That said, the U.S. Army has a well-documented history of throwing out great soldiers as soon as conflicts wind down. For example, following the Vietnam conflict, thousands of highly skilled helicopter pilots and special forces officers were forcibly discharged from the army. The peacetime military no longer required their services. It is reasonable to assume that the same thing will happen after the Iraq conflict. Those commissioned officers who joined the service to fly helicopters are pretty much out of a flying job once they attain the rank of captain. If they still want to fly in combat-type operations, their only choice is to sign on with a security contractor like Blackwater USA. When a soldier leaves the service now and goes to work for a contracting firm, he or she may be just a year or so ahead of the axe. For the most part, it’s the U.S. military’s fault for losing highly qualified people, not the compensation offers of contracting firms. Even our best-trained soldiers have little or no job security. It’s foolhardy to believe otherwise.
Furthermore, all branches of the military send people to school with highly specific prerequisites that the service member will have x amount of time remaining on his or her enlistment following completion of the training. This ensures that U.S. armed forces get an adequate return on their investment. The military has the option of increasing the time requirements remaining after schooling is complete, or improving the pay and working conditions for highly skilled personnel.
Perhaps it isn’t a bad thing that the Department of Defense is faced with some healthy competition. The U.S. Air Force, in particular, has had a tough time through the years retaining pilots who might be lured out of the service for much higher paying jobs flying commercial airliners. The DoD has addressed this problem, at least in part, by developing compensation and benefits packages, including fair pay, retirement, and a bonus system that recognizes the extraordinary demands of military service on the individual service members and their families. A more recent development is the DoD’s effort to improve retention of special forces personnel along these same lines.
Salaries for contractors and especially security contractors are often exaggerated in the press. Like the stories about fourteen-hundred-dollar coffeemakers and three-thousand-dollar toilet seats, accounts of individuals making a thousand dollars a day are taken to represent the entire profession. While true in extremely rare cases, these stories don’t accurately represent the usual compensation, nor do they take expenditures or costly sacrifices into account. Most U.S. citizens working in a war zone are skilled at their jobs and are making between $50,000 and $120,000 a year. Similar jobs in the United States would pay about 20 to 30 percent less. The few contractors who make more are typically in very dangerous assignments, such as the Blackwater USA contractors who provided security for Paul Bremer, the top U.S. man in Iraq at the time.
Most contractors say they would have gone to the war zone for half of their salary. Common motivating characteristics among these men and women is their desire for adventure, a sense of patriotism, and work flexibility not found in military service. They look for professionalism in their contracting firm of choice—the kind that keeps a person alive—with compensation a secondary factor at best. For most rational people, money alone could never be worth the risk that war zone contractors face on a daily basis.
Critics are quick to point out huge contracts and accuse contracting firms of bilking the U.S. government. If those critics were to ride shotgun in a KBR truck from Kuwait to Mosul for just one day, they might change their minds. Iraq is a scary place, and it tests one’s values and deeply held convictions. When faced with the reality of what’s going on, money alone is meager compensation. People who go there for the money often return home within a week after arrival. That’s their prerogative. If it weren’t for strict military discipline, many soldiers would be headed home right there with them, patriotism or sense of duty be damned.
KBR operates under cost-plus contracts. According to the General Accounting Office (GAO), they receive their actual costs plus 1 to 3 percent profit above and beyond their expenses. The awards are down from the 1 to 9 percent formerly awarded during the 1990s. This is in line with most defense contracts and is not extraordinary by any industry standards, even if they achieve their maximum profit potential.
Granted, that still amounts to a lot of money given that contracts for Halliburton and its subsidiary, KBR, are running into the billions of dollars, but it certainly does not fit the business model of most U.S. enterprises. Especially when taken into the context of the job KBR is performing, the profits are marginal. According to Alfred Neffgin, a KBR CEO, during his congressional testimony in July 2004, his employees, equipment, and construction sites in Iraq were enduring forty to eighty enemy attacks per week. Since then, insurgent attacks have consistently increased and those numbers have gone up substantially.
Some security companies bill $1,500 to $2,000 per day, per contractor. These billing charges are unrelated to the individual contractor’s compensation. After factoring in extraordinary expenses—overhead such as the cost of health and life insurance, everyday transportation in and out of the war zone, lodging, and specialized equipment—the profits don’t look so profitable. And it’s nearly impossible to gauge the long-term health of private military contractors, given the volatility of the international political situation. Only a handful of PMCs survive in this volatile business environment.
And if not for ready, willing, and able civilian contractors, who else would do it? Critics often fail to calculate the true cost of maintaining a large enough military force capable of responding to the full spectrum of potential conflicts. By some estimates, a soldier earning $35,000 to $40,000 a year actually costs the government about $25,000 a month. Contracting secures badly needed talent without the long-term economic or political costs.
