Exclusive: U.S. Blocks Oversight of Its Mercenary Army in Iraq
• By Spencer Ackerman
• July 22, 2011 |
• 7:00 am |
• Categories: Iraq
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/07/iraq-merc-army/
By January 2012, the State Department will do something it’s never done before:
command a mercenary army the size of a heavy combat brigade. That’s the plan to
provide security for its diplomats in Iraq once the U.S. military withdraws.
And no one outside State knows anything more, as the department has gone to war
with its independent government watchdog to keep its plan a secret.
Stuart Bowen, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), is
essentially in the dark about one of the most complex and dangerous endeavors
the State Department has ever undertaken, one with huge implications for the
future of the United States in Iraq. “Our audit of the program is making no
progress,” Bowen tells Danger Room.
For months, Bowen’s team has tried to get basic information out of the State
Department about how it will command its assembled army of about 5,500 private
security contractors. How many State contracting officials will oversee how
many hired guns? What are the rules of engagement for the guards? What’s the
system for reporting a security danger, and for directing the guards’ response?
And for months, the State Department’s management chief, former Ambassador
Patrick Kennedy, has given Bowen a clear response: That’s not your
jurisdiction. You just deal with reconstruction, not security. Never mind that
Bowen has audited over $1.2 billion worth of security contracts over seven
years.
“Apparently, Ambassador Kennedy doesn’t want us doing the oversight that we
believe is necessary and properly within our jurisdiction,” Bowen says. “That
hard truth is holding up work on important programs and contracts at a critical
moment in the Iraq transition.”
This isn’t an idle concern or a typical bureaucratic tussle. The State
Department has hired private security for its diplomats in war zones for the
better part of a decade. Poor control of them caused one of the biggest
debacles of the Iraq war: the September 2007 shooting incident in Nisour
Square, where Blackwater guards killed 17 Iraqi civilians. Now roughly double
those guards from the forces on duty now, and you’ll understand the scope of
what State is planning once the U.S. military withdraws from Iraq at the end of
this year.
“They have no experience running a private army,” says Ramzy Mardini, an
analyst at the Institute for the Study of War who just returned from a
weeks-long trip to Iraq. “I don’t think the State Department even has a good
sense of what it’s taking on. The U.S. military is concerned about it as well.”
So far, the Department has awarded three security contracts for Iraq worth
nearly $2.9 billion over five years. Bowen can’t even say for sure how much the
department actually intends to spend on mercs in total. State won’t let it see
those totals.
About as much information as the department has disclosed about its incipient
private army comes from a little-noticed Senate hearing in February. There, the
top U.S. military and civilian officials in Iraq said that they’d station the
hired guard force at Basra, Irbil, Mosul and Kirkuk, with the majority — over
3,000 — protecting the mega-embassy in Baghdad. They’ll ferry diplomats around
in armored convoys and a State-run helicopter fleet, the first in the
department’s history.
But there are signs of even deeper confusion as State prepares to take the lead
in Iraq. An internal State Department audit from June faulted top officials for
“a lack of senior level participation” (.pdf) in an “unprecedented” transition
to civilian control. The result is that “several key decisions remain
unresolved, some plans cannot be finalized, and progress in a number of areas
is slipping,” the audit concluded. It raises the prospect that the U.S.
military will leave Iraq the same way it entered it — without any planning
worthy of the name.
Bowen has minimal visibility into State’s planning process. His teams of
auditors are in Iraq, reviewing reconstruction contracts for waste, fraud and
abuse, as they have since the early days of the war. They just can’t see
anything about the guard force. As far as Bowen is concerned, even though
there’s been a nearly 90 percent drop in violence since the surge, State’s
hired army still acts like Iraq is a killing field, with death squads and
insurgents around every corner.
“Have the standards for convoy travel changed at all from the worst moments of
Iraq civil war? The answer’s no,” Bowen says. Diplomats are allowed an hour for
meetings outside secured U.S. fortresses. Then it’s time to hit the road, in
armored cars full of men armed to the teeth and wearing black sunglasses.
The State Department says it’s learned its lessons from Nisour Square and now
places stricter rules on contractors, like putting cameras in contractor
vehicles and revising “mission firearms policies,” as Kennedy told a
congressional panel last month. (.pdf) It’s an issue Kennedy’s well-versed in
handling: He ran the department’s internal investigation into Nisour Square in
2007. Now, according to Bowen, he’s shielding State’s plans from scrutiny.
State wouldn’t comment for this story, saying it would be “inappropriate” to
discuss an internal matter concerning Bowen. A department official who wouldn’t
speak on the record merely said that it provides him with “extensive materials
in response to their audit requests for documents and information falling
within its statutory responsibilities.”
But Congress is showing signs of restiveness over State’s stonewalling. A bill
that the House Foreign Affairs Committee crafted this week includes a provision
specifically instructing State to let Bowen’s office to do its job: “SIGIR
should audit military, security, and economic assistance to Iraq during the
term of SIGIR’s existence,” the language reads, inserted at the behest of the
panel’s chairwoman, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.
But it’ll take months for that bill to pass. Until then, Bowen is shut out of
State’s ad hoc foray into generalship. “From my conversations with State
Department people,” Mardini says, “they really don’t have a sense of how
difficult this is going to be.” And it doesn’t look like they want to know.
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