Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan

Okay, I'm pissed off at the NY Times again. Today they posted an article on the use of contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. The article gives the impression that contractors are a bunch of loose cannons, running around Iraq and Afghanistan unchecked, shooting up anything that moves, with little or no accountability. I found the article to be highly misleading. While many of the basic facts seem to be okay, they are not presented accurately nor in context.

First, they use the term "contractor" loosely. From the article, you'd believe that there were tens of thousands of men running around, heavily armed, and looking for a fight. The article explicitly states that there are more contractors in Afghanistan than there are soldiers. True. However, "contractors" include truck mechanics, computer technicians, supply clerks, US post office workers, construction supervisors, and a host of other non-combatant jobs which constitute the vast majority of civilian support. Even for those in the security field, most don't go outside the bases. They're "third-country nationals" (TCN's) from places like Uganda or Nepal, who stand guard at dining facilities, maintenance shops, unit compounds, or other places. Yes, they have AK-47's and other weapons, but this is a war zone, so they damn well better. These are the sort of routine jobs with very little threat exposure (besides the occasional incoming mortar round) that need to be done but don't require a highly-trained and very expensive US soldier or Western security specialist. The actual number of heavily-armed security forces roaming the Iraqi and Afghanistan countrysides are small.

The article cites several instances of contractor security forces shooting Iraqi non-combatants, mostly in the 2004-2007 period. All these reports came from those recently posted on Wikileaks. It's easy to critique these incidents from the safety of American soil and several years, but at the time, Iraq was a very hot war zone. As the article notes, 53 security contractors were killed in 2006 alone, an average of one a week. Attacks were happening by the hundreds, all over the country, every day. US soldiers as well as security contractors had to make life-and-death decisions on the spot with insufficient evidence. Quick: a car's coming at you and isn't slowing down. Is it an attack or is it innocent? That's all the information you have, and by the time you read to the end of that question, it's too late: somebody has just died, maybe the driver, maybe you. As Donald Rumsfeld, the architect of the Iraq war, stated, "stuff happens". Nasty stuff. So, yes, you can comb through the Wikileaks documents and find examples of security contractors killing innocent Iraqis. You can also find examples of security contractors doing their job and getting their charges safely out of a trouble spot.

The Times article states "it is clear from the documents that the contractors appeared notably ineffective at keeping themselves and the people they were paid to protect from being killed." Bullshit. In my work with the State Department and the Corps of Engineers in Iraq for 20 months, our Blackwater and Aegis security contractors took us all over the country, in and out of some very dangerous areas, every day, safely and securely. During that time, there were literally thousands of trips. Sometimes they were attacked, most of the time, not. A very few resulted in injuries to those being carried. Only one of those trips, the Fallujah incident of May 2009 cited in the Times article, resulted in a loss of life for the people being carried. (Two of the three men killed were friends of mine. The two Aegis security guards in the vehicle survived. I wrote a blog post about it.) So: thousands of trips for the Embassy and Corps of Engineers, some attacks, a few injuries, one attack with fatalities. That doesn't sound "notably ineffective" to me. No, I've ridden around the country with those guys. I've seen them in action. I'd go with them again.

Normally, I find the Times to have good reporting on Iraq. They're the only US-based news organization that has maintained a permanent presence in Baghdad during the entire conflict. Their reporting is usually pretty accurate and nuanced. Unfortunately, they missed the boat on this one and produced a very misleading report.

Projects in Iraq

I'm normally a fan of the New York Times, particularly when it comes to reporting in Iraq. They are one of only a couple of major international news organizations that maintain a full-time presence in the country. (The only other one I know of is Al Jazeera). Usually, Times reporting is very accurate and insightful.

Not this time. Yesterday, they ran an article entitled "U.S. Fails to Complete, or Cuts Back, Iraqi Projects". The gist of it is that, through incompetence and inefficiency, American reconstruction managers are failing to do their jobs, wasting taxpayer money and leaving Iraqis in the lurch. As a former reconstruction project manager in Iraq, I am familiar with the projects that they cite in the article. I can state unequivocally that this article is highly slanted and is based on extremely selective use of facts. It is certainly not up to the Times' normally high standards.

The article focuses on the sewage treatment plant being built in Falluja. This is a city that saw two major battles and some of the worst fighting of the war. It is still dangerous, although much improved. According to the Times' article, in 2004 American authorities decided, on their own and with no input from the Iraqis, to build a massive sewage treatment plant. After spending six years and over $100M, we're now walking away from an unfinished plant, leaving Falluja residents in the lurch. Additionally, Americans are leaving many of the rest of our projects unfinished, or finished to such low standards that they are unusable. Essentially, we are wasting American taxpayer money and leaving Iraqis with nothing useful.

The facts that the Times cites are fairly true, as far as they go. But they ignore many important facts, and their conclusions are certainly far from the real situation. Now for the rest of the story.