Those individual contractors who do survive and grow accustomed to the missions seem to have trouble leaving. When they do leave the war zone, they often return home and find themselves walking in circles. Nothing seems to make them happy or content. They’ve lived on the edge too long and now find it hard to cope with regular life. It sounds strange, but many head back to the war zone not for the money, but for the experience of closeness with fellow human beings, that special camaraderie that comes from facing danger together on a daily basis.
The real difference between soldiers and contractors is that contractors have more experience. Some would argue that the civilian contractor should not only get paid for it, he should get paid well. As with any profession, experience is a highly valued commodity. Whether the contractor is a long-haul trucker or a former drill sergeant, he’s been doing his job for years. He is damn good at it. He has developed a lot of skills. And most importantly, he isn’t any less a patriotic citizen than those in uniform.
Cronyism
Kellogg, Brown & Root’s geographical dispersion, core pool of skilled personnel, and equipment designed for the Iraq war zone are virtually unmatched. Their subcontractors know the drill, and they understand the nuances of working with U.S. military units. The learning curve for a new low-bid contractor is painful at best and can cost lives at worst. KBR has a reputation for getting the job done. For whatever reasons, KBR received so many initial contracts, one can find little fault in their ability to meet government requirements in a professional and expeditious manner. The U.S. military is reticent to send an unseasoned unit into the war zone, and it follows that we would not want to send in unseasoned contractors.
Major Thomas Palermo knows something about the real cost of trying to run a war in a competitive bidding scenario. He commands NAVISTAR, a dusty convoy staging base on the Kuwait-Iraq border. “When I first came to the Middle East I was not a KBR fan,” Palermo admits. “But now that we have been forced to award building and trucking contracts to other low bidders, I have truly come to appreciate what KBR brings to the table. Most of the new firms are just clueless as to how to get the job done. They bluffed their way into a contract as a ‘qualified�
� bidder and now we are paying the price. At least you felt with KBR that they were just an extension of your military unit. They know what to do and don’t gripe at every turn. They are truly a ‘can-do’ operation.”
KBR began as Brown and Root, founded in Texas in 1919 by siblings George R. Brown and Herman Brown and their brother-in-law, Dan Root. Its first job was supervising the building of naval warships. KBR’s start-up scenario is similar to that of its younger contracting peers: a couple of retired generals founded the company, then got their foot in the door with the help of the active-duty generals who were their understudies in years past.
Many believe this is a classic old-boy network, and thus should be subject to a fairness evaluation process; if the fair-haired stepchild gets the war zone contract, it should be disallowed. All things being equal, yes; however, all things are not equal, particularly when it’s about life and death. Objectivity is not the highest priority in a war zone strewn with roadside bombs and the threat of beheadings. When it comes to training coalition forces or protecting the interim Iraqi president, one questions whether the trust that comes from only personal, first-hand knowledge of a contractor’s experience should be outweighed by another contractor’s low bid.
The growth of modern contracting is a relatively new phenomenon—easy to criticize, but hard for policy makers to wrap their arms around. They have yet to digest all the implications and seem light years away from any real solution to the issue of fairness in hiring contractors. Perhaps there needs to be some elaborate proving ground that will demonstrate and test the abilities of trainers and armed war-zone contractors. Meanwhile, the cronyism charges will continue as the old-boy network thrives, some would argue, by life-or-death necessity.
Disproportionate Role
In March 2004, four Blackwater USA contractors ran out of luck on a mission into Fallujah. Crowds ambushed and killed a team of former Navy Seals and U.S. Army Rangers, suspending two of their lifeless bodies from a bridge, leaving the other two dead, burned, and dismembered at the scene of the ambush.
Blackwater asserted that the four men were security contractors, providing protection for a food truck on its way to a U.S. military base, and reports of their being mercenaries on a mission to snatch insurgents were false. Much of the world refused to make the distinction. Security contractor is just another name for paid mercenary, and the general feeling outside the United States is that they got what they deserved.
Overwhelmingly, the majority of security contractor missions in Iraq consists of convoy protection, personal bodyguards, and critical-site protection. For them, the label mercenary is misleading and unwarranted. Every day in Iraq, dozens of security contractor firms are engaged in protecting mail, food, supplies, and fuel shipments throughout the country. The use of civilians to accomplish these tasks frees soldiers to do what they are there to do—fight enemy insurgents.
In the last sixty years, civilians working in a war zone generally fit one of two categories. Either they were defense contractors like Halliburton, employing personnel to rebuild a war-ravaged country’s infrastructure, or they were mercenaries. Although the public doesn’t seem to hold either in great favor, at least the lines between the two were very distinct, until now. New developments blur those distinctions: the military is over-taxed and war-zone contractors are in far greater danger than ever before. They are forced to provide their own security, and they often take up arms themselves or hire people to provide protection. Additionally, there are myriad jobs that never existed in previous wars, and everyone working in Iraq or Afghanistan requires personal security.
