Camp Followers, Contractors, and Carpetbaggers in Iraq

http://www.hnn.us/articles/20067.html

<snip>Whatever truths eventually surface from these partisan arguments, during my time in Iraq I could not help but notice the ubiquity of one kind of reconstruction entrepreneur—the PSD or Personal Security Detail. President Bush’s broad, international “coalition of the willing” does exist but in the form of mercenaries carrying Irish, French, British, South African, Russian, German, Ukrainian, American and Nepalese (Gurkhas) passports. These (mostly) men were guarding corporate and governmental facilities, training Iraqi police, firefighters and soldiers, as well providing personal protection for Western and Iraqi civilians. It is useful to reflect on the presence of the PSDs because of the light they shed on the Bush administration’s closely entwined military, political and reconstruction policies.

Licensed to carry arms by the Coalition Provisional Authority, the PSDs’ large-scale presence certainly illustrates the previously noted pattern of cost shifting prevalent in military installations. Any corporation whose CPA contracts require an onsite presence had better provide for its own private security. But cost shifting is a consequence of other factors, and in this respect, U.S. Iraq reconstruction policy is different from any other in American history.

Two points emphasized by the presence of PSDs need to be considered sequentially. The first, now obvious to most observers, is that the U.S. lacks sufficient troops to provide meaningful ground security in all but a few key places—and not always there. Less often discussed is a second reason that lurks behind the first. If the goal were to “defeat” the insurgency, the level of ground troops should have been doubled (or more) to provide a safer environment for reconstruction, especially in the Sunni Triangle. But the goal is not (and never was) to militarily defeat the insurgency. Rather, if one ignores political rhetoric and focuses on where boots are actually on what ground—call it a garrison and patrol strategy—a strong inference arises that the overall military and political goals of reconstruction is merely to contain the insurgency until a combination of the ISF and local constabulary can assume the security function.

This is important, because it weakens one of the administration’s rationales used to sustain public support for the war—we fight the terrorists in Iraq so we don’t have to fight them here. Indeed, as already acknowledged by the Bush administration, a majority of the Iraqi insurgents are a combination of former Ba’athists and assorted nationalists—not those likely to wage a jihad inside the United States. What this also suggests is that even given the most optimistic scenarios for reorganizing the ISF, the insurgency could continue for decades. This is not an insurmountable problem—many countries manage to function even with active, domestic terrorists (e.g., Russia, Israel, Spain, Algeria.)

But a garrison-and-patrol strategy cannot produce safety comparable to the security standards of occupied Germany, Japan or Italy. Whatever the public was led to expect, it is my opinion that even after confronting a larger-than-expected insurgency, U.S. forces in Iraq were never intended to produce post-WWII levels of security; rather, security is maintained at levels sufficient to keep the oil fields and MSRs {Main Routes of Supply} open and commerce flowing. (Perhaps it is an unintended consequence, but in one perverse sense, weaker security also provides the Iraqis with incentives to accelerate domestic security formation, i.e., the U.S. will not “do” it for them.) Nevertheless, because so much reconstruction—of power grids, water and sewer systems, and telecommunications, to name a few—takes place away from the protective wing of U.S./Iraqi forces, private entities are sometimes left to fend for themselves. Thus, in parts of Iraq, private contractors are kidnapped, sometimes for ransom, sometimes for murder; and sometimes, private security services battle insurgents and criminals directly.

was trying to address by committing more troops