When Iraq resembles a ‘Mad Max’ movie

June 16, 2007

In an excellent front-page WaPo piece, Steve Fainaru highlights today one of the most important stories of the war in Iraq that gets a fraction of the attention it deserves: private contractors from companies like Blackwater, which have been engaged in parallel “surges” of their own.

Private security companies, funded by billions of dollars in U.S. military and State Department contracts, are fighting insurgents on a widening scale in Iraq, enduring daily attacks, returning fire and taking hundreds of casualties that have been underreported and sometimes concealed, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials and company representatives.

While the military has built up troops in an ongoing campaign to secure Baghdad, the security companies, out of public view, have been engaged in a parallel surge, boosting manpower, adding expensive armor and stepping up evasive action as attacks increase, the officials and company representatives said. One in seven supply convoys protected by private forces has come under attack this year, according to previously unreleased statistics; one security company reported nearly 300 “hostile actions” in the first four months.

There was one part of Fainaru’s piece that stood out for its anecdotal significance.

Holly vowed he would never again use unarmored vehicles for convoy protection. He went to his primary shipper, Public Warehousing Co. of Kuwait, and ordered a change. PWC hired ArmorGroup, which had armed Ford F-350 pickups with steel-reinforced gun turrets and belt-fed machine guns.

Other companies followed suit, ramping up production of an array of armored and semi-armored trucks of various styles and colors, until Iraq’s supply routes resembled the post-apocalyptic world of the “Mad Max” movies.

Nothing says “progress in Iraq” like comparisons to a post-apocalyptic action film in which a desert area plunges into anarchy, with roving bands of well-armed militias struggling to maintain order.

As for the bigger picture, Fainaru describes an environment in which more than 100 private security companies operate outside of Iraqi law, providing protection for top administration officials, including U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and at least three commanding generals, including Air Force Maj. Gen. Darryl A. Scott, who oversees U.S. military contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In all, it’s the biggest military outsourcing project anyone’s ever seen.

The military plans to outsource at least $1.5 billion in security operations this year, including the three largest security contracts in Iraq: a “theaterwide” contract to protect U.S. bases that is worth up to $480 million, according to Scott; a contract for up to $475 million to provide intelligence for the Army and personal security for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; and a contract for up to $450 million to protect reconstruction convoys. The Army has also tested a plan to use private security on military convoys for the first time, a shift that would significantly increase the presence of armed contractors on Iraq’s dangerous roads.

“The whole face of private security changed with Iraq, and it will never go back to how it was,” said Leon Sharon, a retired Special Operations officer who commands 500 private Kurdish guards at an immense warehouse transit point for weapons, ammunition and other materiel on the outskirts of Baghdad.

U.S. officials and security company representatives emphasized that contractors are strictly limited to defensive operations. But company representatives in the field said insurgents rarely distinguish between the military and private forces, drawing the contractors into a bloody and escalating campaign.

As for casualties, we know about U.S. military losses, and we have a vague sense of Iraqi losses, but attacks on private security forces go unreported. The Pentagon won’t release statistics on contractor casualties or the number of attacks, and according to one veteran who spent 2 1/2 years in Iraq, it’s because the administration doesn’t want Americans to know about these other Americans who are fighting and dying in large numbers.

“It was like there was a major war being fought out there, but we were the only ones who knew about it,” said Victoria Wayne, who served as deputy director for logistics for one of the companies.

Using security contractors for escorting military convoys will ensure more Iraqi civilian deaths since contractors are not held to the same rules of engagement and use of deadly force. If security contractors are identified as having killed civilians under questionable circumstances, the security firm sends the contractor back to the US, shutting the door on any investigations. All these civilian deaths is a major reason why the US is so unpopular. Frontline Private Warriors is worth the time to watch and it highlights that these contract firms are unwilling or unable to state what all this is costing.

  • This is the creation of “war gangs” and private armies that will come back to haunt us all. Perhaps the “insurgents” will follow suit and raise money to hire their own “security forces”.
    This is how the Government has replaced the draft. It gives them a better opportunity to work in secret because with a draft soldiers and legitimate personnel loyal to the constitution would be managing the convoys.
    Instead we’ve allowed the gov. to hire mercenaries loyal only to their pay masters.

  • This was the under-the-radar plan all along. Perhaps one day, we’ll find out just how much money companies such as Blackwater have been given, how many of their ’employees’ have been killed and injured, and just how pervasive and deep the raiding of our treasury has been.

    But all is going according to plan.

  • Back before the French Revolution, there wasn’t much distinction between “regular” soldiers and mercenaries. All of them were paid by the king, and if the king ran out of money, the army went home. The idea that armies protected the “nation”, rather than the king, was laughable. The French revolutionaries’ mobilisation of huge conscript armies (originally for national defense, then for conquest), and the propaganda that conscription of fighting-age men was one of the duties of the citizen, was (outside of a few cases of local militias like the Swiss cantons) a genuinely new idea at the time, which has been part of the accepted national myth in most countries almost ever since.