During the first Gulf conflict, Red Adair Company and others entered Kuwait and Iraq to put out the hundreds of oil rig fires. Back then, most of the public was supportive, if not always approving. That military units alone could not accomplish the job without the help of contractors seemed obvious. Much like the immediate aftermath of 9/11, firefighters in the Gulf had the status of true heroes.
This was only the beginning, and the business of contracting was about to explode.
While the military focused on combat preparedness for the diverse nature of future conflicts, it fell behind in the demand for the countless peripheral services that would be required in the evolving war zone. Protecting military convoys is one thing, but providing daily protection for thousands of civilian trucks pouring supplies into rebuilding a country is quite another. Even if the DoD had predicted personnel needs with 100 percent accuracy, it would still have had to outsource the countless support jobs, from providing security for local, national, and international political representatives to driving a steady stream of trucks and moving supplies under constant enemy fire. With the public’s unwillingness to support a national draft, the military will increasingly look to the private sector for the foreseeable future.
Thousands of individual contractors come from countries other than the United States. Military contracts frequently result in the hiring of third world nationals as truck drivers. This is a source of great anxiety to U.S. military forces assigned to provide security to these convoys of what are known pejoratively as “Haji drivers,” for they are completely unpredictable, particularly in an ambush situation. There could be any combination of a dozen or so languages flying around all at once. The language barrier makes the resulting chaos all the more impossible to control, so U.S. gun-truck escorts are thrilled when they see U.S. drivers at the helm.
Training military personnel to survive and win at war is a huge endeavor, and must be constantly improved and updated as the nature of war evolves. Military training commands are operating at maximum capacity. U.S. Army Reserve and National Guard training units have been spread especially thin. Therefore, our government continues to outsource military and nonmilitary training to the private sector. In so doing, it makes sense to give special consideration to former military people who understand the growing complexity of the war zone.
Training another country’s entire army is complicated to say the least, especially when that foreign army will be going straight into combat. Civilians with previous military training experience are desperately needed to fill the void. Some will be used to train foreign soldiers and others will be used to conduct specialized training for coalition force units.
Building an entire national police force largely from scratch in a country that has known only a ruthless dictatorship for decades is no easy task. Moreover, it has never been part of the U.S. military’s mission until now. Instilling a strong rule of law into the new Iraqi police force (the kind dedicated to the principle of innocent until proven guilty, and one in which even the most hardened criminals have rights) will require years of training and monitoring. Not to mention that fire departments, hospitals, schools, elections, and political and judicial processes require civilian contractors willing to risk their lives in the interests of U.S. foreign policy.
The U.S. armed forces were not designed for the kind of conflicts and security issues that the United States now faces. We can only hope that U.S. defense strategists are planning a redesign of the military force structure. The required changes will take years to implement. In the interim, civilian contractors are more than a stopgap solution and will become only more essential as our enemies present us with new threats.
Self-restraint
Security contractors have been frequently cited for shooting first and asking questions later. In one incident, a private military contractor was escorting a convoy through a U.S. Army checkpoint by helicopter. The contractor allegedly teargassed the soldiers managing the checkpoint to accelerate movement. There is no question that some civilian security firms have gotten out of hand at times. The lack of self-restraint has the potential to jeopardize U.S. objectives. And things may get worse before they get better, as new security firms pop up faster than quality-control programs can be implemented.
War zones are chaotic environments. Accurate, factual stories are hard to come by. Even the participants themselves rarely give the
same accounting of events. Allegations about undisciplined military operations materialize on a daily basis. Many have a kernel or more of truth, but others are the by products of fertile imaginations. The same can be said for allegations of misconduct on the part of civilian contractors.
The Internet is full of stories of resentment and discrimination on the part of military personnel against high-paid civilian contractors in the war zone. In some cases, military units have treated contractors poorly and with disdain. Documented cases of mistreatment of civilian contractors by soldiers or marines have emerged, but they are rare in the scheme of things.
In those few isolated cases, the mistreated contractors are often themselves former soldiers or marines. It is highly improbable that these veterans would flagrantly disregard or jeopardize the lives of military personnel. But young soldiers and marines who feel underpaid and underappreciated have a hard time suppressing their jealousy toward contractors, veterans and otherwise. They view them all as civilians with guns, living in hotels, and driving SUVs, while they, by contrast, are forced to rough it. These young servicemen and women do not always fully accept or understand the critical roles that experienced contractors fill on the battlefield.
In the rush to meet battlefield requirements, some contracting firms, whether inadvertently or by necessity, find themselves working in isolation from military units. It’s no wonder that both groups feel alienated from one another. On the other hand, relationships between contractors and military units tend to flourish when there is better communication, education, and closer working relationships. In such cases, the friendship, respect, and support for one another can be remarkable. They demonstrate all the characteristics of a team. Throughout Iraq, civilian security contractors and military personnel share information about the enemy on the roads ahead. Military homecomings, like the one held in Paris, Illinois, in June 2005, often include both civilian contractors and their counterpart soldiers.
A Bloody Business Page 4