One Utah

According to L.A. Times reporter T. Christian Miller, private contractors working for the U.S. in Iraq now outnumber American troops. A conservative estimate is that 21,000 Americans, 43,000 foreigners and 118,000 Iraqis have replaced soldiers in various jobs ranging from armed security guards to construction and food service. That’s 182,000 contractors compared to 160,000 members of the military.

Especially worrisome are the large numbers of armed security contractors (who don’t like to be called mercenaries, don’t engage in large-scale offensive operations, but in effect have a “license to kill” in Iraq).

“We don’t have control of all the coalition guns in Iraq. That’s dangerous for our country,” said William Nash, a retired Army general and reconstruction expert. The Pentagon “is hiring guns. You can rationalize it all you want, but that’s obscene.”

Blogger Jane Stillwater may have been the first to report that Green Zone checkpoints are being guarded by Peruvian mercs who don’t speak either English or Arabic.

Until recently, when the L.A. Times and other media outlets began filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, the Bush administration has been able to keep the private war in the shadows.

In IraqSlogger, Robert Pelton points out that the media have been “slow off the mark to fully comprehend the vast scale of for profit operations in theaters of war”:

The reality seems to be that this administration is crudely and arrogantly bringing to life the next generation of warfighting. The administration has only been forthcoming when senators demand answers, hold hearings or journalists send in stacks of Freedom on Information Act requests. It appears that in the current administration making a profit from war is not discussed in public, but pursued vigorously in private.

Another concern discussed in the L.A. Times article is the use of trafficked labor to do jobs once performed by U.S. soldiers and employees.

“Middle Eastern companies, including Kulak Construction Co. of Turkey and Projects International of Dubai, supply labor from Third World countries to KBR and other U.S. companies for menial work on U.S. bases and rebuilding projects. Foreigners are used instead of Iraqis because of fears that insurgents could infiltrate projects.”

Some of the foreign workers, like Filipinos on contract with a Kuwaiti company, are hired under false pretenses and treated no better than slaves.

UPDATE: The issue of exploited foreign workers and out-of-control mercenaries in Iraq also appears today on DailyKos.

This entry was posted Thursday, July 5th, 2007 at 9:23 am and is filed under Disaster, Economic Exploitation, Iraq, Jane Stillwater, Military, This Blog, War. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.