http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/16/world/middleeast/asserting-its-sovereignty-ira\
q-detains-american-contractors.html?hp
 
Flexing Muscle, Baghdad Detains U.S. Contractors


________________________________
From: peter mitchell <treetop_bay@...>
To: RemoteSupportMedics@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, January 16, 2012 6:07 AM
Subject: [Remotemedics.co.uk] Positions in Iraq...Doh...!

Hi Byron,
 
Open you computer and go to Internet Explorer.
 
Type in; "International Herald Tribune"
 
Open "International Herald Tribune"
 
Main Headline = "Flexing Muscles Baghdad Detains Foreign Contractors"
 
Get someone to help you with the big words and in future old chap do check
before you make a fool of yourself...!
 
P
 
 
-- On Mon, 16/1/12, Byron Fawcus <byronfawcus@...> wrote:


From: Byron Fawcus <byronfawcus@...>
Subject: Re: [Remotemedics.co.uk] Positions in Iraq...!
To: "RemoteSupportMedics@yahoogroups.com" <RemoteSupportMedics@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Monday, 16 January, 2012, 18:58



 



Hi all,
 
It's all again chinese whispers!! They should arrest you for spreading shyte
rumours.
 
Rgds
Byron
 


________________________________
From: peter mitchell <treetop_bay@...>
To: RemoteSupportMedics@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, January 16, 2012 6:49 AM
Subject: [Remotemedics.co.uk] Positions in Iraq...!


 

 Hi all,
 
Just a bit of advice here about today's situation in Iraq...
 
On CNN (online) at this time there is a report that Iraq government has started
detaining foreign contractors and are cancelling or refusing to issue or renew
visa/permits to foreign contractors..!
 
Apart from anything else it will be the usual thing of corruption and Iraqis
wanting to take over the companies for themselves..
 
However anyone considering this should take a look at the CNN report and check
up on things first...!
 
Cheers
 
P.
 
 
 
 
 
On Sun, 15/1/12, Andrew B. Austin <abaustin+yahoogroups@...> wrote:

From: Andrew B. Austin <abaustin+yahoogroups@...>
Subject: Re: [Remotemedics.co.uk] Flight Medic & Nurse positions - Irbil, Iraq
To: RemoteSupportMedics@yahoogroups.com
Date: Sunday, 15 January, 2012, 8:19

 

While I get keeping pay "a secret," I never quite understood not publishing the
rotations, especially considering the range of possible rotations for similar
positions (from "full time-residential" to 6 on/6 off). It would seem
inefficient to only share that information with people AFTER they were selected.

I'm not trying to call you out specifically, as for all I know you're just
passing something along or doing what you're told, just commenting in general. I
just wouldn't be surprised if this keeps some otherwise qualified persons away.

Austin

On Jan 13, 2012, at 9:43 AM, firepup.rm wrote:

> Executive Jet Middle East is looking for flight medics & flight nurses to work
on rotary & fixed wing operations here in Irbil, Iraq.
>
> Experience in critical care is needed for flight nurses, while PHTLS and ACLS,
are needed for paramedics. All candidates should have experience working in or
around aircraft. Candidates with prior work history in a non-permissive
environment and a working knowledge of TCCC guidelines are preferred.
>
> This position will be in support of oil & gas exploration and extraction in
the region. Details concerning pay, rotations, benefits will be discussed with
those who are selected. Pay will be commensurate with remote work expectations.
>
> Please send your relevant medical certifications or license information with
your resume to jobs@...
>
> PM me for any specific questions.
>
> Company web site is: http://www.sahara-aviation.com
>
>

