Feral Jundi

     State addressed some implications of the lost-functionality issue in Ambassador Kennedy’s April 7, 2010, letter to DoD: After the departure of U.S. Forces [from Iraq], we will continue to have a critical need for logistical and life support of a magnitude and scale of complexity that is unprecedented in the history of the Department of State. … And to keep our people secure, Diplomatic Security requires certain items of equipment that are only available from the military.

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     Ambassador Kennedy wrote, State would “essentially have to duplicate the capabilities of the U.S. military” using less effective gear, so “As a result, the security of [State] personnel in Iraq will be degraded significantly and we can expect increased casualties.”

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     I wanted to get this one out there as a reminder as to how significant this really is.  We are talking about a major effort here, and contractors will be front and center of all of it.  And because of the terms of the SOFA that outlines how many troops can be in Iraq, DoS and other civilian groups will increasingly have to look at new ways of replacing ‘lost functionality’.

     This post is also important in terms of cost in blood for this endeavor.  I just posted three Triple Canopy deaths in the Green Zone who were part of the Embassy protection force, and I wanted to make it very clear that the lives of these men tasked with protecting civilians in Iraq, are precious resources.  We must give these contractors the tools necessary to effectively do their job in Iraq and elsewhere, and if big brother military isn’t going to be around to back up these security forces, then some planning and new thinking about security needs to take place.  Hence why the DoS request for hardware and manpower and this Commission on Wartime Contracting report is so important.

     Definitely check out the entire report that the CWC put out about this matter, because they do bring up some interesting potential problems with this.  The point I got with the whole thing is that DoS definitely needs to get their stuff together if they want to effectively organize and manage this massive contractor effort.  From the logistics to the security, to everything involved with maintaining the Enduring Presence Posts-DoS will need to be organized and on top of this stuff.  State is also wanting to jump on the LOGCAP train, just so they can get some help in the logistics area.  Hopefully they can keep up and effectively manage all of this during the transition period, but like I mentioned in my other article, the enemy has their own agenda during this time period.

     The 14 security-related tasks were very interesting to me.  As was the questions asked about all the what-ifs?  The bottom line is that if DoS is going to have this massive security contractor army, and they are going to be asked to do some security functions that could put them in some legal trouble with the Iraqis, will DoS step in and protect their people?  I mean if you read through the 14 tasks, and you have that many guys with guns out there doing these kinds of tasks, the odds of engagements with the enemy will increase.  The odds of possible civilian casualties increase as well.  What protections will DoS offer to their ‘much needed’ security contractor force?  Because as it stands, the SOFA is not very kind to contractors and I know the enemy doesn’t care about that SOFA.

     I guess my point is, if you are going to use contractors for jobs that used to be done by the military, then you must give them the same protections that the military had.  I cannot see it done any other way.  And like the quote up top said, if DoS cannot have the same military hardware as the troops had, then their ability to protect their people diminishes.  If you look at a military infantry platoon, they have all sorts of weapons and support at their fingertips.  From tanks to mortars and artillery, to close air support and a whole myriad of lethal weapons.  Will this security contractor force have the same tools at their disposal?  No.  Will they have enough to adequately protect their DoS principles? That is the question that goes through my mind as the military packs up and leaves.

   Contractors can be very capable and be trained to a proficient level, but they are not supermen and they cannot make the enemy magically disappear if they decide to attack these EPP’s.  They must have the same rules of engagement, same legal protections and same tools that the military has right now in order to cover those 14 security-related tasks. That’s if they are asked to perform these tasks. It’s either that, or trust the Iraqis to do it?….(yikes)

    With that said, Ambassador Kennedy is partly correct in stating that the DoS will “essentially have to duplicate the capabilities of the U.S. military” using less effective gear. They will also have less legal protections, and less effective rules for the use of force.  I strongly suggest to State that if they do plan on going down this path, that they square away all of these loose ends and put at ease the minds of this contractor army. In other words, give them everything they need to be successful in their mission to protect you. –Matt

