Blackwater-linked firm wins WB deal

The US government has awarded a new contract to a company closely associated with the former Blackwater security firm, notorious for arbitrary killing of Iraqi civilians.

The five-year security contract awarded by the US State Department to the International Solutions (IS) is worth more than $84 million.

In a PressTV interview, Larry Birns, a member of the Council of Hemispheric Affairs, said they (Xe Services) have the blood of a lot of civilians on their hands, as well as all sorts of unsavory incidents that happened.”

“Blackwater did it. If you have committed these acts, the redemption shouldn’t be that easy. It shouldn’t be just a number of months passed and you are back in business again,” Birns added.

He went on to add that the Blackwater became synonymous with all of the excesses and improper procedures and policies and double billing and building equipment that dissolve within a week. “The scandals were so numerous.”

The International Solutions is to provide protective security services for US government representatives in the Israel-occupied West Bank.

The firm is a close associate of the Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater, which changed its name after the Iraqi government refused to renew the company’s operating license.

The leakage of documents regarding the US-led war in Iraq showed that Blackwater employees killed 10 Iraqi civilians and wounded seven others. But Blackwater is most notorious for the Nisoor Square massacre, in which 17 Iraqi civilians were killed. A third instance of its shootings occurred while Blackwater forces were guarding US diplomats.

An expert with the Executive Intelligence Review Jeffrey Steinberg says, “When you hire a private contractor and all of their people are effectively functioning as paid mercenaries, then they are not going to put their lives on the line and why should they?.”

He emphasizes that their job is nothing more than that. “

“And they are in it for the money. Because in a rotten economy, it happens that these private security jobs in combat zones are paying an enormous amount of money,” he added.

Xe Services currently remains the largest of the State Department’s three private security contractors.

International Solutions, on the other hand, is a joint venture between a company called Kaseman, whose board of directors is stacked with former State Department and CIA officials, and US Training Center, a former Blackwater affiliate that apparently still employs many of its former operatives.

Despite its legal troubles, at least 90% of the revenues reported by Blackwater-associate companies come from US government contracts.