Blog: watching a kidnap, Iraq style

The kidnapping will hamper the work of Western consultants at Iraqi ministries as the risks in the city increase.

Even before the abduction, the daily threat of violence meant that much contact between officials and foreign advisers was carried out either inside the fortified green zone or outside Baghdad – in the more peaceful Kurdish region or in a neighbouring country.

Iraqi and Western sources said that Tuesday’s seizure of one IT consultant and four security guards will limit further the ability of Westerners to work with ministries.

Experts from the US, Britain and other countries were brought in to help to set up Iraq’s ministries after the 2003 invasion. They offered advice on spending reconstruction money and helped to bring Iraqis up to speed on developments in technology that they missed under Saddam Hussein.

The ministries then hired foreign advisers and companies. But the Industry and Minerals Minister, Fawzi Hariri, told The Times that his ministry currently employed no foreign advisers, partly because of the security risk and therefore cost of having a nonIraqi on board.

“Most companies are not insured to the level that would allow them to send their people,” he said.

The Electricity Ministry, however, has to work with foreign energy firms because they own much of the technology being used across the network, one of its officials said.

“The kidnapping of the Britons may have an impact on advisers going to other ministries,” he said. However, he insisted that security measures at the electricity compound were “quite secure”.

Diplomats from countries that donated money to Iraq’s reconstruction fund often come to the Electricity Ministry to discuss how projects are going. “We deal with them without any consideration for their nationalities,” the official said.

But in the past year foreign consultants have become a lot more cautious about stepping outside the green zone. Any trip to a ministry office – such as the Finance Ministry building visited by the five Britons – involves a military-style operation with security guards, guns and armoured vehicles.

One British official working for a ministry was certain that the kidnapping would have a negative effect on the ability of people like him to do their jobs. “A number of people will decide the risk is just too great and that was the final straw,” he said. “You can’t go everywhere with a small army.”

The risk to foreign advisers working for ministries also applies to ministry officials and – to an even greater extent – the ministers themselves.

Mr Hariri said that it was impossible to counter every threat. “No amount of security can deal with a determined assassin or ambush,” he said.

Nevertheless, he conducts 80 per cent of his work in normal Baghdad and just 20 per cent of meetings in the green zone.

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