When America marked the death last month
of the 2,000th US service member in Iraq, many
commented that this was a meaningless milestone
made up by the media and no more important than
any other death figures.
They were in fact
right, but not for the reason they thought.
America actually reached the milestone of 2,000
long before. The reason, however, nobody commented
about it was that these fatalities came from
America's other army; that of the private sector.
As of November 14, at least 280 coalition
contractors have been killed.
Although
contractors for private military and security
companies (PMC and PSC respectively; the main
difference being that a
security contractor actually
engages in combat when necessary) have been
working for and with the American military,
various coalition allies, the old Coalition
Provisional Authority (CPA) and the Iraqi
government, the dimension of their role and
activities are still poorly understood.
Although a few of them have received the
glare of publicity due to the gruesome deaths of
some of their employees (Blackwater had four of
its contractors killed, their bodies burned and
mutilated, and two of them strung up on a bridge
over the Euphrates in Fallujah in March 2004) or
scandal (Custer Battles, which was accused of
overcharging occupation authorities by millions of
dollars), most are still unknown to the general
public.
That is hardly surprising. Similar
to the lack of planning for post major combat
operations, private contractors were hastily
called on to fill a security vacuum and throughout
2003 and 2004 were largely left on their own to do
the job.
PSCs provide such services as:
personal security details for senior civilian
officials, non-military site security (buildings
and infrastructure), and non-military convoy
security. Rather than working directly for the US
government or the CPA, most PSCs are
sub-contracted to provide protection for prime
contractor employees or are hired by other
entities such as Iraqi companies or private
foreign companies seeking business opportunities
in Iraq.
The lack of security in post-war
Iraq has created an enormous demand for PMC
services. In 2004, according to the inspector
general for the CPA, at least 10 to 15 cents of
every dollar spent on reconstruction was for
security. For some contractors the security costs
are substantially higher, approaching or even
exceeding 30% of a project's cost. While firms are
reluctant to reveal how much they are spending on
security and insurance it is estimated that for
every $100 in salary paid by the employer, at
least $20 is spent on the life insurance premium.
For most of the time since the US invasion
in 2003 nobody knew for certain how many PMCs
operated in Iraq. Last year in response to a
request from Congress, a CPA-compiled report
listed 60 PMCs with an aggregate total of 20,000
personnel (including US citizens, third-country
nationals and Iraqis). But that list was
incomplete. Missing, for example, are companies
implicated in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal such
as Titan CAC and SOS Interpreting Ltd. News
reports peg the number of interrogators from
private contractors there between 30 and 40. Most
of the armed personnel were the more than 14,000
Iraqi guards who worked the oil field security
contract for the British firm Erinys. The Iraqi
government has since resumed that task.
The total number of (non-Iraqi) PMC
gun-toting personnel is certainly fewer then
20,000; perhaps as few as 6,000 security
contractors. And despite claims to the contrary,
PMCs do not constitute the second- or
third-largest army in Iraq; they are not
coordinated into one cohesive whole, nor do they
engage in offensive operations.
Their
anonymity, however, has not prevented them from
taking causalities. On November 14, two South
Africans working for DynCorp were killed by a
roadside bomb in central Baghdad.
The
Pentagon does not distinguish between contractors
working for firms such as Halliburton or its
Kellogg, Brown and Root subsidiary and security
contractors.
According to a report last
month by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)
there was a workforce of about 38,000 employees
(including foreign nationals and subcontractor
personnel) working on the Logistics Civil
Augmentation Program (LOGCAP) in Iraq from March
2003 to November 2004. But at least 524 US
military contract workers, many of them Iraqis,
have been killed in Iraq since the March 2003
invasion, according to an October 27 Bloomberg
news report.
At least 25 Blackwater
workers have been killed in Iraq. San Diego,
California-based Titan Corp, which provides
military translators, has lost 148, the most among
the 43 companies that have filed death-benefit
claims with the Labor Department.
At least
another 3,963 were injured, according to
Department of Labor insurance-claims statistics
obtained by Knight Ridder news service. If one
assumes the base is the CBO number, that works out
to 10% of the total. Those statistics, which
experts said were the most comprehensive listing
available on the toll of the war, are far from
complete. Two of the biggest contractors in Iraq,
Halliburton and its Kellogg Brown and Root
subsidiary, said their casualties were higher than
the figures the Labor Department had for them.
The government's listing shows the
contractors' casualty rate is increasing. In the
first 21 months of the war, 11 contractors were
killed and 74 injured each month on average. This
year, the monthly average death toll is nearly 20
and the average monthly number of injured is 243.
While casualties are widespread, profits
are concentrated. Last year 12 contractors had
contracts totaling an estimated $951,614,615
(including the $293 million contract awarded to
Aegis Defense Services for coordinating security
operations). As not all of them are big contracts,
it seems clear that a majority of the overall PMC
contracts are concentrated in a small number of
firms.
However, the financial rewards can
be overplayed, especially since the downsides for
PMC contractors can be considerable. For instance,
companies enforce regular periods of unpaid
mandatory leave out of country on their employees
every few months for rest and recharge; although
it is for some tax-free, under US law citizens are
still liable to US tax if they reside within the
US for more than one month in the year.
The use of private military and security
contractors to date is mixed. Generally they have
done reasonably well in fulfilling their contracts
in Iraq. They have performed difficult missions
under trying circumstances. In several,
little-noted cases, they performed above and
beyond the call of duty.
While some of
them have been implicated in human-rights abuses
such as occurred in Abu Ghraib prison, they have
on the whole been far more professional than the
regular military forces.
But, with the
advantage of hindsight it seems clear that a lack
of strategic planning has affected private sector
operations in Iraq in the same way it has affected
the regular US military. Coordination of PMCs was
deficient, and they failed to be given sufficient
early warning before the war about how much their
services would be needed.
Things should
improve in the future as last month the Pentagon
finally released a long-awaited directive on the
roles and functions of the contractor on the
battlefield. But issuing and implementing
directives are widely different things, so
progress will be slow.
David
Isenberg, a senior analyst with the
Washington-based British American Security
Information Council (BASIC), has a wide background
in arms control and national security issues. The
views expressed are his own.
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