British contractors in the Basra area of Iraq are following the kidnapping of Kenneth Bigley with concern and sympathy, but have questioned the wisdom of living and working in Baghdad without security or personal protection.
Many who watched Bigley’s impassioned plea for mercy on oversized television screens last week say that it would not have happened to them.
There are an estimated 1 500 contractors and civilian security officers working in the British-controlled southern area of Iraq. The camps have been built and are maintained by contractors. The communications infrastructure — such as internet services for soldiers — is operated by civilians. Then there are those that work in reconstruction: engineers, experts in sewerage, electricity and oil.
Those who have no military experience almost never travel outside the camps of the military zone designated Multi-National Division (South East) without an escort. The majority are accompanied by soldiers in ”snatch wagons” — armoured Land Rovers — providing cover with heavy machine guns and SA80 rifles. Ex-military types, armed to the teeth, also provide escorts.
None of the contractors are allowed to talk to the media because of companies’ policy that speaking about the situation on the ground puts their lives at risk. Some spoke to The Guardian on condition of anonymity, others point-blank refused.
Sitting in a rest area in Allenby Lines, one of the camps in the enormous, secure coalition compound known as the A Pod, around the old Basra airport, one contractor said: ”It’s an unfortunate situation that chap’s in, but I don’t know the security measures he had in place.
”He took an unnecessary risk. We live on camp and travel with green fleet [the British army]. There’s no ifs, buts and ands about it. It’s company policy, we don’t travel without the army. If the army say you don’t move, you don’t move.
”My personal feeling is, if they offered me another £10m to travel unescorted, I wouldn’t do it. What has happened to him wouldn’t put me off what I am doing at the moment. Travelling unescorted is what would put me off.”
One close-protection worker said: ”Where we fall down as British people is the arrogance that ‘we will be safe because we are British’.
”You are a contractor, you know nothing about security. You come to Iraq, you are badly briefed, you think it is secure because you are British. You go and live in Baghdad and you are a target. You have got a pistol and you think that will protect you; well it won’t.
”They have really got to be thinking more about their security, they really have. These guys know you are on your own, that you have only got one pistol. They know you have got no security. The Iraqi people might be poor but they are not stupid.
”What British contractors have got to do is make sure their security is 100%. They have got to have a company looking after them 24/7.
”This man has been too blatant. He has gone, ‘Hey, I am British, they won’t hurt me.’ But he was a soft target.”
For almost all of his six-month contract with Gulf Supplies and Commercial services, a United Arab Emirates-based general services and construction contractor, Bigley had lived in a house in the affluent Mansur area of Baghdad outside the high-security area known as the Green Zone.
He travelled around in a distinctive 4×4 vehicle and chose to have no security guards of his own. His limited hostile-environment training came from his brother, who had also spent many years living in the Middle East. When asked by a neighbour why he had no protection in place, he is reported to have said: ”I’m not afraid. You only die once.”
In its latest report, Centurion, a company that provides training for those travelling and working in danger zones, says of the situation in Iraq: ”Safety for any foreigner in Iraq cannot be guaranteed 100%, with or without security guards …
”The majority of foreign workers in Iraq can leave at any time and should not feel forced to work in the country. Most foreign workers in Iraq are attracted by good salaries, a fact which has to be weighed against the good, safe life you could have back home without the fear of kidnapping, injury or death.
”It’s their personal decision to work in this dangerous environment … Training in all aspects regarding these issues should be compulsory. Cost should not be an issue.”
Another security guard said companies without the highest security in place were negligent and culpable.
”If it’s a Middle Eastern company he was working for, you can forget it; they just don’t take security seriously enough. Whether he wanted to live in a house unprotected or not, he shouldn’t have been allowed. It is his employer’s responsibility to look after his safety as well as his own. It is unbelievably naive,” he said.
But even those with such protection are vulnerable. Last week, a party escorted by a team from Hart Security was attacked while travelling in the British-controlled Amara area.
The non-military 4×4 vehicle — known as white fleet — was shot at, with one of the bullets going through the window, hitting the passenger in the head and causing a bloody but superficial injury.
As the days go by without news of Bigley, contractors talk of going home not because of his predicament, but simply because the life they lead is tough, hot and mostly boring. They admit, though, that the thought of kidnap isn’t too far from their minds, since it is always a consideration of the British soldier that they so heavily rely on for protection.
As one private said: ”We have so many things to think about — shooting, improvised explosive devices, mortars, rockets — but we also have to have the idea that we might be taken hostage, and we are always on the lookout for the possibility.
”At the end of the day, everyone here is taking a risk. It’s just that the contractors get paid an awful lot of money to do it.”
Security companies in Iraq
Control Risks Group
One of the largest British security companies operating in Iraq with more than 750 staff, mainly drawn from former members of the British Army, SAS and Royal Marines. It offers bodyguard services for government employees and civilian contractors, numbers the Foreign Office among its clients and has talked several firms through evacuation procedures, ways to avoid being followed and how to minimise the possibility of an attack. One employee, Mark Carman (38) was killed in May in a rocket attack outside the coalition’s headquarters
ArmorGroup
Also known as Global Risk Management, the company chaired by Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the former Tory cabinet minister, was contracted by Bechtel to guard construction sites and deal with unexploded ordnance across Iraq. It has more than 1 400 employees in the country. In May ArmorGroup employee Andrew Harries (34) from Aberdare, was shot dead by a sniper when his convoy was attacked near Mosul in northern Iraq
Hart Group
A Bermuda-registered security consultancy run by former SAS and Scots Guards officer Richard Bethell, it has been providing close protection teams for contractors in Iraq. Employee Gray Branfield, a former assassin for the apartheid government in South Africa, was killed in a firefight in Kut in April
Kroll
The risk consulting company was awarded a contract to guard USaid staff in Iraq, but has also been working with private contractors. Kroll also owns The Crucible, a training centre outside Washington where US companies send lorry drivers, engineers and security guards for an Iraqi orientation programme
Aegis
Run by Lieutenant Colonel Tim Spicer — the former Guards officer at the centre of the ”arms to Sierra Leone” affair in 1999 — it won a £280-million deal from the Pentagon this year to coordinate security contractors and provide ”close protection” teams for Iraq coalition staff and diplomats. – Guardian Unlimited Â