USATODAY.com - Role of security companies likely to become more visible

Blackwater Security Consulting, which lost four employees in Wednesday's ambush in Iraq, is one of about 25 private security groups employed in Iraq to guard officials and installations, train Iraq's new army and police and provide other support for occupation forces.

The private companies employ about 15,000 people in Iraq, making them effectively the second-largest armed component of the coalition after the United States' 100,000 troops. Britain has more than 8,000 soldiers in the country.

The companies are likely to be even more visible after June 30. That's when sovereignty will be transferred from the U.S.-led coalition to an Iraqi government and the Bush administration will try to draw down the U.S. military presence.

Some critics say the companies — which employ retired military and intelligence officers from countries including the USA, Britain, South Africa, Nepal and Fiji — are largely unaccountable to governments, courts or the public. Others say the companies are a good way to provide safety in war zones. President Bush has called on a "coalition of the willing" to send troops to Iraq, but many nations have been reluctant to commit large numbers.

"We do have an international coalition in Iraq, a coalition of the billing," says Peter Singer, an analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington and author of Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry. "It is a multinational industry in where it operates and where they are from."

The use of such companies in U.S. military operations dates to the first President Bush. After the 1991 Gulf War, the Pentagon, headed by then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, paid a Halliburton subsidiary, Brown & Root Services, nearly $9 million to study how private companies could provide support in combat zones. Cheney went on to serve as CEO of Halliburton before becoming vice president.

Blackwater, based in Moyock, N.C., was founded by two former Navy SEALS in 1996 and provides a range of training and security services, according to its Web site. Among its Iraq duties: guarding Paul Bremer, the U.S. civil administrator.

A Blackwater news release said its employees were protecting a food convoy when they were attacked Wednesday. "We grieve today for the loss of our colleagues and we pray for their families," the company said Thursday.

In February, Blackwater, through a subcontractor, began hiring former combat personnel in Chile, offering up to $4,000 a month to guard oil wells in Iraq, the company official said. Some of the Chileans worked for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, the spokesman confirmed.

• Custer Battles of Fairfax, Va., which supplies personnel to guard the Baghdad airport.

• Global Risk, a British company that protects the U.S.-led civil administration.

• Pilgrims, based in the Seychelles Islands, which provides security for many Western news media outlets.

• DynCorp of Reston, Va., which helps train Iraqi police and also guards Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

• The Steele Foundation of San Francisco, which also provided the security detail for former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

• Erinys, a British company with offices in the Middle East and South Africa, which guards Iraq's oil fields. The company has come under scrutiny for hiring former South African security officers involved in the apartheid government.