The dark truth about Blackwater

When the history books are written about the Iraq war, they will point to several critical turning points in U.S. efforts to beat back the insurgency that flourished after the 2003 invasion and "Mission Accomplished" victory speeches were the order of the day. Certain to make the list are the battle for Fallujah, the revelation of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, and now the shootout in Baghdad that left as many as 20 civilians dead, the entire country seething and U.S. operations at a standstill. What will distinguish these accounts from histories of past wars is the new common denominator for each of these incidents: the private military industry.

In developing a counterinsurgency operation, the ideal is that a strategy is developed and then implemented. As Gen. von Moltke famously said, "No plan survives first contact with the enemy," and it is expected that the enemy will react and the plan will have to be adjusted. What is not expected is for a third force to cause the strategy to be jettisoned, before it even has a chance to succeed.

The recent Blackwater incident is not the first time that decisions made by the firm have diverted American strategy and resources, taking the U.S. operation into unexpected and unfortunate directions. As retired Army officer and New York Post columnist Ralph Peters notes, "Time and again, contractor shoot-'em-ups have either turned back the clock on local progress or triggered greater problems. Blackwater also gave us the cowboys who got lynched in downtown Fallujah in early 2004 -- prompting an 'ordered-by-the-White-House' response that defined the entire year."

There are two notable aspects about the Fallujah episode as it relates to counterinsurgency. First, the town had been restive since the invasion, but as former Marine Bing West describes in his masterful book "No True Glory: A Front Line Account of the Battle of Fallujah," the Marine unit that deployed into the area in 2004 had a classic counterinsurgency plan to simultaneously build up local trust in the community and weed out insurgents. As Maj. Gen. Mattis said, they would "demonstrate to the world there is 'No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy' than a U.S. Marine." Unfortunately, on March 31, without any coordination with the local Marine unit, a Blackwater convoy drove through Fallujah, was ambushed, and the four contractors killed. The Marine unit based right outside of Fallujah didn't even know that an attack had taken place until a reporter embedded at their base passed on the news from a wire-service report that he downloaded off the Web.

With images of the contractors' bodies being mutilated making the press and eerily echoing the killing of U.S. soldiers in Somalia a decade before, the Marines were ordered to seize the entire city, despite their protests that it would worsen the situation rather than solve it. It was one ambush in a war full of them. But to the policymakers back in Washington, now feeling the pressure of the television news cameras, some sort of action had to be taken.

The Marines moved into the city in force and a major battle broke out. It proved a disaster for the effort to win hearts and minds. With international press reporting more than 1,600 civilians killed (an exaggeration) and his Iraqi and British allies pressuring him, President Bush ordered a halt to operations. The town was handed over to a makeshift Iraqi brigade led by a former Republican Guard officer. The city soon devolved into a base of operations for al-Qaida in Iraq, and the Marines were ordered back in November 2004. Ninety-five U.S. Marines and soldiers were killed and almost 500 wounded in the street-by-street fighting that followed. The Marines' original strategy for winning at counterinsurgency never had a chance.

The second notable aspect of this incident is how the contractor convoy ended up there in the first place. A wrongful lawsuit against Blackwater, filed by the mothers of the four men killed, revealed that the employees had been sent on the mission without proper equipment, training or preparation. While the contract had called for at least six men in armored vehicles and time for a route risk assessment and pre-trip planning, the firm had rushed together a team of four men, who had never trained together, and sent them out without armored vehicles or even good directions. It later turned out that the critical mission the men were being rushed into was escorting some kitchen equipment. Blackwater had just won the contract and reportedly wanted to impress the client, a Kuwaiti holding company, that it could get the job done. The equipment was never delivered and Fallujah instead become a rallying point for the wider insurgency.

Another unanticipated setback for U.S. foreign policy occurred again in July of this year. One of the most critical aspects to Iraq's short- and long-term stability is the behavior of its neighbors. While the Kurdish north is one of the most secure parts of Iraq, its quasi-independence has Turkey, which has its own large Kurdish minority, especially tense. In July, the Turkish government revealed that its forces had captured U.S. weapons in the hands of the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK), a Turkish rebel group that often uses northern Iraq for a base of operations. The Turkish press exploded and the Turkish military discussed launching operations into Iraq, as well as using the episode to try to stifle civilian political rule inside Turkey.

The PKK is designated a "foreign terrorist organization" by the State Department, which bars U.S. citizens or those in U.S. jurisdictions from supporting the group in any way. The U.S. military and Justice Department launched an investigation into how U.S. weapons could get into the hands of the PKK, as the group has goals so contrary to U.S. strategy both within Iraq and beyond. Their investigations led them from Turkey and Iraq to North Carolina, home of Blackwater. Two Blackwater employees recently pled guilty of "possession of stolen firearms that had been shipped in interstate or foreign commerce, and aided and abetted another in doing so" and are now reportedly cooperating with federal authorities. However, the damage to U.S. strategy has already been done; as Steven Cook, an expert on U.S.-Turkey relations at the Council on Foreign Relations, put it, the "the Turks were very pissed."

