Hurricane katrina aftermath new orleans11/12/2023 The Blackwater operators described their mission in New Orleans as “securing neighborhoods,” as if they were talking about Sadr City. We can make arrests and use lethal force if we deem it necessary.’ The man then held up the gold Louisiana law enforcement badge he wore around his neck.” “When asked what authority they were operating under,” Scahill reported, “one guy said, ‘We’re on contract with the Department of Homeland Security.’ Then, pointing to one of his comrades, he said, ‘He was even deputized by the governor of the state of Louisiana. Armed as they would be in Iraq, with automatic rifles, guns strapped to legs, and pockets overflowing with ammo, Blackwater contractors drove around in SUVs and unmarked cars with no license plates. According Jeremy Scahill’s reporting in The Nation, Blackwater set up an HQ in downtown New Orleans. Some, like Blackwater (which has since redubbed itself Xe), were under federal contract, while a host of others answered to wealthy residents and businessmen who had departed well before Katrina and needed help protecting their property from the suffering masses left behind. It started immediately after the storm and flood hit, when civilian aid was scarce-but private security forces already had boots on the ground. The dominant narratives that have emerged, in the four years since the storm, are of a gross human tragedy, compounded by social inequities and government ineptitude-a crisis subsequently exploited in every way possible for political and financial gain.īut there’s an even harsher truth, one some New Orleans residents learned in the very first days but which is only beginning to become clear to the rest of us: What took place in this devastated American city was no less than a war, in which victims whose only crimes were poverty and blackness were treated as enemies of the state. Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.Ĭonfronted with images of corpses floating in the blackened floodwaters or baking in the sun on abandoned highways, there aren’t too many people left who see what happened following Hurricane Katrina as a purely “natural” disaster.
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