U.S. contractors recruiting Africans for security jobs in Iraq
CAIRO — U.S. private military contractors have been hiring
former commandos from Kenya, Uganda, Zambia and other countries in the
region.
Industry sources said the Africans, attracted by a 10-fold salary increase, would
replace or augment the thousands of Americans employed in guarding
reconstruction projects in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Previously, people who performed such tasks were seen as mercenaries,"
[Ret.] Kenyan Army Lt. Col. James Mwangemi, an independent security
consultant, told the U.S.-based CNS News. "This is changing, and Iraq has
fired up the change in perception."
The sources said U.S. military contractor KBR was the first to recruit
in
East Africa, Middle East Newsline reported.
Another company was identified as Sentry Security of East
Africa, a company registered in Pennsylvania but with a branch in Kenya. The
sources said Sentry deployed at least 1,200 security personnel from
Kenya in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last two months.
The U.S.-based Special Operations Consulting-Security Management Group
has been recruiting in Uganda. The sources said the company has sent more
than 3,000 East Africans to Iraq.
The recruitment comes amid Iraqi demands to prosecute security officers
from Blackwater USA, charged with killing civilians during a shootout in
September 2007. The U.S. State Department plans to reduce its contracts with
Blackwater, one of the largest private military contractors in Iraq.
The International Peace Operators Association has estimated that 180,000
contractors work in Iraq, most of them Iraqis. The U.S. Defense Department
reported 128,888 contractors in Iraq — one third of them Americans — as of
April 2007.