    Until now. Most European countries have given up on conscription since the end of the cold war. The US of course ended the draft after Vietnam, but there was still the sense that volunteer soldiers were serving the common good. Unitl Iraq. The fact that military personnel and equipment are being defended by private contraactors – rather than, say, the military – suggests that our government’s military ambitions far exceed what they’re willing to ask from the public in terms of boots on the ground. Instead they’re rebuilding a 17th-century-style army that’s a mix of destitute, poorly paid nationals and cynical, well-paid mercenaries.

    It helps that, under the debt-centred Republican philosophy of government finance, money to pay for this army is essentially free (at least in the short-term, which is all that matters to these guys). And the great thing about mercenaries is: no veterans benefits, no crying family members on TV, no Army field manuals to constrain what they do with old-fashioned notions like the Geneva conventions. A complete cessation of any remaining sense that the president’s fighting men represent America. No, they’re just the house-guard of the president and his faction and cronies.This, finally, is the Revolution in Military Affairs.

  • They aren’t “Americans” – they’re otherwise-unemployable former lifer scum and far right wannabe idiots – and I hope they all get the chance to “be all the barbecue you can be,” like those four worthless pieces of shit who got what they deserved on that bridge in Fallouja 3 years ago. At least we don’t have to bury them in cemeteries where real American heroes are buried and I don’t have to run across them at the VA.

    The last time a country fielded large numbers of a private army in a war, that private army was known as the Waffen SS. Ain’t it amazing the number of parallels between that government and this one run by the grandson of the traitor who funded the earlier one?

    Let’s call them what they are: The Amerikan Waffen-SS. I wonder how many Einsatzgruppen they’re running, filling mass graves in the desert?

  • Tom Cleaver brought up a very good point. Anyone desperate or dumb enough to work for these security firms will not be supported as you were promised once you get into Iraq. The 4 Blackwater contractors killed in Falluja were killed because their vehicles got stuck in traffic. Their killers walked up to the rear of the vehicles and shot them. Blackwater was supposed to supply 2 vehicles with 3 people in each, one acting as a rear gunner. Blackwater only put 2 people in each vehicle which resulted in no rear gunner. A rear gunner may have saved their lives. Because of the public outrage over the contractor’s deaths and the treatment of the bodies in Falluja, the Marines leveled the city resulting in many civilian deaths and the highest US death toll in any month since the US has been in Bush’s War for Oil in Iraq.

  • According to Blackwater, the Falluja mess may have been caused by internal Blackwater office politics and personal animosity. One of the guys (ex SEAL) who got killed got into it with a manager who did some stupid things. This led to the ex SEAL to be assigned to the convoy and denied the things that were SOP including heavy machine guns.

    Some have said it was a deliberate setup.

  • “a contract for up to $475 million to provide intelligence for the Army”

    The concept of war by proxy is scary enough, but outsourcing intelligence gathering may be even much worse. Will US troops be fed intelligence by a company whose bottom line depends upon finding something to tell the US military and isn’t it in these companies’ best interest to prolong this conflict to keep the gravy train rolling?

    The companies may have no qualifications to discern good intel from bad, are signatory to no treaties nor bound by any international rules. They are not loyal to any cause other than their own profit. Why would any Iraqi provide any information to some guys with guns and a company logo on their chest? Will these guys have any morals or code of conduct in their treatment of people they suspect may have information?

    The War on Terror has officially become the Market on Terror.

  • “….more than 100 private security companies operate outside of Iraqi law, providing protection for top administration officials, including U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and at least three commanding generals, including Air Force Maj. Gen. Darryl A. Scott, who oversees U.S. military contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan….”

    So American troops, including those in the Special Operations community, aren’t good enough or trustworthy enough for these jobs?

    Kind of a slap in the face for those who swoar an oath to defend their country, don’t you think?
    Apparently loyalty to a paycheck is more acceptable.

  • Hey CB, can I interest you in a nice frame for this picture?

    In your whole piece, you never used the term “mercenary” one time. Come on, man, call it what it is. If everybody who called them contractors would instead call them mercenaries, there’d be a lot more outrage (as there should be!). A contractor is someone who comes and builds your house. A mercenary is someone who shoots holes in it and/or blows it up. Let’s get our terminology straight and quit buying into the Bushco word games.

    Surge = escalation
    Contractor = mercenary
    etc. ad nauseum

  • President Lindsey (@10) is right. A lot of the distrust in the French Foreign Legion (plenty of books painting them as black as could be) came from the simple fact that they were *mercenaries* and not accountable to anyone…

  • Speaking ill of the dead (Waldheim); Waffen SS is appropriate.

    Ouch, this shoe is way too tight.

  • its amazing how ignorant you all are.

    1) the contracters in iraq have a stricter ROE than us forces.
    2) in falluja everyone there was given a chance to evacuate with the only thing to keep the insurgents from leaving was a simple search as they left.
    3) few contracters actualy do anything combat-wise and those few are combat veterans that know what they are doing. the rest simply build things and cook freeing up more soldiers for what little fighting actualy takes place.
    4) 90% of the contracters involed in conoy operations drive mack trucks filled with supplies. freeing up soldiers to provide security for those convoys.

    5) IF YOU WEREN’T THERE YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO WHINE ABOUT WHATS GOING ON THERE!!!!!!!

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