Alwaght- In the post-Saddam Iraq, the US pushed for a private security provision with reliance on the private security firms that are commissioned with protection of vital and infrastructural facilities in a bid to get toehold in the Iraqi security and economic structures.
In the recent days, the Iraqi media, quoting sources close to the Baghdad government, have reported that Iraq reached a deal with an American security company to maintain and protect the strategic Baghdad-Turaibil highway that connects Iraq to Jordan as a transit route.
Turaibil is a border crossing between the two countries.
When the news of return of the notorious American security firm Blackwater to Iraq was spread, it drew reactions from the Iraqi politicians from all sides, with some lawmakers strongly calling on the government to revoke the agreement with the private company.
The Iraqi government has been struggling to reactivate the transit highway that serves as an important ground access road for trade between the two countries and its restarting can help rejuvenated commercial ties with the neighboring Jordan.
The highway, 430 kilometers long and crossing the Iraqi province of Al Anbar, when crosses the border ends in Amman, the Jordanian capital. The highway fell to ISIS hands after the terrorist group attacked Iraq in June 2014 and has sustained serious damages. Nearly 36 of the route's bridges were blown off by the terrorist group. 290 kilometers of the international highway go through the desert of Iraq. The road is said to carry the potentials to facilitate trade worth of about $13 billion between Iraq and Jordan.
In a report, the office of the Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said that the government signed a deal with the Olive Group, an American private security firm, to secure the Dry Canal Future Project which is aimed at reconstructing and reviving the major trade route that connects the Iraqi capital to the Jordanian one.
The Iraqi news outlets suggest that the government’s representatives negotiated the contract with eight American security companies in Amman for eight months. At the end, they agreed with the Olive Group to undertake the job.
Faleh al-Issawi, the vice-president of the Al Anbar provincial council, told the media that the company will start work from July 15 this year. More media reports revealed the contract was signed between the two sides when Jared Kushner, President Trump's advisor and son-in-law, visited Baghdad early in April. The reports drew business links between Kushner and the security company.
Valid for five years, the contract will see the American firm providing an array of services including securing the highway by helicopter patrolling, reconstruction of the bridges, building mid-road relax stations, gas stations, restaurants, and setting up checkpoints.
The Olive Company was originally a British group, and for the first time in 2012 was authorized to do security business as a private entity. It merged in 2015 with an American security group and was renamed as Olive Group. Furthermore, expert information suggest that the Olive Group is a subsidiary of the larger American company named Constellis Group Inc, known as a rebranding of the Blackwater Protection which is remembered notoriously among the Iraqis for its occupation-time killing of 17 and injuring 20 Iraqi civilians in September 2007 in Baghdad in what was later labelled Nisour Square massacre. The Iraqi government expelled 250 Blackwater security guards in February 2010.
After its Iraq scandal, the American firm rebranded under new names like the Academi, Constellis Group Inc., and Olive Group. At the present time, the Olive Group has an active office in Basra in southern Iraq. It furthermore opened offices in Baghdad and Erbil, the capital of Iraq's Kurdistan region. It provides security services to the US embassy and consulates across Iraq, as well as the American and foreign companies.
The analysts say that the White House takes advantage of such security company for its full supervision of the Baghdad-Amman highway as the US military cannot step directly in the Iraqi legal and civilian affairs for some sensitivities, and so this company can fill the vacuum and serve many Washington's security objectives in Iraq.
Security companies like Olive Group need instability to expand business and thus earn more money, so their nature well runs counter to their peaceful slogans and stated plans. The experts say strengthening the peace and stability will mean end of the job of such companies, something justifying their casting doubt over rightness of entrusting Olive Group with securing the major Baghdad-Amman trade route.
The US uses the private security firms in Iraq to ostensibly secure its diplomatic missions and forces and help Baghdad improve security conditions nationwide, but information from Iraqi sources maintain that this type of companies are active deep in Iraq’s security stage and themselves act as security watch for the US in Iraq and further destabilize the country.
Actions like spying for the Pentagon and the CIA and killing the civilians in Fallujah in 2004 and in Baghdad in 2007 are examples of such security companies' abysmal record in Iraq as they work as the US instruments of influence.
The current approach of the US foreign policy under billionaire businessman Donald Trump puts first the economic interests. This is a motivation for the American officials to fairly provide security of this international highway using various ways to help facilitate their sway in Iraq's security and economic framework.
