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Businessmen from abroad keeping a low profile in Iraq

In most capital cities, foreign businessmen have a favorite hotel bar where they can unwind and swap tips about how best to deal with the locals.

Visitors to Baghdad are lucky just to find a hotel room with air conditioning and a balcony from which to make a satellite phone connection. Security measures -- such as US tank patrols and an 11pm curfew -- are a special challenge to out-of-towners looking for a watering hole.

The Al-Muhajir Hotel, for example, is an unassuming concrete building with 26 furnished apartments. There's no bar and not even a restaurant, just a reception lounge with potted plants and a 1.5m-tall Chinese urn. The place is fully occupied, by Americans.

A reporter recently approached four of them in the lobby. They were men in civilian clothes, and one held three cartridges for an AK-47 in each hand. Asked if they were businessmen, they clenched their teeth and glared.

"I can't comment on that," one said in a Deep South accent.

He wore a plastic tag around his neck identifying him as an employee of a company called Dyncorp. Maybe they all worked for Dyncorp.

"I can't comment on that either," he said.

Why all the secrecy?

"I'd rather not comment on it," he said.

When the reporter tried to talk to the hotel receptionist, the Dyncorp employee told him -- politely -- to leave. An unspecified "organization" was occupying the hotel and did not appreciate the reporter's presence, he said. In return, he agreed to pass on the reporter's card to one member of the group, an Iraqi-American businessman named Rubar Sandi.

The reporter and receptionist went outside to continue their conversation. Another American, stony-faced and wearing dark glasses, came out and stood close enough to listen.

It later emerged that many of the guests were advisers to Iraq from the US Department of Justice. Sandi was their landlord.

The nearby Ekal Hotel offered a hint of what the future might offer for foreign businessmen in Iraq's capital. A dozen plainclothes guards lingered near the entrance.

Sandi, who was inside eating lunch, said later that these men were the nucleus of a 200-member security force he was creating as a business service to foreigners.
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