Contractors Move Into the Gap in Iraq

Posted on Aug 19, 2010

AP / May Alleruzzo

U.S. soldiers race across the border into Kuwait on Wednesday, part of the last combat brigade to leave Iraq as part of the drawdown of American forces.

With the last American combat brigade pulling out of Iraq this week, the U.S. is turning much of the security effort there over to a small army of civilian contractors under the State Department. 

The U.S. is planning to use the contractors to train Iraqi police, operate radar to warn of enemy attacks, search for IEDs, fly drones, and even act as a quick-response force. —JCL

The New York Times:

To protect the civilians in a country that is still home to insurgents with Al Qaeda and Iranian-backed militias, the State Department is planning to more than double its private security guards, up to as many as 7,000, according to administration officials who disclosed new details of the plan. Defending five fortified compounds across the country, the security contractors would operate radars to warn of enemy rocket attacks, search for roadside bombs, fly reconnaissance drones and even staff quick reaction forces to aid civilians in distress, the officials said.

“I don’t think State has ever operated on its own, independent of the U.S. military, in an environment that is quite as threatening on such a large scale,” said James Dobbins, a former ambassador who has seen his share of trouble spots as a special envoy for Afghanistan, Bosnia, Haiti, Kosovo and Somalia. “It is unprecedented in scale.”

White House officials expressed confidence that the transfer to civilians — about 2,400 people who would work at the Baghdad embassy and other diplomatic sites — would be carried out on schedule, and that they could fulfill their mission of helping bring stability to Iraq.

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