From the Washington Post comes news that will, or should, dominate the discourse over Iraq for a few days: a CENTCOM census counted “about 100,000” contractors in Iraq. This is up from an estimated 87,000 a few months ago, but this be partially explained by better surveying.

In comparison, there are around 140,000 US troops, and of course very few Coalition troops, save 6,000 +/- UK troops, in Iraq now. Here’s the contractor breakdown WaPo gives:

• DynCorp International: 1,500 (700 training police)
• Blackwater USA: 1,000+ (most as security contractors)
• KBR: 50,000 across Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait, although there may be some doublecounting as they won’t give breakdowns.
• MPRI (part of L-3 Communications, NYSE: LLL) , has about 500 employees
• Titan, another L-3 division, has 6,500 linguists in the country.

There are four aspects to this story, two of which are briefly mentioned.

The first is this quote from William Nash of the CFR:

“It takes a great deal of vigilance on the part of the military commander to ensure contractor compliance. If you’re trying to win hearts and minds and the contractor is driving 90 miles per hour through the streets and running over kids, that’s not helping the image of the American army. The Iraqis aren’t going to distinguish between a contractor and a soldier.”

The impact of driving techniques was “addressed” months ago in Afghanistan. More importantly, while we consider the contractors to be less than agents of the US (they are contractors, not American military personnel), locals don’t, as Nash states, see a difference, regardless of nationality of the contractor.

The lack of a strategic vision in Iraq is emphasized by this report. Our frequently ad hoc assemblage of “gap” solutions has resulted in a force not just a few times larger than our nearest Coalition partner, but nearly twenty times.

Interviewing Robert Young Pelton, one here’s numbers upward of 140,000 contractors in Iraq: around 70,000 known plus one unknown for each known.

The second point is the next, and last, paragraph in the article:

The census gives military commanders insight into the contractors operating in their region and the type of work they are doing, [Lt. Col. Julie Wittkoff, chief of the contracting branch at Central Command]said. “It helps the combatant commanders have a better idea of . . . food and medical requirements they may need to provide to support the contractors,” she said.

This is a minor point, but points out the reader the 100,000 +/- contractors are far from an absolute number. There are support services provided by the military (at a cost to the military… i.e. the contractors are not self-contained), there are support personnel the contractors bring to the country that are not yet counted, and there little other “insight into the contractors operating” in the military’s operating areas.

There are multiple levels of control and accountability, not just criminal, that this article only hints at and I’m sure other Post and NYT authors will start to catch on to.

The third aspect of this story, completely absent, is who pays for the contractors. With most of the security contractors under subcontract, awareness and control become increasingly unclear. The impact contractors have on our mission ranges from the daily drives to the guys taken down in Fallujah in 2004 that, as Thomas Ricks points out, weren’t aware of changing conditions and tactics.

But who pays for the contractors? Department of State? Department of Defense? Department of the Interior? All of it from budgets controlled by the executive branch, but funded by Congress? The Custer Battles trial showed that some monies were effectively “hidden” through the now defunct Coalition Provisional Authority, to what affect?

One of the arguments in favor of contractors is the bang for the buck. How many bucks for what kind of bang is impossible to measure without transparency.

The fourth issue is the most important and completely ignored in the article: the complete absence of these numbers being represented in either General Pace’s or Jim Baker’s study groups. Besides the expected virtual acknowledgement that we can’t go to our allies for help, our paid friends in the country are ignored.

More importantly, we apparently have 100,000 additional forces (not all are shooters) supplementing our mission in Iraq, but coordination is poor and the fact we are just getting a handle on them indicates an incredible lack of strategic vision. But that’s no surprise. These contractors could be helping us, if it weren’t for reconstruction failures and their held to a larger strategic task beyond getting from Point A to B and protecting each of those points.

Last point to reiterate the control and accountability issue. American democracy relies, in part, on a democratic control of force. The Founding Fathers were intimately aware of the power of the military and gave us a Constitution that created a shared control of the armed forces between two masters, the legislative and the executive branches of government. Congress was empowered to “raise and support” the armed forces of the new nation and given the power “To declare War,” and the President was given the power to conduct the war. Further, of the 18 Congressional powers enumerated in the US Constitution 11 relate to security. (for more on this part, see Charlie Stevenson’s book) The contractors in Iraq are generally, if not completely, outside the control and oversight of Congress. This “private army” of the executive branch isn’t held to the same two-master standard as the military. Hence recent GAO and CRS reports on contractors.

There’s more to this issue than the numbers, although they indicate a problem more significant and severe than most are aware.

It seems the media is starting to get a handle on the real issues with contracting. Earlier this month, on the heels of the final nails in the coffin of the Special Inspector (although the nails could be removed by a Democrat Congress), comes the Washington Post article with surprising and ‘new’ awareness of limited accountability in Iraq.