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Better planning for Defense-to-State transitions in Iraq needed to avoid mistakes and waste

July 12, 2010

‘LOST FUNCTIONALITIES’

The Departments of Defense and State have listed more than 1,000 tasks and functions that must be addressed in the DoD-to-State transition in Iraq. They range from real-estate management and portable toilets, to fire prevention

and environmental clean-up. To complicate the transition further, most of the functions rely on long-standing DoD relationships with the Government of Iraq that currently have few parallels at State. Of special concern is State’s “lost functionality” list—presented in a briefing to the Commission—of 14 security-related tasks now performed by DoD that

State must provide as the military drawdown in Iraq proceeds:

Recovering killed and wounded personnel

Recovering damaged vehicles

Recovering downed aircraft

Clearing travel routes

Operations-center monitoring of private security contractors (PSCs)

PSC inspection and accountability services

Convoy security

Explosive-ordnance disposal

Counter-rocket, artillery, and mortar notification

Counter-battery neutralization response

Communications support

Tactical-operations center dispatch of armed response teams

Policing Baghdad’s International Zone

Maintaining electronic counter-measures, threat intelligence, and technology capabilities

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SECURITY CONCERNS

Although State has about 2,700 private security contractors in Iraq and the Bureau of Diplomatic Security is hiring more security specialists, a State Department official testified at a June 2010 Commission hearing that the Department will need “between 6,000 and 7,000 security contractors” for the future—more than doubling its current PSC numbers. With such a large increase in contract employees, existing weaknesses in contract management and oversight, not to mention

funding and hiring challenges, can only grow more troublesome. An additional concern is presented by the nature of the functions that contractors might be supplying in place of U.S. military personnel. What if an aircraft-recovery team or a supply convoy comes under fire? Who determines whether contract guards engage the assailants and whether a quick-reaction force is sent to assist them? What if the assailants are firing from an inhabited village or a hospital? Who weighs the risks of innocent casualties, directs the action, and applies the rules for the use of force? Apart from raising questions about inherently governmental functions, such scenarios could require decisions related to the risk of innocent casualties, frayed relations with the Iraqi government and populace, and broad undermining of U.S. objectives. To a non-combatant Iraqi who has lost a family member or a home as “collateral damage” in a firefight, an armed State Department contract employee will not look appreciably different from an American soldier. While many private security contractors are highly trained, with military or police backgrounds, the Commission has found that some fall far short of

professional standards of training, ethos, and discipline. The already daunting tasks of contract management will grow more daunting as new security, policy, and political challenges emerge from the transition.

Download publication here.

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State Department Planning to Field a Small Army in Iraq

07/22/2010

Can diplomats field their own army? The State Department is laying plans to do precisely that in Iraq, in an unprecedented experiment that U.S. officials and some nervous lawmakers say could be risky.

In little more than a year, State Department contractors in Iraq could be driving armored vehicles, flying aircraft, operating surveillance systems, even retrieving casualties if there are violent incidents and disposing of unexploded ordnance.

Under the terms of a 2008 status of forces agreement, all U.S. troops must be out of Iraq by the end of 2011, but they’ll leave behind a sizable American civilian presence, including the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, the largest in the world, and five consulate-like “Enduring Presence Posts” in the Iraqi hinterlands.Iraq remains a battle zone, and the American diplomats and other civilian government employees will need security. The U.S. military will be gone. Iraq’s army and police, despite billions of dollars and years of American training, aren’t yet capable of doing the job.

The State Department, better known for negotiating treaties and delivering diplomatic notes, will have to fend for itself in what remains an active danger zone.Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, flew to Washington this week for a conference with the State Department on how to transition Iraq from soldiers to diplomats.

He and Ambassador Christopher Hill “have built a joint plan to do this transition,” Odierno said. “So we are now going to go through this (plan) and brief them on it and tell what they have to do to support this transition.”

