The US-backed Iraqi government of PM Nuri al Maliki has dropped its demand for the expulsion of US security firm Blackwater, under investigation over the killing of 11 Iraqis on September 16, a government security official told reporters in Baghdad five days later.
On September 18, Maliki publicly vowed to expel Blackwater, which employs about 1000 people guarding US embassy personnel in Baghdad. However, the September 21 New York Times reported that "American diplomats on Friday resumed travel in convoys escorted by Blackwater USA, the private American security contractor, three days after the Iraqi government banned the company".
Associated Press reported the next day that "Iraqi investigators have a videotape that shows Blackwater USA guards opened fire against civilians without provocation in an incident last week in which 11 people died".
The Pentagon and the US State Department employ up to 48,000 private security personnel across Iraq. These mercenaries operate under a June 2004 order issued by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) that grants them immunity from any prosecution.
The September 23 Washington Post reported: "Senior Iraqi officials repeatedly complained to US officials about Blackwater USA's alleged involvement in the deaths of numerous Iraqis, but the Americans took little action to regulate the private security firm ...
"The lack of a US response underscores the powerlessness of Iraqi officials to control the tens of thousands of security contractors who operate under US-drafted Iraqi regulations that shield them from Iraqi laws. It also raises questions about how seriously the United States will seek to regulate Blackwater, now the subject of at least three investigations by Iraqi and US authorities."
On September 26, the US Congress-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty website reported that, "Based on the current political landscape, those who oppose al-Maliki may use the Blackwater incident to further erode his already tenuous political position. If the joint US-Iraqi commission set up to investigate the Al-Nusur incident finds that some of the Blackwater contractors opened fire without provocation, but are not punished or do not end up standing trial in Iraq, then al-Maliki could be seen as a US puppet and lose any political credibility.
"Indeed, al-Maliki's vociferous condemnation of the shootings and calls for those accused to face justice, despite his understanding that CPA Order 17 will make it virtually impossible to do so, is arguably an attempt to assuage public anger and shore up his political standing."
Meanwhile, US military officials have ignored a demand made on September 22 by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani that they immediately release Mahmudi Farhadi, an Iranian detained by the US military three days earlier, after Iran's ambassador to Iraq said the arrest called into question Iraq's sovereignty.
Agence France Presse reported on September 22 that "Talabani said the Iranian seized from a hotel in northern Iraq last Thursday was a civilian official who had been visiting with the blessing of both the Kurdish regional government and the authorities in Baghdad".
In a statement addressed to the top US officials in Iraq, General David Petraeus and ambassador Ryan Crocker, Talabani, a Kurd, said: "I am informing you of our displeasure over the arrest of the Iranian civilian official without consulting the government of Kurdistan. That is a humiliation for the regional administration. You ignored our authority. I ask for his immediate release in order to maintain healthy relations between Iran and Kurdistan and for the prosperity of Kurdistan."
The US military seized Farhadi from a hotel in Sulaimaniyah, in Iraqi Kurdistan, alleging that he was an officer in the covert operations arm of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards. But Talabani insisted Farhadi was an official on a "commercial mission with the knowledge of the federal government in Baghdad and the government of Kurdistan".
AFP reported that both Tehran and the pro-US Iraqi Kurdish regional government have said that Farhadi was part of a visiting business delegation.
Iranian ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qomi told AFP that "This kind of action violates the sovereignty of Iraq". He rejected claims by US officials that Iran was undermining its neighbour's security, "insisting that, compared with Iraq's borders with U.S. allies Jordan and Saudi Arabia, the frontier with Iran was a model of security", AFP reported.
The US occupation forces are also continuing to hold five Iranians detained in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Irbil in January. US officials claim the five are members of the Quds (Jerusalem) Force of Iran's 125,000-strong Revolutionary Guards Corps and that they were aiding "terrorists" to attack US occupation troops in Iraq. But the five have never been charged. Both Iran and the Iraqi Kurdish regional government insist they are diplomats.