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The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com
A lesson from Iraq war: How to
outsource war to private contractors
During the Iraq war, private defense contractors providing security and support
outnumbered troops on the ground at points. Contractors can enhance US military
capacity but also entail risks. US experience with private security contractors holds
several key lessons.
A helicopter owned by Blackwater USA, a private security contractor, flies over
central Baghdad, Iraq, Feb. 7, 2007. Op-ed contributor Molly Dunigan says 'the
United States must protect its interests and ensure that the contractors it employs
are carefully vetted and well trained. It should also continue to work toward a
commonly accepted means of holding contractors accountable for their behavior.'
(Marko Drobnjakovic/AP/file)
By Molly Dunigan / March 19, 2013 at 9:34 am EDT
Pittsburgh
Ten years after it began, the Iraq war might best be remembered as Americas
most privatized military engagement to date, with contractors hired by the Pentagon
actually outnumbering troops on the ground at various points.
This might come as a surprise to many, since the sheer number of contractors used
in Iraq was often overshadowed by events. By 2008, the US Department of
Defense employed 155,826 private contractors in Iraq and 152,275 troops. This
degree of privatization is unprecedented in modern warfare.
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One of the most important lessons of the Iraq war is that this military privatization is
likely to continue in future conflicts. This could be a good thing, as contractors can
enhance US military capacity. But any large-scale use of private military contractors
also entails risks. Recent US experience with private security contractors, in
particular, holds several critical lessons for the future.
Of course, private contractors are not new to war zones. They supported all the
major US conflicts of the late 20th century, including in Vietnam, the Balkans, and
Operation Desert Storm in Iraq. But in these cases, they mainly provided logistical
and base support.
Now, the US military has developed a growing dependence on private contractors
and for a wide range of functions traditionally handled by military personnel. The
Army spent roughly $815 million ($163 million per year, or about $200 million per
year in 2012 dollars) to employ contractors under its Logistics Civil Augmentation
Program between 1992 and 1997. But between 2001 and 2010, that expenditure
grew to nearly $5 billion per year. Of course, this latter cost coincides with US
involvement in Afghanistan as well as Iraq.
A more pertinent question and what truly sets the Iraq war apart concerns the
role of these private civilian contractors. Throughout the war, the majority (61
percent) of contracted jobs continued to be base-support functions. The next-
largest group (18 percent) of Department of Defense contractors were security
contractors. They provided security services, such as guarding installations,
protecting convoys, or acting as bodyguards.
Moreover, this outsourcing trend continued in Afghanistan, where there were
94,413 contractors in 2010, compared with 91,600 US troops.
Military outsourcing in this vein developed as a result of an increased supply of
private military services combined with increased demand. The boom in supply was
borne out of larger privatization trends in both the US and Britain in the 1980s and
1990s, which spread over into the military arena. The increased demand was due
to the strains that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan placed on the US military.
Some have speculated that this degree of outsourcing will end with the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan, but that assumption is unrealistic. The private military and security
industry is now incredibly large, powerful, and perhaps most important
adaptable. Rather than scaling back, the industry is broadening its territory,
expanding into maritime security, providing security to business and governments in
Africa, and exploring other new markets.
Both to repeat the successes of private military contracting and to avoid the
mistakes of contractors in the recent wars, the Department of Defense must
consider several points specific to security contractors in particular.
First, security contractors can have a decisive impact on the perceptions of local
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citizens in the areas where they operate. This can be either useful or problematic for
military forces on the ground, particularly when contractors are deployed alongside
troops engaged in population-focused operations.
This was indeed a problem in Iraq. In a 2008 RAND survey, 35 percent of
diplomatic personnel who had worked with armed contractors in Iraq between
2003 and 2008 reported having to manage the consequences of actions by armed
contractors against local citizens. And nearly 40 percent had witnessed armed
contractors acting in ways that were unnecessarily threatening, arrogant, or
belligerent while deployed, including throwing objects at local civilians to clear them
off roadways.
A complicating factor is that security contractors currently operate in something like
legal limbo. There are no clear-cut guidelines for their status under international
law, and many US laws dont apply to non-US citizen contractors. But any
provocative behavior by contractors has the potential to hinder military efforts.
For this reason, the United States must protect its interests and ensure that the
contractors it employs are carefully vetted and well trained. It should also continue
to work toward a commonly accepted means of holding contractors accountable
for their behavior. One promising mechanism in this regard is the International Code
of Conduct, which is being finalized by an international consortium of national
governments, civil society organizations, and, as of now, 592 private security
companies.
The US also needs to ensure that contractors and military forces can coordinate
effectively when deployed together, and that civilian personnel operating on its
behalf can easily be identified as friendly forces. At least 78 friendly-fire incidents in
Iraq between November 2004 and August 2006 were reported to involve private
security contractors; in 49 of those incidents, coalition forces fired at contractors.
Ten years on, the war in Iraq may have ended, but its impact on the way the US
goes to war is far from over.
Molly Dunigan is a political scientist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND
Corporation.
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