Security Companies: Shadow Soldiers in Iraq

[R. A. Hettinga]

<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/19/international/middleeast/19SECU.html?th=&pagewanted=print&position=>

The New York Times

April 19, 2004

Security Companies: Shadow Soldiers in Iraq
By DAVID BARSTOW

his article was reported by David Barstow, James Glanz, Richard A. Oppel
Jr. and Kate Zernike and was written by Mr. Barstow.

They have come from all corners of the world. Former Navy Seal commandos
from North Carolina. Gurkas from Nepal. Soldiers from South Africa's old
apartheid government. They have come by the thousands, drawn to the dozens
of private security companies that have set up shop in Baghdad. The most
prized were plucked from the world's elite special forces units. Others may
have been recruited from the local SWAT team.

But they are there, racing about Iraq in armored cars, many outfitted with
the latest in high-end combat weapons. Some security companies have formed
their own "Quick Reaction Forces," and their own intelligence units that
produce daily intelligence briefs with grid maps of "hot zones." One
company has its own helicopters, and several have even forged diplomatic
alliances with local clans.

 Far more than in any other conflict in United States history, the Pentagon
is relying on private security companies to perform crucial jobs once
entrusted to the military. In addition to guarding innumerable
reconstruction projects, private companies are being asked to provide
security for the chief of the Coalition Provisional Authority, L. Paul
Bremer III, and other senior officials; to escort supply convoys through
hostile territory; and to defend key locations, including 15 regional
authority headquarters and even the Green Zone in downtown Baghdad, the
center of American power in Iraq.

 With every week of insurgency in a war zone with no front, these companies
are becoming more deeply enmeshed in combat, in some cases all but
obliterating distinctions between professional troops and private
commandos. Company executives see a clear boundary between their defensive
roles as protectors and the offensive operations of the military. But more
and more, they give the appearance of private, for-profit militias - by
several estimates, a force of roughly 20,000 on top of an American military
presence of 130,000.

 "I refer to them as our silent partner in this struggle," Senator John W.
Warner, the Virginia Republican and Armed Services Committee chairman, said
in an interview.

The price of this partnership is soaring. By some recent government
estimates, security costs could claim up to 25 percent of the $18 billion
budgeted for reconstruction, a huge and mostly unanticipated expense that
could delay or force the cancellation of billions of dollars worth of
projects to rebuild schools, water treatment plants, electric lines and oil
refineries.

 In Washington, defense experts and some leading Democrats are raising
alarms over security companies' growing role in Iraq.

 "Security in a hostile fire area is a classic military mission," Senator
Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a member of the Armed Service committee, wrote
last week in a letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed by 12
other Democratic senators. "Delegating this mission to private contractors
raises serious questions."

 The extent and strategic importance of the alliance between the Pentagon
and the private security industry has been all the more visible with each
surge of violence. In recent weeks, commandos from private security
companies fought to defend coalition authority employees and buildings from
major assaults in Kut and Najaf, two cities south of Baghdad. To the north,
in Mosul, a third security company repelled a direct assault on its
headquarters. In the most publicized attack, four private security
contractors were killed in an ambush of a supply convoy in Fallujah.

The Bush administration's growing dependence on private security companies
is partly by design. Determined to transform the military into a leaner but
more lethal fighting force, Mr. Rumsfeld has pushed aggressively to
outsource tasks not deemed essential to war-making. But many Pentagon and
authority officials now concede that the companies' expanding role is also
a result of the administration's misplaced optimism about how Iraqis would
greet American reconstruction efforts.

The authority initially estimated that security costs would eat up about 10
percent of the $18 billion in reconstruction money approved by Congress,
said Capt. Bruce A. Cole of the Navy, a spokesman for the authority's
program management office.

But after months of sabotage and insurgency, some officials now say a much
higher percentage will go to security companies that unblushingly charge
$500 to $1,500 a day for their most skilled operators.

 "I believe that it was expected that coalition forces would provide
adequate internal security and thus obviate the need for contractors to
hire their own security," said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the new inspector
general of the authority. "But the current threat situation now requires
that an unexpected, substantial percentage of contractor dollars be
allocated to private security."

