Did Blackwater’s Rules of Engagement Work Against It in Nisour Square?

The New York Times has a piece out today adding new details about the September 16 Blackwater shootings in Nisour Square. Relying largely on 12 Iraqis described as eyewitnesses, Iraqi investigators and a U.S. official familiar with one of the American investigations, the account suggests Blackwater’s rules of engagement worked against both the Blackwater convoy and the Iraqis left dead and wounded.

The State Department’s rules of engagement for Blackwater call for a series of escalating measures starting with signaled and verbal warnings to halt and progressing to the use of deadly force.

The Iraqi Interior Ministry account of the shooting is familiar by now: a car carrying a young family was ordered to stop by a traffic policeman so a Blackwater convoy could pass through. But the car rolled forward, resulting in Blackwater guards killing the driver, his wife and their young child — and sparking the melee that followed.

But the Times reports that the car may have proceeded because its driver was already dead:

The car in which the first people were killed did not begin to closely approach the Blackwater convoy until the Iraqi driver had been shot in the head and lost control of his vehicle. Not one witness heard or saw any gunfire coming from Iraqis around the square. And following a short initial burst of bullets, the Blackwater guards unleashed an overwhelming barrage of gunfire even as Iraqis were turning their cars around and attempting to flee.

As the gunfire continued, at least one of the Blackwater guards began screaming, “No! No! No!” and gesturing to his colleagues to stop shooting, according to an Iraqi lawyer who was stuck in traffic and was shot in the back as he tried to flee. The account of the struggle among the Blackwater guards corroborates preliminary findings of the American investigation.

Yesterday, Erik Prince, CEO of Blackwater, said that it’s far from clear that Blackwater did anything wrong. That response might be self serving, but it’s not necessarily false — at least from the perspective of the State Department-issued “escalation of force” policy.

After approaching cars fail initial orders to halt, Blackwater guards are permitted to “spider” a driver’s windshield — in other words, to fire into it. Only after “spidering,” State Department security chief Richard Griffin explained, can Blackwater guards employ lethal force. If Blackwater guards were following procedure, then the bullet used to spider the windshield ended up killing the driver — which, frankly, you’d expect, since it’s the rare Iraqi civilian vehicle that possesses a bulletproof windshield, and Blackwater guards don’t typically fire low-caliber handguns like .22s.

Once the driver was killed, the car rolled forward, prompting Blackwater’s guards — who were several yards away and perpendicular to the car — to apparently believe they were in further danger from the vehicle. From there, the chaos progressed:

By then cars were struggling to get out of the line of fire, and many people were abandoning their vehicles altogether. The scene turned hellish.

“The shooting started like rain; everyone escaped his car,” said Fareed Walid Hassan, a truck driver who hauls goods in his Hyundai minibus.

He saw a woman dragging her child. “He was around 10 or 11,” he said. “He was dead. She was pulling him by one hand to get him away. She hoped that he was still alive.”

As the shooting started in earnest Jabber Salman, a lawyer on his way to the Ministry of Justice for a noon meeting, described people crying and shouting. “Some people were trying to escape by crawling,” he said. “Some people were killed in front of me.”

As Mr. Salman tried to drive away from the shooting, bullets came one after another through his rear windshield, hitting his neck, shoulders, left forearm and lower back. “I thought, ‘I’m sorry they are going to kill me and I can do nothing.’”

It could be that the rules weren’t properly followed. After all, there appeared to be no flares or thrown water bottles preceding the shooting, as, according to the rules of engagement, should have occurred. On the other hand, though, if these accounts are correct — and it should be noted that at least two investigations, one by the FBI and another joint U.S.-Iraqi inquiry, are ongoing — it might be a case of contractors following proper “spidering” procedure. If so, that procedure left Iraqis dead and Blackwater believing it was still endangered, prompting further violence in perceived self-defense.

Update: This post has been corrected to avoid giving the inaccurate impression that Prince did not comment on the September 16 incident at all.