Odierno said that one of the chief responsibilities of the remaining U.S. troops in Iraq is to help facilitate that transfer.

The arrangement is “one more step in the blurring of the lines between military activities and State Department or diplomatic activities,” said Richard Fontaine of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington research center. “This is no longer (just) the foreign service officer standing in the canape line, and the military out in the field.”

“The State Department is trying to become increasingly expeditionary,” he said.

With public attention riveted on the war in Afghanistan, the coming transition of the U.S. mission in Iraq has gotten relatively little notice by the news media. American troops are pulling out of the country at an accelerating rate to meet President Barack Obama’s interim ceiling of 50,000 noncombat troops remaining in Iraq by the end of next month.

The stakes, however, could be enormous. The Obama administration has promised Iraqis that the United States won’t abandon their country when American troops leave. If it can’t keep that promise, U.S. influence in the unstable region could dissipate, despite a seven-year war that’s cost more than $700 billion and the lives of at least 4,400 U.S. troops.

Already, however, the State Department’s requests to the Pentagon for Black Hawk helicopters; 50 mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles; fuel trucks; high-tech surveillance systems; and other military gear has encountered flak on Capitol Hill.

Contractors are to operate most of the equipment, and past controversies that involved Pentagon and State Department contractors, including the company formerly known as Blackwater, have left some lawmakers leery.

“The fact that we’re transitioning from one poorly managed contracting effort to another part of the federal government that has not excelled at this function either is not particularly comforting,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.

“It’s one thing” for contractors to be “peeling potatoes” and driving trucks, McCaskill told McClatchy. “It’s another thing for them to be deploying MRAPs and Black Hawk helicopters.”

“I know there’s a lot of bad choices here,” the senator said, adding that she’d choose using the U.S. military to protect diplomats in Iraq. “That’s a resource issue.”

A report July 12 by the bipartisan legislative Commission on Wartime Contracting said that the number of State Department security contractors would more than double, from 2,700 to between 6,000 and 7,000, under current plans.

“Particularly troubling,” the report said, “is the fact that the State Department has not persuaded congressional appropriators of the need for significant new resources to perform its mission in Iraq.”

“We have to make the case to them. We hope that people recognize the importance of follow-through here,” a senior administration official said, alluding to the long-term U.S. commitment to Iraq. Walking away from that “would be a terrible mistake,” the official said. He spoke only on the condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to talk for the record.

State Department and White House officials, while acknowledging the peculiarity of having a large civilian U.S. government presence in a war zone without American troops on the ground, said that the transition — already under way, in some cases _would go smoothly.

Planning began in spring 2009, and the transition is being shepherded by teams in Washington and Baghdad that confer in weekly video teleconferences.

“This is a major endeavor, and it is without precedent, I believe,” said Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy, the department’s top management official, who’s seen 37 years of management challenges.

“We’ve defined what we have to do. And now we have to define where we’re going to do it and how we’re going to do it,” he said in an interview.

The State Department also will have to provide for its own basics, such as food, water and laundry, perhaps through existing Pentagon logistics contract known by the acronym LOGCAP.

Kennedy and other officials noted that the department has experience operating aircraft in war zones, through a long-standing, Florida-based aviation wing that’s conducted counter-narcotics missions in Colombia, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

In the interview, Kennedy defended the decision to use contractors to operate military assets. The State Department doesn’t have enough Diplomatic Security agents to do the job, and it makes little sense to undertake a mammoth hiring effort for a temporary need, he said.

“This is the kind of surge activity that it seems very, very logical to use contractors for,” he said.

Critics say it would be more logical for the military to leave several thousand troops behind to protect government officials and property.

However, that would require renegotiating the U.S.-Iraqi status of forces agreement, a sensitive step. There’s “no thought of that right now,” the senior administration official said.

Story here.