In 2004, as the article states, raw sewage ran in the streets of Falluja, a result of overflowing septic systems. The reason the septic systems were overflowing is that the trucks that normally would have pumped out all the septic tanks could not function in a city that was being torn apart by warfare. The operators could hardly have said "Umm, excuse me, but could you Americans stop shooting for an hour so I can pump out the septic tanks on this street? And you guys over there, would you remove those bombs, please? I'll only be there a little while and then you can go back to killing each other. Thank you very much."

In 2004, we were just starting to use money as a weapon. The goal was to start the repair and rebuilding process in Iraq and to provide essential services (clean water, electricity, sewage, roads, education, and so on). We would hire Iraqis to do the work: if they were employed and earning a living, they would be less inclined to pick up an AK-47. So even though the real cause of the sewage in the streets of Falluja was the inability of the septic trucks to operate, American and Iraqi authorities decided to put a lot of Falluja residents to work on a city-wide sewer system.

The Americans proposed a system that would collect sewage from the city and route it to a lagoon processing system. This is a very simple system that is cheap to build, requires very little maintenance, and can be operated by people with little training. It's a common system throughout the world and the United States. Iraqi officials, however, would have none of that. They believed that lagoon systems were for "third-world" countries (their words, not mine). They wanted a state-of-the-art, high-tech system. After a long period of going round and round, American military and civilian leaders capitulated and agreed to build the high-tech version, even though it would cost many times more than a lagoon system, would require a small army of highly-educated and highly-trained operators as well as additional fuel, chemicals, and maintenance, and wouldn't accomplish anything that the lagoon system couldn't. Virtually all of us who were involved in any way with the Falluja sewer project during my time in-country (Aug 2008 - Apr 2010) realized that this was a major mistake, but had to live with it.

So for the past six years, we've been trying to build this monstrosity. A project like this is difficult to do in the best of times; in a place like Iraq, it's amazing we've gotten as far as we have. Violence has been only part of the problem. There have been constant issues with contractors: incompetence, inefficiency, and fraud, to name some. We've had to terminate many contractors for poor performance, then re-award the contracts, only to terminate the next one as well. City officials have played their own roles in obstructing progress by delaying or refusing permits. Most importantly, Iraq is a very tribal country, and if you do not have the right tribal connections, you cannot work in a particular area. So even the most highly-qualified construction company in the world could not build this system in Falluja if it didn't have Falluja people on the payroll.

(The best analogy I can think of is that Iraq is a country of Tony Sopranos. National government officials, provincial government officials, city government officials, heads of corporations, local bigwigs - almost all are a "Tony Soprano" to varying extents. If you want to build a project in any city, town or province, you pay off the right people, you hire their buddies (regardless of whether they work or not; usually they don't), you pay through the nose for permits and approvals, you grease palms, you buy supplies and materials from certain "approved" companies, and so on. While I worked at the Embassy, the Anti-Corruption Coordinator estimated that 70 cents on every American dollar was skimmed off in such fashion, and I believe it.)

After all these years, though, the project in Falluja is winding down. The Times article didn't mention it, but the high-tech sewage treatment plant is being successfully completed. It's a showcase. The problem is the collection system: the pipes that run through the city, all the way to each house and business. This is what has caused roads to be ripped up for years and caused major inconveniences for Falluja residents. The major problems with the collection area construction projects were with the contractors. I am not saying that the Corps of Engineers didn't make mistakes, but it certainly wasn't the one-sided "Americans are incompetent" pitch that the Times is making. At the end of April, when I left Iraq, the plan for Falluja was to connect just enough houses to the system to allow operation of the plant. This was about all that could be done with American funding within the remaining time available. Don't forget: we have a deadline coming up, and our military forces (including the Corps of Engineers) have to be out of the country. However, most of the major construction for the sewage collection system will have been completed. It will be up to the Iraqis to make the final connections. And it will be up to the Iraqis to maintain and operate their brand-new, state-of-the-art sewage treatment plant. As the Times article noted, they have not yet stepped up to the plate.

I was personally offended by one paragraph. It stated that four Iraqis have died during construction of the sewage plant. This is true. One of them was a young boy whose father sent him down in a hole to pull the plug that prevented him from dumping his septic waste into the collection system. I believe that this boy was the one mentioned in the article who was overcome by fumes. What the article did not state was that three Americans have died as well. Two of them, Terry Barnich and Dr. Maged Hussein, were co-workers and friends of mine at the Embassy; the third was CDR Duane Wolfe, who was in charge of the sewage system construction. The three were killed by a roadside bomb on May 25, 2009, while on a visit to the Falluja sewage project. These men - smart, dedicated beyond belief, and committed to success - were killed by the very people they were trying to help.

I had to laugh at some parts of the Times article, particularly at the idea that Iraqis are complaining about American engineering and safety standards. I've seen the results of Iraqi standards. I also had to laugh at the idea that the Iraqis are complaining about poor quality of construction and that the Americans are ignoring them. Somebody's blowing smoke ... or not doing all their research.