"The numbers I've heard range up to 25 percent," Mr. Bowen said in a
telephone interview from Baghdad. Mark J. Lumer, the Pentagon official
responsible for overseeing Army procurement contracts in Iraq, said he had
seen similar estimates.

But Captain Cole said that the costs were unlikely to reach that level and
that the progress of reconstruction would eventually alleviate the current
security problems.

Still, in many ways the accelerating partnership between the military and
private security companies has already outrun the planning for it.

 There is no central oversight of the companies, no uniform rules of
engagement, no consistent standards for vetting or training new hires. Some
security guards complain bitterly of being thrust into combat without
adequate firepower, training or equipment. There are stories of inadequate
communication links with military commanders and of security guards
stranded and under attack without reinforcements.

Only now are authority officials working to draft rules for private
security companies. The rules would require all the companies to register
and be vetted by Iraq's Ministry of Interior. They would also give them the
right to detain civilians and to use deadly force in defense of themselves
or their clients. "Fire only aimed shots," reads one proposed rule,
according to a draft obtained by The New York Times.

Several security companies have themselves been pressing for the rules,
warning that an influx of inexperienced and small companies has contributed
to a chaotic atmosphere. One company has even enlisted a former West Point
philosopher to help it devise rules of conduct.

"What you don't need is Dodge City out there any more than you've already
got it," said Jerry Hoffman, chief executive of Armor Group, a large
security company working in Iraq. "You ought to have policies that are fair
and equal and enforceable."

Company executives argue that their services have freed up thousands of
troops for offensive combat operations.

But some military leaders are openly grumbling that the lure of $500 to
$1,500 a day is siphoning away some of their most experienced Special
Operations people at the very time their services are most in demand.

Pentagon and coalition authority officials said they had no precise tally
of how many private security guards are being paid with government funds,
much less how many have been killed or wounded. Yet some Democrats and
others suggest that the Bush administration is relying on these companies
to both mask the cost of the war and augment an overstretched uniformed
force.

 Mr. Rumsfeld has praised the work of security companies and disputed the
idea that they were being pressed into action to make up for inadequate
troop levels.

Still, the government recently advertised for a big new contract - up to
$100 million to guard the Green Zone in Baghdad.

 "The current and projected threat and recent history of attacks directed
against coalition forces, and thinly stretched military force, requires a
commercial security force that is dedicated to provide Force Protection
security," the solicitation states.
 Danger Zones: Rising Casualties and Deal Making

The words did not match the images from Iraq.

At a Philadelphia conference last week, a government official pitched the
promise of Iraq to dozens of business owners interested in winning
reconstruction contracts.

William H. Lash III, a senior Commerce Department official, said Baghdad
was flowering, that restaurants and hotels were reopening. He told of
driving around Baghdad and feeling out of place wearing body armor among
ordinary Iraqis. In any case, he joked, the armor "clashed with my suit,"
so he took it off.

But the view from Iraq is considerably less optimistic, with contracting
companies and allied personnel alike hunkering down in walled-off
compounds. "We're really in an unprecedented situation here," said Michael
Battles, co-founder of the security company Custer Battles. "Civilian
contractors are working in and amongst the most hostile parts of a conflict
or postconflict scenario."

One measure of the growing danger comes from the federal Department of
Labor, which handles workers' compensation claims for deaths and injuries
among among contract employees working for the military in war zones.

Since the start of 2003, contractors have filed claims for 94 deaths and
1,164 injuries. For all of 2001 and 2002, by contrast, contractors reported
10 deaths and 843 injuries. No precise nation-by-nation breakdown is yet
available, but Labor Department officials said an overwhelming majority of
the cases since 2003 were from Iraq.

With mounting casualties has come the exponential growth of the
little-known industry of private security companies that work in the
world's hot spots. In Iraq, almost all of them are on the United States
payroll, either directly through contracts with government agencies or
indirectly through subcontracts with companies hired to rebuild Iraq.

