A nation that goes to war on principle may not realize it will then have to hire private soldiers to keep the peace. The work of the four American civilians slaughtered in Fallujah last week was so shadowy that their families struggled to explain what exactly the men had been hired to do in Iraq. Marija Zovko says her nephew Jerry said little about the perils of the missions he carried out every day. "He wouldn't talk about it," she says. Even representatives for the private security company that employed the men, Blackwater USA, could not say what exactly they were up to on that fateful morning. "All the details of the attack at this point are haphazard at best," says Chris Bertelli, a spokesman for Blackwater. "We don't know what they were doing on the road at the time."
What the murder of the four security specialists did reveal is a little known reality about how business is done in war-torn settings all over the globe. With U.S. troops still having to battle insurgents and defend themselves, the job of protecting everyone else in Iraq--from journalists to government contractors to the U.S. administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer--is largely being done by private security companies stocked with former soldiers looking for good money and the taste of danger. Pentagon officials count roughly 20 private companies around the world that contract for security work, mainly in combat areas. They are finding plenty of it in Iraq. Scott Custer, a co-director of Custer Battles, based in Fairfax, Va., says as many as 30,000 Iraqis and "several thousand expats" are working for private outfits in Iraq. Security contractors make a lot more than the average soldier, but last week's events suggest that they may also be turning into more attractive targets for insurgents. "If they can chase us out," says Custer co-director Mike Battles, "then in a void, they become more powerful."
Among the various professional security firms, none is as renowned as Blackwater USA. Based in Moyock, N.C., the firm gets its name from the covert missions undertaken by divers at night and from the peat-colored water common to the area. It was founded in 1996 by former Navy SEAL Erik Prince, who saw a growing need for private security work by governments overseas and private firms. Since then, the company has trained more than 50,000 military and law-enforcement personnel just south of the Virginia border, near Norfolk, at its 6,000-acre facility, which it calls "the finest private firearms-training facility in the U.S." The facility boasts several target ranges and a simulated town for urban-warfare training. It is so advanced that some of the U.S. military's active-duty special-ops troops have trained there. Next month Blackwater will host the World SWAT Challenge--an Olympic-style competition among 20 SWAT teams from around the country--set to be broadcast on ESPN.