The list of alleged contractor misdeeds in Iraq has grown long in the past 3 1/2 years. Yet when it comes to holding companies accountable, the charges seldom stick.

Critics say that because of legal loopholes, flaws in the contracting process, a lack of interest from Congress and uneven oversight by investigative agencies, errant contractors have faced few sanctions for their work in Iraq.

Doing a fair job of identifying problems, it does drop the ball on the Custer Battles case. The federal judge’s ruling was based on the origin of payments and not on the amount itself. The federal judge ruled that the plaintiffs could only go after the money the US paid Custer Battles and not after monies paid by the CPA, which was ostensibly, if far from reality, an Iraqi or at least non-US entity.

More critical are the examples of incomplete projects.

For example, auditors reviewed 14 projects by one contractor, Parsons Corp., and found that 13 had serious defects. Among the problem contracts was one to build 142 health clinics. Only six have opened.

Yet Parsons will not have to return any of its profit, nor is it likely to face any kind of formal punishment. Its contracts were what are called “cost-plus” deals, widespread in Iraq, in which the government bears much of the risk.

And we wonder how we’re not winning believers that we can make the country a better place.

The article does bring out an interesting point:

Bowen said the government should have been willing to fire contractors when it realized that projects were going awry. “I started pushing for terminations for default, which is how you hold underperforming contractors responsible, in the summer of 2005,” Bowen said.

But his calls were rarely heeded. The reason? “Litigation fear,” he said. “It was viewed as too much trouble.”

Because the contracts are so poorly written and managed, the government is afraid or coerced into not terminating. That may be part of the problem but Griff Witte, the WaPo reporter, gets down to brass tacks and nails one of the problems of endemic outsourcing:

Frederick F. Shaheen, an attorney with the firm Greenberg Traurig LLP who represents contractors, said firing a contractor is difficult because the military is so dependent on them.

If an official were to try to cancel a meal-service contract, for example, “some colonel is going to be on the phone to you ripping your lips off saying, ‘Why aren’t my troops being fed?’ ” Shaheen said.

The threat of canceling a contract “is normally the sharpest quiver in the bag of the contracting officer. But there’s no arrowhead on it any more,” Shaheen said. “So the checks and balances are gone. The system is broken.”

Ah, one of the hidden problems of contracting.

Well, it’s not the quickest they could have acted, but at least the conversation will happen soon. A half-day conference in Brussels next month (7 Dec 06) by the Security & Defence Agenda has two panels on privatization of force:

How Should EU Policymakers see the role of "Private Armies"

The crucial role of private security companies in Iraq looks increasingly like a pointer to the future. Private contractors are offering not only new reserves of skilled manpower but also sophisticated services ranging from intelligence-gathering and infrastructure protection to the provision in Iraq of command-and-control that links reconstruction and counter-insurgency operations. With many of these specialist security companies originating in Europe, how should EU policymakers see their roles developing? As Europe’s defence and security identity takes shape, what should be the inter-relationship between EU member states’ often hard-pressed military and the growing numbers of private sector security operators?

followed by

Are the NGOs and Private Security Companies Allies or Foes?

At first sight, NGOs involved in humanitarian relief or development work are far removed from private security companies. Yet they often pursue the same goals of protecting non-combatants and institution-building. How are private security specialists likely to fit into future EU-led relief and peacekeeping operations, and is there a need for a more clearly defined relationship both with EU battle groups and with the NGOs that administer the Union’s world-leading aid effort?

Both of these 90min sessions ask interesting questions, but the panel titles are intentionally leading. This should not be surprising considering the SDA’s target audience: Brussels-based international press. Still, it should be interesting what is said. I’m not going, but I’ll be interested in their report. The different portrayals of private security contractors by different media is interesting and understudied.

Private Actors and Security Governance looks like an interesting book that may ask the right questions about private forces. Much of the US discourse on non-state actors convienently ignores private security companies and their potential (actual is a better word) to influence foreign policy. The book’s teaser:

"The privatisation of security -understood as both the top-down decision to outsource military and security-related tasks to private firms and the bottom-up activities of armed non-state actors such as rebel opposition groups, insurgents, militias and warlord factions -have profound implications for the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Both top-down and bottom-up privatisation have significant consequences for effective, democratically accountable security sector governance as well as on opportunities for security sector reform across a range of different reform contexts. This volume situates security privatisation within a broader policy framework, considers several relevant national and regional contexts and analyses different modes of regulation and control relating to a phenomenon with deep historical roots but also strong links to more recent trends of globalisation and transnationalisation."

I haven’t read the book, so I can’t give a review but I’d be interested to hear from anybody who has. I’m curious how the book approaches the topic and what, if any, recommendations it makes.