Global Risk Strategies, one of the first security companies to enter Iraq,
now has about 1,500 private guards in Iraq, up from 90 at the start of the
war. The Steele Foundation has grown to 500 from 50. Erinys, a company
barely known in the security industry before the war, now employs about
14,000 Iraqis.

In many cases companies are adapting to the dangers of Iraq by replicating
the tactics they perfected on Special Forces teams. One, Special Operations
Consulting-Security Management Group, has recruited Iraqi informants who
provide intelligence that helps the company assess threats, said Michael A.
Janke, the company's chief operating officer.

 The combination of a deadly insurgency and billions of dollars in aid
money has unleashed powerful market forces in the war zone. New security
companies aggressively compete for lucrative contracts in a frenzy of deal
making.

"A lot of firms have put out a shingle, and they're not geared to operate
in that environment," said Mr. Hoffman, the Armor Group chief executive.

 One security company, the Steele Foundation, recently turned down an $18
million contract for a corporation that wanted a security force deployed
within only a few days; Steele said it simply could not find enough
qualified guards so quickly. Another company promptly jumped at the
contract.

"They just throw bodies at it," said Kenn Kurtz, Steele's chief executive
officer.

Early on in the war, private security contractors came mostly from elite
Special Operations forces. It is a small enough world that checking
credentials was easy. But as demand has grown, so has the difficulty of
finding and vetting qualified people.

"At what point do we start scraping the barrel?" asked Simon Faulkner,
chief operating officer of Hart, a British security company. "Where are
these guys coming from?"

When four guards working for a subcontractor hired by Erinys were killed in
an attack in January, they were revealed to be former members of
apartheid-era security forces in South Africa. One had admitted to crimes
in an amnesty application to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission there.
"We were very alarmed," said Michael Hutchings, the chief executive of
Erinys Iraq. "We went back to our subcontractors and told them you want to
sharpen up on your vetting."

Troops and Guards: Distinctions Are Hard to Keep

For private security contractors, the rules of engagement are seemingly
simple. They can play defense, but not offense. In fact, military legal
experts say, they risk being treated as illegal combatants if they support
military units in hostile engagements.

"We have issued no contracts for any contractor to engage in combat," Mr.
Lumer, the Army procurement official.

 What has happened, Mr. Lumer said in an interview, is that the Pentagon
has, to a "clearly unprecedented" degree, relied on security companies to
guard convoys, senior officials and coalition authority facilities.

 No one wants regular troops "standing around in front of buildings," he
said. "You don't want them catching jaywalkers or handing out speeding
tickets."

But in Iraq, insurgents ignore distinctions between security guards and
combat troops. And what is more, they have made convoys and authority
buildings prime targets. As a result, security contractors have
increasingly found themselves in pitched battles, facing rocket-propelled
grenades, not jaywalkers..

It is in those engagements, several security executives said, that the
distinctions between defense and offense blur most. One notable example
came two weeks ago, when eight security contractors from Blackwater USA
helped repel a major attack on a coalition authority building in Najaf. The
men fired thousands of rounds, and then summoned Blackwater helicopters for
more.

 In an interview, Patrick Toohey, vice president for government relations
at Blackwater, grappled for the right words to describe his men's actions.
At one moment he spoke proudly of how the Blackwater men "fought and
engaged every combatant with precise fire." At another he insisted that his
men had not been engaged in combat at all. "We were conducting a security
operation," he said.

"The line," he finally said, "is getting blurred."

And it is likely to get more blurred, with private security companies
lobbying for permission to carry heavier weapons.

 "We will keep pressing for that," said Mr. Faulkner, the Hart executive -
especially after four of his men spent 14 hours on a roof of their building
in Kut fighting off 10 times as many insurgents. Another Hart employee was
killed in the assault, his body later dismembered by the mob.

 "I cannot accept a situation where four of our people are being besieged
by 40 or 60 Iraqis, where they're talking to me on a telephone saying,
`Who's coming to help?' " Mr. Faulkner said.

They are also seeking ways to improve communications with military units.

