Saturday, Sep 6, 2008
The second key dilemma results from the fact that private military operations are carried out by competing firms operating in a fluctuating and sometimes unpredictable marketplace. Contractors thus have no common standard for recruitment, vetting, training, weapons, appearance, tactics. As one former Special Forces veteran said, "The military really can't tell you how to do your job -- they can advise you, but they really have no control over you."
The result is that, as in any other industry, the companies diverge in the information they collect, the quality of their personnel and recruiting, their methods for evaluating risk, and their operational procedures. Knowledge of the battlefield means not just power but profits. Yet the firms not only do not have ready access to the military's intelligence, getting only a delayed and "sanitized" version from the CPA, but also do not have any formal procedures or institutionalized incentives for sharing the local knowledge they have gathered. While there are certainly informal information transfers among clusters of firms, there is no central repository of intelligence or systemized threat analysis across the industry. Indeed, such a system would denude the leading firms of their very competitive advantage.
Many soldiers and analysts express admiration for the professionalism of and the difficult jobs carried out by firms such as Blackwater and others. But all realize that not every firm can be the best and that, at the lower end of the market space, some are barely competent, if that. This has become a particular concern in what executives term the Iraqi "gold rush." The firms in Iraq range from well-established firms with thousands of years of collective experience in war zones, to start-ups that did not exist before the war. As Scott Custer of Custer Battles notes, "You've got a whole host of fly-by-night and disreputable companies. They're terrible. They get people killed."
Because of this loose and lethal environment, some of the best-respected firms in the industry have avoided Iraq altogether. For example, ICI is a firm with a strong operating history in some of the world's worst war zones, including Sierra Leone and Liberia. In 1998, the State Department named it small contractor of the year. Its president, Brian Boquist, is a former Green Beret. "In Iraq it is the Wild West," Boquist writes. "Almost none of them [the security firms in Iraq] have any real experience in war zones. We have stayed out of the place as it disintegrates from an insurgency to a civil war."
One of the challenges of the booming PMF market in Iraq is that demand is now outpacing supply, and the once tight-knit community, where every employee knew and had worked with every other, has been cracked wide open. David Claridge, head of Janusian, said, "There is a shortage of quality labor. Hiring people takes time now, whereas before we had a database of people we could just call up. Now we have to wait for people to come off other jobs." Claridge added, in an interview with NPR: "We are aware as an industry that perhaps some of the people being employed in Iraq -- because of the massive demand for labor -- some are perhaps not up to the task. As I say and I reiterate that this is not referring specifically to the individuals here [those killed in Fallujah], but we have seen a number of security operatives die during the last seven days, and we have to make sure that everyone providing services there is professionally trained and up to the task."
Firm seek to meet this labor shortage in different ways. Some continue the practice of hiring only personnel that are personally vetted and known by the company leaders beforehand. But this comes at the cost of lower employee rolls and lost revenue opportunities. Others pull in a grab bag of skill sets and backgrounds as they multiplied their numbers. What it means to be "Ghurka," "commando," or even "Special Forces" has a looser standard. But now, as Paul Rees, the managing director of Centurion, noted to Knight Ridder News, the labor market is so tight that firms are hiring people who don't know when to fire at attackers and when not to.
With no planning and a limited staff, as one senior Defense Department official comments, "the CPA has let all kinds of contracts to all kinds of people. It's blindsided us." At times, not only the lesser skilled but also some particularly disturbing characters have made it through the limited vetting, which can involve little more than sending in one's résumé. For example, British forces were not pleased to learn that a former soldier convicted of working with Irish terrorists had been hired by the ArmorGroup firm (which has a reported 600 personnel in Iraq) and granted clearance to enter U.S. and British bases in Iraq. (After an Irish newspaper reported the story, the employee was suspended.) South African political activists have identified a number of the contractors in Iraq from appearances before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, including one who admitted to firebombing more than 60 homes for the apartheid regime.
