”, which is what this civilian army really amounts to.

No one seems to know exactly how many contract workers are currently employed in Iraq. The numbers vary between 20,000 and 30,000. However, the advantages to the US government of having the possibility to call upon such a large force to fill the gaps needed in a war that has lasted far longer than anticipated comes with dangerous loopholes.

These contractors, or mercenaries, are not bound by the military code of honour, and thanks to a law engineered by the US, these employees enjoy complete immunity from criminal prosecution in Iraq, even when red lines are crossed, as they allegedly were last September 16.

According to reports from Iraq, a controversy broke out when a convoy of US diplomats travelling in Baghdad under the protection of employees from Blackwater, came under fire. The Blackwater protection force allegedly opened fire indiscriminately, killing 11 Iraqis and wounding 13, including women and children.

Blackwater is the largest private contractor operating in Iraq. In his book titled “Blackwater” describing the secretive workings of the company’s hired guns clad in black uniforms, Jeremy Scahill, an award winning investigative journalist, calls Blackwater USA “the world’s most powerful mercenary army”.

Scahill describes the deployment of these soldiers of fortune as “the powerful private army that the US government has quietly hired to operate in international war zones and on American soil”. (Blackwater employees appeared on the streets of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.)

Blackwater, one of several such companies operating in Iraq, has its own military base and operates about 20 aircraft, including armed helicopters. Scahill describes them as “the elite Praetorian Guard for the global war on terror”.

Blackwater, says Scahill, has openly declared its forces above the law. According to the author, Blackwater has played on the ambiguity surrounding its employees. The company resisted attempts to have its employees come under the Pentagon’s Uniform Code of Military Justice, or UCMJ, on the grounds that they are civilians. At the same time, the company has sought immunity for its employees from civilian litigation back in the US on the grounds that its employees are part of the US military task force.

In other words, the 20,000 to 30,000 armed employees of Blackwater answer to no authority, either in Iraq war in the US. This is not the first incident involving Blackwater in Iraq. But the incident of September 16 has drawn the ire of many Iraqis, leading Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki to revoke the company’s licence. However, the prime minister’s ruling appears to have fallen on deaf ears as the company continues to operate, even if in a symbolic gesture US diplomats in Baghdad were told not to leave the protected Green Zone for the time being. Almost all US agencies operating in Iraq — the State Department and the US Agency for International Development, the Commerce Department, the Defence Department and the US Army — all have contractors working for them, or are administering contracts that have contractors working for them. The four ill-fated Americans who were ruthlessly slain outside Fallujah in March 2004 worked for Blackwater. The Bush administration, writes Scahill, considers Blackwater “revolution in military affairs”. Its critics on the other hand see a threat to democracy.