Two weeks ago, a team of private security guards fought for hours to defend
a coalition authority building in Kut. They later complained that allied
Ukrainian forces had not responded to their calls for help.

Even routine encounters between allied forces and private security teams
can be perilous. Mr. Janke, the security company executive and himself a
former Navy Seal, said that in a handful of cases over the last year,
jittery soldiers had "lit up" - fired on - security companies' convoys.

No one was killed, but standard identification procedures might have
prevented those incidents, Mr. Janke said.

Sorting out lines of authority and communication can be complex. Many
security guards are hired as "independent contractors" by companies that,
in turn, are sub-contractors of larger security companies, which are
themselves subcontractors of a prime contractor, which may have been hired
by a United States agency.

In practical terms, these convoluted relationships often mean that the
governmental authorities have no real oversight of security companies on
the public payroll.

In other cases, though, the government insists that security companies
abide by detailed rules. A solicitation for work to provide security for
the United States Agency for International Development, for example,
contains requirements on everything from attire to crisis management.

"If a chemical and/or biological threat or attack occurs, keep the area
near the guard post clear of people," the document states, adding in
capital letters, "Remember, during the confusion of this type of act, the
guards must still provide security for employees or other people in the
area."

The words are emphatic, but empty.

Government contracting officials and company executives concede that
private guards have every right to abandon their posts if they deem the
situation too unsafe. They are not subject to the Uniform Code of Military
Justice, nor can they be prosecuted under civil laws or declared AWOL.

 Scott Earhart said he left Iraq because he was disgusted at the risks he
was asked to take without adequate protection or training.

Mr. Earhart, 34, arrived in Iraq in October to work as a dog handler for a
bomb-detection company hired by Custer Battles. A former sheriff's deputy
in Maryland, he said that there were not enough weapons and that his body
armor was substandard.

"If you didn't get to the supply room in time you wouldn't have a gun," he
said.

Mr. Earhart said the breaking point came when he was asked to drive unarmed
to Baghdad from Amman, Jordan. "I felt my safety was in jeopardy," he said.

 Mr. Battles, of Custer Battles, said that it had taken longer than
expected to get weapons shipments, and that the company had had "growth
issues, like everybody else." But, he emphasized, "under no circumstances
did we let people out into the field without proper equipment."

 Clearer Rules: Search for Standards, Even a Philosophy

For more than a decade, military colleges have produced study after study
warning of the potential pitfalls of giving contractors too large a role on
the battlefield. The claimed cost savings are exaggerated or illusory, the
studies argue. Questions of coordination and oversight have not been
adequately resolved. Troops could be put at risk.

Several senior American commanders in Iraq and Kuwait, or who have recently
returned, expressed mixed feelings about the use of private security
companies.

 "The key thing is there are many requirements that are still best filled
with combat units that can call on gunship support - Apache and Kiowa
Warriors overhead - medevac, and just plain old reinforcements," one senior
Army general wrote in an e-mail message to The Times. "Our task is to
outsource what MAKES SENSE given the enemy situation."

In an unusual reversal of roles, the push for industry standards is coming
from security executives themselves. In Washington, Pentagon lawyers are
reviewing the rules governing security companies. At the same time,
coalition authority and Iraqi officials are drafting operating rules for
the private security companies.

The draft rules urge the use of "graduated force" - first shout, then
shove, then show your weapon, then shoot. And they spell out when the
guards may use deadly force. But they do not cover precisely how security
operators will be screened and trained.

For now, companies are often writing their own rules and procedures for Iraq.

 "It's an industry that if it's not careful could easily blend into what is
usually referred to as war profiteers or soldiers of fortune or
mercenaries," "It is a very ill-defined operating space right now," Mr.
Battles said. "We draw the lines."

Custer Battles went so far as to hire an expert in military ethics, Paul
Christopher, who taught philosophy at West Point. Mr. Christopher is
helping the company define its place and policies in the chaos of Iraq.

"He's the anti-Rambo," Mr. Battles said. "This is a deep thinker."

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington for this article.


-- 
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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
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"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
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