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By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and ERIC SCHMITT
BAGHDAD — Iraqi authorities have detained a few hundred foreign contractors in
recent weeks, industry officials say, including many Americans who work for the
United States Embassy, in one of the first major signs of the Iraqi
government’s asserting its sovereignty after the American troop withdrawal
last month.
The detentions have occurred largely at the airport in Baghdad and at
checkpoints around the capital after the Iraqi authorities raised questions
about the contractors’ documents, including visas, weapons permits and
authorizations to drive certain routes. Although no formal charges have been
filed, the detentions have lasted from a few hours to nearly three weeks.
The crackdown comes amid other moves by the Iraqi government to take over
functions that had been performed by the United States military and to claim
areas of the country it had controlled. In the final weeks of the military
withdrawal, the son of Iraq’s prime minister began evicting Western companies
and contractors from the heavily fortified Green Zone, which had been the heart
of the United States military operation for much of the war.
Just after the last American troops left in December, the Iraqis stopped issuing
and renewing many weapons licenses and other authorizations. The restrictions
created a sequence of events in which contractors were being detained for having
expired documents that the government would not renew.
The Iraqi authorities have also imposed new limitations on visas. In some recent
cases, contractors have been told they have 10 days to leave Iraq or face arrest
in what some industry officials call a form of controlled harassment.
Latif Rashid, a senior adviser to the Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, and a
former minister of water, said in an interview that the Iraqis’ deep mistrust
of security contractors had led the government to strictly monitor them. “We
have to apply our own rules now,” he said.
This month, Iraqi authorities kept scores of contractors penned up at
Baghdad’s international airport for nearly a week until their visa disputes
were resolved. Industry officials said more than 100 foreigners were detained;
American officials acknowledged the detainments but would not put a number on
them.
Private contractors are integral to postwar Iraq’s economic development and
security, foreign businessmen and American officials say, but they remain a
powerful symbol of American might, with some Iraqis accusing them of running
roughshod over the country.
An image of contractors as trigger-happy mercenaries who were above the law was
seared into the minds of Iraqis after several violent episodes involving private
sector workers, chief among them the 2007 shooting in Baghdad’s Nisour Square
when military contractors for Blackwater killed 17 civilians.
Iraq’s oil sector alone, which accounts for more than 90 percent of the
government’s budget, relies heavily on tens of thousands of foreign employees.
The United States Embassy employs 5,000 contractors to protect its 11,000
employees and to train the Iraqi military to operate tanks, helicopters and
weapons systems that the United States has sold them.
The United States had been providing much of the accreditation for contractors
to work in Iraq. But after the military withdrawal, contractors had to deal with
a Iraqi bureaucracy at a time when the government was engulfed in a political
crisis and Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, fearing a coup, was moving tanks
into the Green Zone.
The delays for visa approvals have disrupted the daily movement of supplies and
personnel around Iraq, prompting formal protests from dozens of companies
operating in Iraq. And they have raised deeper questions about how the Maliki
government intends to treat foreign workers and how willing foreign companies
will be to invest here.
“While private organizations are often able to resolve low-level disputes and
irregularities, this issue is beyond our ability to resolve,” the
International Stability Operations Association, a Washington-based group that
represents more than 50 companies and aid organizations that work in conflict,
post-conflict and disaster relief zones, said in a letter on Sunday to Secretary
of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Doug Brooks, president of the organization, said in a telephone interview that
the number of civilian contractors who have been detained was in the “low
hundreds.” He added in an e-mail on Sunday, “Everyone is impacted, but the
roots have more to do with political infighting than any hostility to the
U.S.”
As Iraqi and American officials were negotiating last summer to keep American
troops in Iraq into 2012, the Iraqis refused to grant American troops immunity
from Iraqi law, in large part because of violent episodes like the one in Nisour
Square. Although the contractors working for the embassy are doing many of the
same jobs American troops had, including training, logistics, maintenance and
private security, they are not protected from Iraqi law.
Mr. Rashid, the adviser to Mr. Talabani, said Iraqis are fed up with foreign
contractors. “The Iraqi public is not happy with security contractors. They
caused a lot of pain,” he said. “There is a general bad feeling towards the
security contractors among the Iraqis and that has created bad feelings towards
them all.”
Mr. Rashid said that traveling to the United States to work was no different.
“Every time I go to the airport in New York they open my suitcase three
times,” he said. “How long does it take to get an American visa?”
An adviser to Mr. Maliki said that as part of the current agreement between the
United States and Iraq, no Americans should be in the country without the
permission of the Iraqi government.
“Iraq always welcomes foreigners into the country, but they have to come
through legally and in a way that respects that Iraq now has sovereignty and
control over its land,” said the adviser, Ali Moussawi.
Last month, two Americans, a Fijian and 12 Iraqis employed by Triple Canopy, a
private security company, were detained for 18 days after their 10-vehicle
convoy from Kalsu, south of Baghdad, to Taji, north of the capital, was stopped
for what Iraqi officials said was improper paperwork.
One of the Americans, Alex Antiohos, 32, a former Army Green Beret medic from
North Babylon, N.Y., who served in the Iraq war, said in a telephone interview
Sunday that he and his colleagues were kept at an Iraqi army camp, fed
insect-infested plates of rice and fish, forced to sleep in a former jail, and
though not physically mistreated were verbally threatened by an Iraqi general
who visited them periodically. “At times, I feared for my safety,” Mr.
Antiohos said.
In a statement, Triple Canopy, which denied any problems with documents, said
that during the detention period, company officials were in contact with
employees by cellphone, and brought them food, blankets, clothing, medical
supplies and cellphone batteries. All were released unharmed on Dec. 27.
The detention drew the ire of Representative Peter T. King, a New York
Republican who heads the House Homeland Security Committee. His office was
contacted by Mr. Antiohos’s wife on Dec. 19 seeking help to get the employees
released. Mr. King criticized the United States Embassy in Baghdad for failing
to help release the contractors caught in a drama that he said might have
resulted in part from rival Iraqi ministries’ battling for political primacy.
“They could have been held as power plays by one Iraq department against
another, but what adds to the problem is that it does not appear that the State
Department is doing anything near what they could be doing,” Mr. King said in
a telephone interview.
The United States Embassy in Baghdad, as well as senior State Department and
military officials, say that no Americans are currently being detained, and they
insist the detentions and visa delays are more the result of bureaucratic
inexperience than malevolent intentions.
“The embassy has pushed for consistency and transparency in the government of
Iraq’s immigration and customs procedures and urged American citizens to
review their travel documents to ensure that they comply with Iraqi requirements
to help avoid such incidents,” an Embassy spokesman said in a statement.
One senior American military official said that the current disconnect between
the Iraqis and the contractors was “primarily an adjustment of our standard
operating procedures as we adapt our people and they adapt their security forces
to the new situation.”
Michael S. Schmidt reported from Baghdad, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

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