A Bloody Business

by Gerry Schumacher

  Skeet gets on the radio to Viper Operations Center. “Range status red,” he says. “We’re going hot.”

  Curtis Acton, back at the operations center, has finally gone to catch a few hours of sleep, and Bill Bratten, another MPRI contractor and former marine, has taken over the watch at the operations center. Bill checks his logs of other units scheduled to come into the area. “Roger copy,” he responds. “Range status red. You have until 1100 hours before we have an Aussie unit coming onto the range. Make certain that all safety measures are in place. Call back in when weapons status is green. The convoy will be driving many miles of open desert engaging targets with live ammunition.” Several humvees from the Viper team are sent out to designated intersections several miles away where they will block all traffic attempting to enter the training area.

  The Wisconsin guardsmen lock and load. Every M16, squad automatic rifle, and .50-caliber machine gun is loaded with live rounds. The convoy rolls again. Fifteen minutes into the trip, metallic silhouettes of insurgents attack from multiple directions, simulated IEDs blow off on guardrails, and vehicles on rail systems charge into the convoy. Explosions are detonating on both the right and left of the convoy. Bullets fly in every direction; chaos and the “fog of war” are introduced into the scenario. Vehicles are separated, communications are disrupted, and simulated casualties mount. Skills are tested to the maximum degree.

  The event is eventually stopped. Everyone dismounts and gathers around in a semicircle. An OC picks up a stick and draws figures in the sand, then places rocks representing the location of every vehicle in an after-action review (AAR). The soldiers relate who was where and what they were thinking as events unfolded. The group discussion lasts nearly an hour, with analysis, analysis, and more analysis. Everyone with an opinion is heard, with no criticism. Every unique perspective is valid and offers something to the discussion. Nothing is left out, as one person’s observation during this exercise could mean the difference between life and death in the days and weeks ahead. In fact, tomorrow these young soldiers will be in combat, and Viper’s primary objective is to get them back alive.

  Paul and Skeet head out to link up with the Australian unit that has just arrived. “Unlike most military operations,” Paul explains, “every soldier in a convoy becomes an independent decision maker. The individual soldier driving a truck may be the only person who spots an insurgent, a VBIED, or an explosive device hidden on the road. He has only seconds to make a decision. There is no time for consulting with his commander. The wrong decision could cost him his life or the life of an innocent person . . . or the lives of the soldiers in his unit.” Paradoxically, many of the soldiers encountering frequent enemy contact are service and support troops that had, once upon a time, assumed they wouldn’t be on the front lines. Paul continues, “Never before in the history of combat, have so many soldiers shouldered alone, so many life-and-death decisions, so frequently. It’s asking a lot of a nineteen year old.”

  Checkpoints (CP) and entry checkpoints (ECP) have been constructed, and soldiers learn the right and wrong way to manage the complications of establishing and maintaining them. Kuwaiti civilians: men, women, and children participate in the training by being role players attempting to pass through these checkpoints. The role players are also trained on how to replicate events that will confront the soldiers in Iraq. Soldiers are challenged with myriad scenarios that they must successfully work through. Aviation units are afforded mock cities and targets where they must learn control and accuracy over their application of firepower. Following an incident in Iraq, where an Italian journalist was shot and her bodyguard killed, Camp Yankee was flooded with military units requiring updated and improved training on how to establish and run a checkpoint. There’s no doubt that some of this training is part of the unit’s predeployment activities back in the States, but the changing information from the war zone filters into this base daily. Unlike the weeks or months it may take to cause a change in training curricula back at home, new information on insurgent tactics is updated and incorporated every day into the training at Camp Yankee.

  Very few army support units have opportunities to develop their close-quarters combat skills. MPRI plays a major role in helping these types of soldiers perfect their skills in house-to-house fighting. House-to-house fighting is very complex. Soldiers must protect themselves and avoid shooting their comrades under very stressful conditions. The paradox of protecting innocent civilians while engaging insurgents with lethal force is a major training challenge. As the size and scope of urban-clearing operations expand through an insurgent-infested neighborhood, the possibilities for mistakes, fratricide, and the death of innocent civilians exponentially increase from block to block.

  Camp Yankee’s urban ranges replicate close-quarters combat (CQC), house-to-house fighting. These ranges, also known as military operations in urban terrain (MOUT) sites, are full-scale mock towns that accommodate live-fire training for teams, platoons, and company-sized units. Viper’s close-quarters combat (CQC) and close-quarters marksmanship (CQM) training begins with “glasshouse drills.” Initially, all training is dry fire until the tactics and procedures are fully understood. In the glass house, soldiers practice entering a sandbag replication of a building in four-man stacks and are exposed to corner-fed and center-fed rooms. They study fire control, points of domination, and the path of travel. The training focuses on footwork and movement within a room.

  Next they will enter a corral, an enclosure with four-foot-high walls with catwalks, upon which Viper OCs can move around and observe each soldier’s movements and techniques. A corral has the additional challenge of introducing hallways. Training progresses to squad-sized “shoot houses” where they rehearse dry firing (meaning without live rounds or projectiles) in both day and night scenarios. Shoot houses have all the components of an actual building except that there are no ceilings. The rooms contain silhouettes of both enemy and noncombatants. Some of the rooms have furniture.

