The recruitment of Namibians as security guards in Iraq and other war zones by American company – Special Operation Consultants (SOC-SMG), is nothing short of enlisting them as mercenaries.
One does not need to be a rocket scientist to understand that recruiting Namibians under whatever guise for work in a war zone is simply luring them into war. They will either work as cannon fodder and thereby partake in the war or become active participants as soldiers.
If we may ask, how else does one become a security guard in a war situation without getting embroiled in war when the very people these guards would be on the look out for are armed combatants whose aim is to blow up the very facilities they are guarding.
And, how would the Iraqi insurgents for example differentiate between Namibian guards and enemy soldiers?
The insurgents have no business asking whether people guarding buildings or whatever facilities are “mere guards’ from Namibia or US or UK soldiers.
In any case, the insurgents might not even know where Namibia is. They might think it is a city somewhere in the United States hence our citizens would not be spared death.
Whether right or wrong, any foreigners going into a warring country like Iraq become targets. It stands to reason that the insurgents will fire their way into the facilities that they want to blow up and thereby shoot those guarding them. The guards will thus be sucked into war because they too will have to fire back. Their first instinct will be to protect themselves and the facilities they guard.
A case in point is the American Blackwater – whose personnel are accused of indiscriminately shooting and killing Iraqi civilians recently. Blackwater personnel are professed to be armed guards but being in combat zone to protect American facilities and officials, they are having to use arms and to engage in war.
On Tuesday this week, foreign private security guards belonging to an Australian-run firm shot and killed two women after a car they were travelling in failed to heed a warning to stop. From the above and numerous other cases, there is ample evidence that private security guards in Iraq or Afghanistan are not just security guards but soldiers who fight for those who employ them.
The claim by Paul Grimes, Executive Director of SOC-SMG, that the recruits from Namibia will not be deployed in combat zones is a fallacy because the entire Iraq is a combat zone.
The war in Iraq is a war without rules. Virtually anything and everybody is a target. The protagonists on both sides do not observe internationally accepted rules of war and the Geneva Convention. What we have in Iraq is madness where indiscriminate killings and bombings are rife on both sides.
Civilian men, women and children are killed every day. What more of security guards.
No one is safe in Iraq. Many foreign nationals are being kidnapped on a daily basis. Not even journalists are spared the war. They dare not venture outside the Green Zone for instance. The only time they cover stories outside the Green Zone is when they get embedded with US soldiers.
The name Special Operation Consultants, the company that is here to recruit Namibians suggests this is not just a security company. In addition, the recruits are required to have military background. Why not police background for instance, why military background?
The number of Namibian recruits is also suspect – between 3??????’?????’?????????????