For Security in Iraq, a Turn to British Know-How

Why is the field crowded with so many British companies? "They've been doing security for a while," said Doug Brooks, president of the International Peace Operations Association, a District trade group. Brooks may be understating the case. British experience in security dates back centuries, when the empire operated in far-flung locales.

The rise of international terrorism in the 1970s offered a ready opportunity for the British to capitalize on that long experience. Business executives and wealthy families increasingly found themselves targets of kidnappers. In 1975, the London insurance broker Hogg Robinson created a subsidiary called Control Risks, which offered advice to clients on how to negotiate with kidnappers. Some of its experts were recruited from Britain's elite SAS military officer corps. The consulting business took off. "Wherever a kidnapping took place, it was covered," said Simon Adamsdale, a co-founder of Control Risks, which became a separate company in the early 1980s.

In 2003, Control Risks began offering armed services when it won a contract in Iraq to provide security on behalf of the British government. Control Risks has also done work for American commercial interests in Iraq, and it has about 300 employees there.

The other long-established private security firm in the industry is ArmorGroup, which was founded in 1981 as Defence Systems Ltd. It, too, opened shop in London with experts who had served as SAS officers, and its security services initially focused on countering kidnappings.

The firm found a trove of clients in the gas and mineral extraction business, who often worked in remote terrain. Defence Systems trained private security teams, and the use of force was rare; brandishing a shotgun often sufficed. "Nothing more serious than bird scaring," said Christopher Beese, ArmorGroup's chief administrative officer who has been with the firm for 18 years. ArmorGroup has about 1,300 employees in Iraq, and a major client is the U.S. government, for which it provides convoy security.

Several British security firms say they are better suited for the job in Iraq than the Americans are. Jonathan Garratt, who served as a British platoon commander in Northern Ireland and co-founded Erinys in 2001, said that the British tend to maintain a low profile while American contractors in Iraq have a more overt presence, often marked by employees sporting goatees, wrap-around sunglasses and bandannas. "We prefer people to dress smartly," he said. His employees in Iraq wear beige trousers and blue polo shirts (along with black body armor).

British forces during the conflict in Bosnia in the early 1990s used to call Americans "Ninja Turtles," said Peter W. Singer of the Brookings Institution, the author of a book on the private military industry. That's because U.S. troops often wouldn't venture off base without an elaborate shell of military garb -- helmets, flak vests, ammunition. The British, by comparison, frequently went out in little more protection than soft hats. Beese, of ArmorGroup, said the British are merely "good at sitting down in the sand with a cup of tea and talking things over."

Perhaps ArmorGroup's biggest competitor is Aegis, which has about 1,200 employees in Iraq. The firm was co-founded in 2002 by Spicer, who retired as a lieutenant colonel before venturing into private military services.

Spicer declined to comment for this article. But his autobiography, "An Unorthodox Soldier," offers a glimpse into why outsiders may have gained traction in winning major U.S. security contracts. "As for the USA," he wrote, "politicians there are hampered by what I have come to think of as the CNN factor -- a deep-rooted concern about the reaction of the domestic voter." He cited the gruesome example of butchered bodies of U.S. troops being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993 caught on prime-time television. The American outcry, he noted, led to the military's withdrawal and created an opportunity for outside firms like his predecessor company, Sandline International, to step in. "[S]omeone," he said, "has to do it."

Staff researcher Richard Drezen contributed to this report.