  Live-fire training is the final phase. The walls of the rooms in each building are three-feet thick and filled with sand. Bullets will not pass through these walls. However, in an actual house entry, soldiers must be aware that bullets will frequently penetrate a wall, and their movement must take this into account. Shooting inside a twelve-foot-by-twelve-foot room is a unique experience, especially in darkness. The noise level, the brilliant muzzle flashes, the sound of bullets flying around a room, and the difficulty communicating above the din, is a new experience for them. Despite all the safety precautions, CQC is dangerous training, but absolutely necessary to get the soldiers used to a type of combat they will experience in Iraq.

  Larry Word recalls a visit to Camp Yankee by an active-duty general in the First Cavalry Division. “The general was back in Kuwait observing a National Guard brigade training up to join the division,” he says. “He told me to not change a thing about our urban operations instruction. He said that his soldiers, who all trained with us, dominated the enemy in room clearing. In six months of house-to-house fighting to include the tombs of Najaf (where they expected heavy casualties), the division did not incur a single soldier killed in action.”

  Paul Collins relates another self-congratulatory moment for the Viper OCs: “An army convoy in Iraq was ambushed. A female buck sergeant, Lee Ann Hester, and several other soldiers were caught in the kill zone of an insurgent ambush. She maneuvered her humvee onto the flanks of the attackers and began delivering withering machine-gun fire. She and her crew then dismounted, closed off the enemy escape route, and began attacking the enemy with hand grenades and grenade launchers. As the battle continued, she picked up her rifle and personally killed several enemy soldiers. Many of the insurgents were carrying handcuffs. They had intended to destroy the convoy and take U.S. prisoners.

  “When the battle ended, Sergeant Hester and her small team of fellow soldiers had killed twenty-seven insurgents, wounded six, and captured one. Sergeant Hester became the first woman since World
War II to be awarded the Silver Star. When asked about her heroism, she commented: ‘Your training kicks in, your soldier kicks in. It’s your life or theirs . . . you’ve got a job to do protecting yourself and your fellow comrades.’”

  Team Viper had conducted convoy ambush reaction training for Sergeant Hester and her unit just a few months earlier. Her unit’s reaction to the attack was a page out of Viper’s training manual. The report of her actions in combat had the OCs grinning ear to ear with pride.

  Their job satisfaction is best summed up by Viper Team Operations Chief Curtis Acton: “Every day we know that someone, some American soldier in Iraq, has lived through an enemy engagement because of what we do here.”

  Chapter 7

  Security Contractors

  I. An Overview

  During an attack on a headquarters in Najaf, Iraq, eight Blackwater security contractors found themselves facing hundreds of Iraqi militia fighters. While urgently calling for U.S. military reinforcements, in the middle of the firefight, Blackwater’s own helicopters brought in ammunition and supplies to the besieged contractors. They also coordinated an aerial medical evacuation of a wounded marine. At the same time, near the city of Kut, UN forces assigned to protect coalition administrators abandoned them, leaving their fate to the enemy. While the UN forces continued their retreat, a group of security contractors fought for three days in a heroic attempt to save the administrators.

  Hart Security, a British firm, was on contract to protect a local construction project. A UN military unit was responsible for securing the area. The UN unit abandoned them, and the contractors found themselves alone and in an intense firefight with the enemy. Under intense enemy fire, they were eventually evacuated and forced to leave one of their own dead behind. It’s no small wonder that security contractors are demanding more and more sophisticated weapons and greater flexibility in their response.

  Civilian security personnel are not contracted to attack people while in Iraq. They are not directed to conduct operations against insurgent forces. Contrary to the movie stereotypes, they are not hired to conduct covert assassinations. They are contracted by private companies and coalition governments to provide security for people, vehicles, buildings, construction sites, energy facilities, and water-treatment plants. Enemy tactics targeting these people and the facilities they guard have created circumstances beyond the contractors’ control.

  The complexity of this new kind of war has rendered international law obsolete in many ways. Attempts to enforce definitions of combatants and noncombatants are muddled. Private military contractors are caught in the catch-22 situation of trying to conform to laws and regulations regarding civilian conduct in a war zone and dealing with the realities of the jobs they are asked to perform. In at least one instance where the military disarmed four private contractors, a few hours later the contractors were captured by insurgents, tortured, and killed. On whose hands is their blood?

  In broad terms, there are two types of security contractors operating in Iraq: those contracted by the U.S. State Department, and those providing security for dozens of other coalition operations. Some contracting firms, like Blackwater, execute both types of contracts with different teams. The composition, personnel, equipment, and operating policies for State Department contracts are very specific and highly regulated. Ostensibly, all firms are under the control of the Coalition Provisional Authority—in other words, the U.S. military. State Department contracts are awarded to U.S. firms and require that all personnel be U.S. citizens. The teams are equipped with U.S. weapons, protective gear, and vehicles.

