AT around noon on Sunday, Sept 16, an Iraqi doctor was on her way to pick up her pathologist husband from a Baghdad hospital. Her 20-year-old son was behind the wheel. When they reached Nisour Square, a bullet out of nowhere struck and killed the young man.

The car kept moving forward, until a barrage of gunfire cut short his mother’s agonised screams. Within moments, a grenade launcher was deployed to incinerate the vehicle.

Thereafter, bullets began flying in every direction. Shortly afterwards, the shooting spree was repeated some 500 metres from the square. At the end of it, 17 Iraqis lay dead and at least as many were seriously injured. Callous as it may seem to point this out, that’s not an enormous toll by local standards: aerial bombardments, suicide bombings and other actions by the occupying forces or their foes frequently claim more lives. But what sets this particular incident apart is the fact that the perpetrators were neither insurgents nor, strictly speaking, US troops.

They were employees of Blackwater USA, one of the scores of private “security” firms that are, quite literally, making a killing in Iraq. The estimated 180,000 ‘private contractors’ exceed by 20,000 the American troop strength in the country. Of them, at least 50,000 are designated for combat roles. Blackwater enjoys an edge because it is favoured by the US State Department. It provided protection for Paul Bremer and its services have been retained by subsequent proconsuls. Official visitors from the US invariably rely on it whenever they venture outside the Green Zone.

As a consequence, when the Iraqi administration of Nouri al-Maliki reacted to the Nisour Square bloodbath by revoking Blackwater’s licence, that effectively halted excursions outside the Green Zone by US diplomats. The ban was quietly lifted after three days, following a muted expression of contrition from Condoleezza Rice and the promise of a transparent investigation. According to the State Department, Rice expressed her regret ‘over the death of innocent civilians that occurred during the attack on an embassy convoy’. Blackwater initially denied the charge: ‘The ‘civilians’ reportedly fired upon by Blackwater professionals were in fact armed enemies,’ a spokeswoman said.

Although the firm continues to insist the convoy came under fire after a car bomb went off nearby, this appears to be a blatant falsehood. Iraqi witnesses have, without exception, maintained all along that the Blackwater guards had opened fire without provocation. None of the victims was armed, and no one had so much as hurled a stone at the uniformed gunmen. US military investigators found no evidence to contradict this view. In fact, one of the Blackwater employees reportedly tried to restrain his colleagues, obviously to little avail.

Less than a week earlier, the US ambassador in Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker, had praised the efforts of private security firms, singling out Blackwater for an honourable mention. If this wasn’t embarrassing enough for the State Department, it subsequently turned out that the department’s first comment on the massacre was drafted by a Blackwater employee. And when an FBI team travelled to Iraq to investigate the growing scandal, guess who was responsible for their protection?

In its final report on the incident, Iraq has officially demanded that the US government sever links with Blackwater within six months, that the Sept 16 gunmen be handed over for trial in Iraqi courts, and that $8m be paid in compensation to each bereaved family. It is unlikely that the US will heed this wish list: although it clearly has an interest in sustaining the myth of Iraqi sovereignty, Washington does not regard Maliki as indispensable. Blackwater’s interests are evidently more precious.

A rule promulgated by Bremer in 2004 gives Blackwater employees -- and all other private contractors -- immunity against Iraqi laws. The occupying military forces enjoy the same privilege, but they can at least be court-martialled. In practical terms, this does not mean very much: most of those who face charges for conduct unbecoming get away with a slap on the wrist. It was reported earlier this month, for instance, that the case against marines held responsible for the Haditha massacre is falling apart. However, it could be argued that even compromised legal proceedings are better than none at all. For instance, at least some of the enlisted personnel involved in the Abu Ghraib atrocities were placed in the dock. The private contractors employed at the notorious prison got away scot free.

Immunity, not surprisingly, encourages impunity. The only disciplinary consequence for highly paid mercenaries is that they can be sacked and sent home. That’s what happened last year to Andrew Moonen, a Blackwater guard who, while drunk, killed a bodyguard of Iraqi vice-president Adil Abdul Mahdi. He promptly found employment with Combat Support Associates, another firm with an Iraqi presence. In all, Blackwater has sacked 120 of its employees in Iraq, which equals 12 per cent of its staff in that country. No one outside the company knows what excesses prompted this punishment.

It is widely acknowledged that only around 15 per cent of shooting incidents involving private firms in Iraq ever get reported. Notwithstanding such limitations on transparency, Blackwater employees have developed a reputation for particularly egregious conduct-which may have something to do with the fact that Erik Prince, the company’s co-founder and boss, is a certifiable theo-con: a Christian fundamentalist who contributes generously to the Republican Party’s coffers. That’s a sensible investment from his point of view, given that federal contracts account for 90 per cent of the revenue earned by Prince Group holdings, the parent company of Blackwater, and the latter’s earnings from such contracts have grown hundred-fold since 2001.

Recent congressional hearings suggest that some US legislators are seriously concerned about the conduct of private contractors in Iraq. A United Nations human rights officer, meanwhile, has hinted that Blackwater could be investigated for war crimes. A more standard legal test also looms, after a man injured in the Nisour Square mayhem and the families of three other victims last week filed a suit against Blackwater in a US federal court.

The outsourcing of military operations by the US, which seriously got under way when Dick Cheney was defence secretary under the first President Bush, illuminates a particularly ugly facet of free enterprise, with American taxpayers footing the bill for the excesses of firms such as Blackwater and Halliburton. The employees of security firms invariably earn far more than US military personnel. It is argued that the level of risk justifies unusually high remuneration for the soldiers of fortune. However, the prospect of being able to live out their violent fantasies inevitably attracts sadists and psychopaths. All too often they turn out to be killers trained either by the US military, or by the armies that thrived under apartheid in South Africa or Pinochet in Chile.

The Nisour Square massacre is a reminder of the dangers inherent in the privatisation of war. Yet it’s vital not to lose sight of the fact that the Blackwater scandal is a side show, one of the innumerable avoidable consequences of the aggression against Iraq, which has led to what retired lieutenant-general Ricardo Sanchez described last week as ‘a nightmare with no end in sight’.

The writer is a journalist based in Sydney.

mahir.worldview@gmail.com