By Aaron Glantz Special to CorpWatch Kirkuk, Iraq -- Mamand Kesnazani reclines in his high-backed leather chair and puts his feet on top of his desk inside the main security gate of Iraq's northern oil field. The former fighter for Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), Kesnazani came to Kirkuk the same day as the American Army last April. He's been guarding the oil field ever since.
"I've had a lot of bosses this year," Kesnazani says as he orders a round of dark Iraqi tea. "First it was the PUK, then the US Army came with Kellogg, Brown and Root. That's Dick Cheney's company," he says smiling. "Now the company has changed again to a British company called Erinys." Kesnazani is a peshmerga -- which means "ready to die" -- a name that has become the accepted name for the Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq who battled Saddam Hussein's army for decades. Security jobs like those at Northern Oil are technically open to all Iraqis, but those staffing this checkpoint estimate 95% are peshmerga. Kesnazani has not even bothered to change his uniform. He still wears the checkered black and white headscarf and sharwal (baggy pants) typical of peshmerga fighters, but most of his cohorts are clad in the smart blue and gold uniform of Erinys Iraq. They look every bit the part of private security guards. These men are on the frontline of the burgeoning security business in Iraq, easily the fastest growing business sector in the country because of the growing sophistication and effectiveness of the insurgency. The majority of the jobs go to Kurds because of their unswerving hatred of Saddam over the years, or to mercenaries from other countries like Britain to South Africa, who are neutral players in what some see as a growing civil war. This boom may be heightening ethnic tensions in Iraq while causing a recruitment strain on security forces in other countries. Favoritism Towards Kurds? Four o'clock in the evening in Kirkuk and two dozen American soldiers are doing their part to secure the city. The US military is performing a regular search of the local offices of the Kurdistan Community Party. A dozen American soldiers with machine guns and body armor are searching the building, while another dozen station themselves outside -- some allowing Iraqi children to play with their automatic weapons. The commanding officer Lt. John Frazee says his troops found five Kalashnikovs -- the self-defense limit set by American authorities. Who's Behind Erinys? Erinys $80-million contract, awarded by the occupation authorities last summer to provide security for Iraq's vital oil infrastructure, has become a controversial lightning rod within the Iraqi Provisional Government and the security industry, according to Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Knut Royce of New York Newsday. Soon after this security contract was issued, the company started recruiting many of its guards from the ranks of Ahmed Chalabi's former militia, the Free Iraqi Forces, raising allegations from other Iraqi officials that he was creating a private army. Chalabi, 59, scion of one of Iraq's most politically powerful and wealthy families until the monarchy was toppled in 1958, had been living in exile in London when the U.S. invaded Iraq. The chief architect of the umbrella organization for the resistance, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), Chalabi is viewed by many Iraqis as America's hand-picked choice to rule Iraq. The security contract technically was awarded to Erinys Iraq, a security company also newly formed after the invasion, but bankrolled at its inception by Nour USA, which was incorporated in the United States last May, according to David Braus, the company's managing director. Nour's founder was a Chalabi friend and business associate, Abul Huda Farouki. Within days of the award last August, Nour became a joint venture partner with Erinys and the contract was amended to include Nour. An industry source familiar with some of the internal affairs of both companies said Chalabi received a $2-million fee for helping arrange the contract. Chalabi, in a brief interview with Newsday, denied that claim, as did a top company official. Chalabi also denied that he has had anything to do with the security firm. Yet the INC is deeply connected to Erinys. For example founding partner and director of Erinys Iraq is Faisal Daghistani, the son of Tamara Daghistani, for years one of Chalabi's most trusted confidants. She was a key player in the creation of the INC which received millions of dollars in U.S. funds to help destabilize the Saddam Hussein regime before the U.S. invasion last year. And Farouki's businesses received at least $12 million in the 1980s from a Chalabi-controlled bank in Washington, D.C. The Jordanian government says that bank was part of a massive embezzlement scheme perpetrated by Chalabi on the Petra bank he owned in Amman. When the bank collapsed in 1989, it cost the Jordanian government $200 million to reimburse depositors and avert a collapse of the country's entire banking system. Jordanian authorities have complained that much of the funds they claim were siphoned off the Amman bank ended up at Petra International. By May 1989, three months before Jordan seized Petra Bank, the bankrupt Farouki companies owed Petra International more than $12 million, court records show. A separate contract for $327 million with Nour was cancelled for the appearance of conflict of interest. He says he generally finds Kurdish groups comply with instructions from American soldiers. "This area is better than Baghdad because it is Kurdish," he says. "Kurds are less likely to make trouble. They're less likely to be terrorists." Full: http://www.corpwatch.org/issues/PID.jsp?articleid=10288 ===== Sasha Lilley Producer, Against the Grain Pacifica Radio's KPFA 510 848-6767 ext 209 www.againstthegrain.org __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Small Business $15K Web Design Giveaway http://promotions.yahoo.com/design_giveaway/