Where the billing is done by the day in a madly expanding market, the labor crunch also affects preparation. Experienced employees complain that pre-deployment briefing and training, important not only for honing sometimes rusty skills, but also for building small-unit cohesion in combat, have been shortened and in some cases even eliminated. It is important to note that some skills needed in the private military world, such as evasive-driving tactics, are not regularly taught in the military, so private contractors cannot exclusively rely on past training. As one PMF executive says, "Just because you used to be a SEAL doesn't mean you'll know how to handle every problem in a place like Iraq."
Each firm determines its own standards and procedures, and there is no formal regulation or even an industry self-regulatory mechanism to establish them or to police and punish those who fall below standards. While the best firms will blackball rogue or incapable employees, the industry has grown so huge and the clients remain so clueless that such tagging offers minimal recourse. For instance, industry insiders could only shake their heads when one firm invited CNN "Crossfire" talk-show host Tucker Carlson to ride along on a mission into Iraq. Not only did the firm's personnel give the conservative pundit an AK-47 to wield in the middle of a volatile war zone, but when they needed gas, Carlson and crew took over an Iraqi gas station by holding local civilians waiting in line at gunpoint. (One hopes he wasn't wearing his trademark bowtie, which would have only added to the local insult.) Carlson described the incident with proud delight in Esquire magazine, apparently not understanding the multiple industry sins that had been committed. Firms also greatly vary in their tactics and operations. For example, in the role of escort and protection, some firms opt to stay under the radar of potential adversaries. They purchase local vehicles, grow beards to blend in, and keep weapons hidden until needed. Others "cowboy up" and attempt to deter threats through posturing. They are recognizable by their web gear, Oakley sunglasses, cradled submachine guns, and brand-new black or white SUVs that can act as magnets for ambush: a mode of operation that is a huge point of contention in the industry.
Risk evaluation, likewise, differs by firm. In the PMF realm, risk incorporates battlefield threats as well as investment hazards. With differing intelligence collection and analysis capabilities (some create an in-house cell; others don't), each firm weighs the risks using all sorts of metrics. The Monday morning quarterbacking of the Fallujah decisions has already begun, illustrating how various firms evaluate situations. Jonathan Garratt, the group managing director of Erinys, has publicly noted that he would have insisted his clients avoid Fallujah altogether. "It's very dangerous. As a generalization, Fallujah is out of bounds on our map. We would only go through there in armored vehicles and a significant security force to defeat all threats." Military officers have even suggested that if the decision to go into a "no go" area like Fallujah without the required up-armored vehicles and heavy weapons had been made within the military, the officer in charge "could expect a court-martial hearing." In response, Blackwater officials have said that their units may have been tricked into entering the town by turncoat Iraqi security forces, leaving aside the point that they didn't have access to such weapons in the first place.
The blame casting will likely continue, and may even result in civil suits, but the underlying point holds true that firms evaluate risks differently. This carries over to their life insurance packages -- a complaint of the Chilean hired unit is that their contracting firm chose a poor one without their understanding -- or the backup support they guarantee--some firms pay the cost of having a quick-reaction force in place, ready to rush to the rescue, while others save money by hoping for the best.
Another important difference between the PMFs and the military is that even individual members of firms can weigh the risks in deciding their own involvement. In the wake of last week's killings, many employees decided it was best to change their job locales, regardless of the heady pay. As one Halliburton employee departing Iraq commented, after his truck blew up underneath him in a convoy attack, "It was time to come home." Similarly, Michael Cherkasky, the president of Kroll, may have 100 employees on the ground in Iraq, but admits that he has chosen not to go. When asked why, he replied, "Are you kidding? I will fly into Kuwait. I will fly into Jordan. I will not fly into Iraq."
In contrast to military standardization, there is a simple market reality at play in Iraq: Each firm has its own approach (which each thinks is the best), but not every firm's recruiting, information and operating procedures can be the best, and some are not even optimal. Every industry has its winners and losers, but the price of establishing those in the private military world is different than in other marketplaces. This issue is compounded by the lack of formal weeding-out processes or the establishment of minimum capabilities, inherent needs in the military environment. One Special Forces veteran goes further: "How these contractors operate is determined by the individual companies. There's no such thing as a 'best practice.' It's a question of sheer economics -- how much is the client willing to pay?"
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