  In contrast, contracts to private security companies by independent businesses or contracts awarded by government agencies other than the State Department such as the Army Corps of Engineers contract with Erinys Security and allow for any composition of personnel from most any country. It’s not uncommon to see teams from companies like Erinys, Custer Battle, DynCorp, and Triple Canopy comprised of personnel from the United States, Australia, South Africa, and Britain. Additionally, due to the complications of bringing weapons into Iraq, these firms often resort to acquiring their weaponry on the thriving arms black market inside Iraq.

  There is much controversy over how security contractors should dress, appear, and conduct themselves in a war zone. One covert technique, widely used by armed contractors in the days immediately following the initial occupation, includes driving standard Iraqi vehicles, such as Mazdas or Toyotas. They immerse themselves in the local population, hiring local civilians to work with them and develop contacts and friendships in the area. To fit in with the locals, they drive with their windows up and air conditioning on, hair unkempt, mustaches and beards grown out. Women contractors wear head scarves, while men wear loose-fitting shirts and sandals.

  Low-profile techniques afford access to greater intelligence on enemy activity. The indigenous workers will frequently tip off contractors to impeding enemy activity, either by their sudden absence from work or by directly furnishing information. Blending into the community reduces their visibility as foreigners as well as the number of attacks against them. These techniques have the added benefit of much greater acceptance in the local, national, and international community.

  The downside to the low-profile concept is that military and police personnel may be wary of these disguised contractors and in the heat of the moment become highly suspicious. If they are spotted with hidden weapons, they can be mistaken for insurgents and subsequently fired upon by coalition forces. Hiring local Iraqis has major benefits, but one never knows when an Iraqi employee has sold out to the enemy. If just one of their indigenous employees begins leaking information on planned operations to the enemy, or worse, becomes a suicide bomber, the contractors are as good as dead. Last but not least, concealing weapons and driving with windows up, if identified, make the occupants easy nonthreatening targets.

  Contrast this with contractors who have adopted a high-profile approach. These contractors drive around in black Suburbans, Yukons, and Avalanches; windows are down and guns are pointed out in every direction. In the open back of the Chevy Avalanches are mounted machine guns with a gunner on the ready. They wear black body armor and have a pistol strapped to their thigh. They carry an assortment of rifles, machine pistols, and submachine guns. Most have high and tight military-style haircuts. They carry enough ammunition to wage a five-hour battle. To a man, they look like they would shoot to kill in the blink of an eye.

  While parts of the world consider this look to be that of the quintessential “arrogant American,” security contractors consider it part of security through intimidation and an important aspect of their safety. An imposing and confident appearance is more likely to give insurgents pause. They are, after all, human, and want to live—at least for a few more days. It might be politically incorrect, and it doesn’t win many friends in international circles, but contractors swear by it. In their view, it gets the job done.

  In practice, many U.S. security contractors have tried to reduce the problems associated with both extremes. More and more, security contractors consciously go out of their way to avoid pointing weapons at civilians. While most security contractors maintain the basic concepts of aggressive posturing, many have hired teams of armed Iraqis who work with and dress identical to their U.S. counterparts. These are called hybrid teams and have proven to be a very effective deterrent to enemy attacks.

  Construction of buildings, pipelines, power-generation facilities, and communications infrastructures is taking place on a daily basis throughout Iraq. But the fact remains that no U.S. citizen is safe working or driving anywhere in Iraq. Unfortunately, neither the U.S. military nor UN forces are able to provide the necessary level of protection for workers and convoys. Construction companies are forced to solve their own security issues.

  Most security contractors have considerable military special operations or specialized civilian law enforcement backgrounds and training. Soldiers in Iraq, with an average of eight
een months of military service, are not sufficiently trained and do not possess the depth of experience required to assume the independent nature of security operations. Civilian security contractors must be capable of fighting against overwhelming odds using complicated and efficiently coordinated tactics honed from years of experience. Finally, soldiers on active duty with special operations skills are needed for offensive operations against the insurgents. It would not be the best use of their talent or organizational capabilities to assign them to security duties.

  On any given evening, Blackwater contractors stationed in Baghdad’s International Zone (a.k.a. the Green Zone) assemble to review the following day’s security operations. Blackwater is on State Department contract to protect U.S. diplomats visiting and traveling around Iraq. Their assignments include protecting high-level officials from the U.S. Embassy and State Department, like Paul Bremer and John Negroponte. They also routinely escort mid-level U.S. government executives and employees. It is not uncommon for a Blackwater contractor to run three to five missions a day.

  Blackwater security teams consist of two primary elements—a personal security detail (PSD) and a combat assault team (CAT). The PSD has responsibility for remaining with and securing their “principal” or “package” throughout the scheduled visit. The CAT is responsible for ensuring that the principal and the PSD team travel safely to each destination on the itinerary. Although many of the trips are relatively short, six to ten miles, the drives are extremely hazardous. Insurgents would love nothing more than to kill or capture a senior U.S. government official. Clearly, there are limitations on the number of routes that can be chosen, and insurgents lie in wait on all of them. There are no safe routes.