The same derailing of U.S. foreign policy has played out the last weeks in Iraq. Just days before the Blackwater shooting, Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker delivered their assessment to Congress of the troop "surge" strategy and their plans for progress in the year ahead. There was intense debate over whether the military "benchmarks" were being met or not -- a debate that missed the fact that, as reported by the McClatchy news service, 43 people were shot in Baghdad by Blackwater contractors that same week. But there was general agreement that progress had to be made in pressing the Iraqi government on the lagging, and arguably more important, political benchmarks.

Then the Blackwater shootings happened, and senior U.S. government officials went from figuring out how best to pressure the Maliki government to scrambling to repair relations. Within hours, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had called the Iraqi prime minister. She didn't call to press him to take action on key political benchmarks like passing an Iraqi oil-sharing agreement or solving amnesty issues. Instead, she called to express her regrets about the Blackwater shootings. With the State Department so dependent on contractors that its personnel could not leave the Green Zone without them, Rice and Ambassador Crocker soon were reduced to begging the Iraqis to not kick out the firm, because the shutdown had paralyzed nearly all U.S. diplomatic and intelligence efforts inside the country. (Blackwater also has a contract to guard CIA offices in Iraq.)

Meanwhile, President Bush had been scheduled to meet with his Iraqi counterpart a mere eight days after the shootings. The top of the president's agenda no longer included how to get the Iraqi government to act to stem sectarian violence so that U.S. military forces could return home. Instead, the focus was now the problems with Blackwater and the wider private military industry.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Neither private military contractors in general nor Blackwater in particular are the only cause of U.S. troubles in Iraq. We can be sure that history will point to a laundry list of leaders and organizations to blame. But while contractors have performed the missions asked of them, it does not appear that the massive outsourcing of military efforts has been a great boon to the counterinsurgency in Iraq.

As the U.S. government now finally debates the private military contracting issue, it must move beyond the obvious focus on shoring up accounting, oversight and even legal accountability. We need to go back to the drawing board on the use of private military contractors, especially within counterinsurgency and contingency operations, where a so-called permissive environment is unlikely. That U.S. civilian diplomatic, reconstruction and intelligence operations in Iraq shut down after the Blackwater suspension illustrates both the inherently governmental importance of these missions and the massive vulnerability we have created.

The emperor has no clothes, but the answer isn't simply to ask him to put on a scarf. A process must begin to roll inherently governmental functions back into government hands. These functions include armed assignments in the battle space, including security of U.S. government officials, convoys and other valuable assets; as well as critical but unarmed roles that affect the mission's success or failure, such as military interrogations, intelligence tasks and the movement of critical supplies like fuel or ammunition. In turn, there are many, many others, such as the running of fast food restaurants, which need not be governmental and can be left to the private market.

The ultimate point is that counterinsurgencies and other contingency operations have no front lines and it is time to recognize this. The Defense Department's function of "supporting" civilian agencies does not include merely stepping aside for a private contractor force. As CENTCOM commander Adm. Fallon notes, contractors shouldn't be seen as a "surrogate army" of the State Department or any other agency whose workers they protect: "My instinct is that it's easier and better if they were in uniform and were working for me."

Our policy need not be inflexible. The return of inherently military and government functions to U.S. military and government personnel will take time, reassignment of personnel, and amendments to existing contracts. But if the Pentagon and State Department prove unwilling or unable to overhaul the process and restore our government's capacity to carry out its constitutionally mandated mission, then the legislative branch must act for them. Congress has been funding an entire pattern of private military outsourcing that it never explicitly voted on, and it is well past time to act.

Many of those vested in the system, including those testifying on Tuesday, will try to convince us to ignore this cycle. They will describe an evident pattern of incidents as "mere anomalies," portray private firms outside the chain of command as somehow part of the "total force," or claim that "we have no other choice" but to rely on contractors, when it is rather about choices they'd rather avoid. These are the denials of pushers, enablers and addicts.

If our military outsourcing has become a dangerous addiction, only an open and honest intervention, a step back from the precipice of over-outsourcing, can break us out of the vicious cycle. Will our leaders have the will to just say no?

Unfortunately, we may already have our answer. On Sept. 21, 2007, five days after the latest shooting incident in Baghdad, Blackwater resumed operations in Iraq.

Story finder (3 ways to search Salon)

Search terms:

Salon the Web

A list of all published articles organized by month and year:
Previous Years October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005

Salon Directory (browse by topic)