As for the claims that we're walking away from partly completed police stations, schools, etc with no explanation, that is just not the case. We probably are walking away from some, but we're working closely (through the Embassy and the Provincial Reconstruction Teams) with the affected Iraqis. The ones we're leaving would be the problem projects, the ones in which the contractors are dragging their feet, or who are screwing up construction, or whatever, and the projects are in such a state that they simply cannot be completed with the time and money remaining. Unlike the past, in which we could terminate one contractor and try again with a different one, we no longer have that option. We're leaving the country. We will not be able to finish them. We're eliminating the projects that can't be completed and putting the remaining (limited) resources into those that can. Sounds like responsible management to me, not incompetence.

That does not mean that these projects can't be completed at all. Iraq is now in a very different condition than it was even two years ago. On virtually all the construction projects that were ongoing when I left, Iraqis could have executed them if they wanted to. That's a key shift from the past, when they did not have the organization, abilities, or resources to handle these projects on their own. Now they do. So if we can't complete a school or courthouse or sewer connections in the year remaining, Iraqis can. It's their country, so they should step up to the plate.

The Times article is accurate in that there are, indeed, problems with some (not all, not even the majority) of our remaining projects in Iraq. It is not, however, just an issue of American competence or judgement. It's much more complicated than that. The Times should present a more complete and nuanced view in future reports if it is to maintain its position as a respected news source. Hatchet jobs like this are unprofessional.

Iraq Reconstruction

The New York Times had an article today about Iraq reconstruction.  Titled "Official History Spotlights Iraq Rebuilding Blunders", the article discusses an as-yet-unpublished Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) report that covers the entire reconstruction history, starting in 2001.  Which, as you may remember, is long before Bush started talking publicly about military action against Iraq.  The article itself is a bit disjointed, but it contains some teaser quotes that are interesting.  Much more interesting is the fact that they have the full report available online as a pdf download.  Or you can read it right there on the web page.  But since it's 508 pages long, you better make yourself comfortable.

My job is involved in reconstruction, and I deal with SIGIR on a fairly regular basis, so I'm always interested in what they have to say.  (Note that I have a link to the SIGIR site in my sidebar).  So as soon as I spotted this report, I dove right into it.  Most of you won't unless you're a policy wonk.  As noted, it's over 500 frickin' pages.  

I've only gotten a little way into it, but am already seeing some very damning information.  Not about reconstruction, but about the Bush administration, specifically that idiot Rumsfeld, and how much of this mess we're in now is directly attributable to him.  And this SIGIR report is from a guy who's a Republican political appointee!  However, it is not a political hack job.  The information in here is carefully researched and based on interviews with the people involved, including Colin Powell, Rumsfeld, his aides, Ryan Crocker (the ambassador to Iraq), and hundreds of others.  And it's based on their papers and notes, all very well footnoted.  In fact, I spoke this evening with one of the people involved in putting this report together - it was a 2-year-plus effort.  In other words, it's as accurate as humanely possible, and it will become a staple for Iraq War researchers for years to come.

The same cannot be said for the Times' article.  The writers went for sensationalism at the expense of accuracy.  The article starts off with the inflammatory statement that calls the reconstruction effort a "$100 billion failure".  Now, excuse me, but that's completely out of line.  Yes, it was poorly planned (actually, not really "planned" at all), subject to political intrigues, delayed by violence, suffered considerable waste, chaotic, and often not in line with reality.  However, even SIGIR realizes that there has been a lot of good stuff done.

Take, for example, the Sadr City R3 water treatment plant.  This plant cost US taxpayers a bundle (about $66M), but it is online now and providing water for almost 200,000 people in the Sadr City slums.  That doesn't sound like failure to me and it didn't to SIGIR when they did a report on it recently.  We've built over 130 primary health care clinics.  We've built a ton of schools, courthouses, humane prison facilities, sewage treatment plants, electrical power stations, electrical substations, roads, bridges, airport facilities, hospitals, you name it, we've probably built it.  We built a security system around their oil export lines that paid for itself in less than a week.  I'd say the large majority of projects that we funded are currently being used for what they were intended.

As the SIGIR report notes, the Republican-led Congress voted overwhelmingly to throw vast sums of money at Iraq for reconstruction, even though there was no coherent plan for how it would be used.  The money went to military and civilian officials who were dumped into the deep end and had to make it up as they went along.  They had to use their own experience, skills, and judgement to figure out what projects were most needed and then get them done.  And once projects were started, the vast majority were completed.  By SIGIR's own figures, only a small percentage (less than 20%) of projects were terminated for any reason: bombings, the security situation, incompetent contractors, whatever.  And this in a country that was undergoing a civil war the whole time.  

Yes, SIGIR and GAO and others can go back and find all kinds of fault with the way these projects were done.  There's plenty of blame to go around and they're still finding it.  That's their job.  But even SIGIR doesn't call the Iraq reconstruction effort a $100 billion failure".  It's not.  My predecessors did a helluva job with in very trying circumstances with no master plan to guide them.  They invented it and made it work.  And that's the American way, isn't it?

The New York Times writers owe the military and civilians who accomplished this remarkable feat a great big apology.