July 16, 2007
American Contractors in Iraq Face Risks

By JOHN M. BRODER
HOUSTON — America has given much to Shaheen Khan. It has taken something, too.

Three years ago, she was a nursery school teacher here, a meek woman with a melodic voice who charmed the children with tales from her native Pakistan.

Today she shares a room in a dreary nursing home on the fringes of Houston, paralyzed from mid-chest down, confined to a wheelchair and tormented by a fateful choice she made in the summer of 2004 to try to remake her life.

Mired in debt and strained by a sometimes difficult marriage, Mrs. Khan signed up with the military contracting giant KBR to do laundry for American forces in Iraq, a job that promised to triple the $16,000 a year she was earning at the school. Told her work would be restricted to the Green Zone in Baghdad, she convinced herself she would be safe.

Five weeks after arriving in Iraq, she was speeding down a Baghdad highway in a Chevy Tahoe when the driver swerved to avoid a box he feared was a bomb. The S.U.V. rolled five times, leaving Mrs. Khan suspended from her seat belt, unconscious with a crushed spinal cord. Doctors have told her she will not walk again.

She is not given to self-pity, but when asked what she looks forward to, Mrs. Khan’s eyes turn cloudy. “Nothing,” she said. “Now my life is almost over.”

This is the face of battle in a new war and a new century — a 46-year-old Pakistani-American woman, sent to the war zone as part of a rented army of 130,000 civilians supporting 150,000 United States soldiers and marines. Taking the place of junior enlisted troops in every American army before this one, these contract employees cook meals, wash clothes, deliver fuel, maintain weapons and guard bases. And they suffer and die alongside their brothers and sisters in uniform. About 1,000 contractors have been killed in Iraq since the war began; nearly 13,000 have been injured.

The consequences of the war will be lasting for many of them and their families, ordeals that are largely invisible to most Americans. And they will be costly. The most grievously injured, like Mrs. Khan, are initially treated at military hospitals in Iraq and Europe, but then sent home and left to the mercies of their employer’s insurance carrier. The less critically hurt, and those with psychic wounds, must fend for themselves to get care.

Nobody makes the private workers go to Iraq or forces them to stay, of course; the high salaries some collect lead critics to dismiss them as mercenaries and their employers as profiteers. But many more contractors, like Mrs. Khan, earn relatively modest wages — far less than the $100,000 the Army says an enlisted soldier costs annually in pay, benefits and training — and some foreign workers who perform some of the most dangerous tasks are paid just dollars a day. After a decade of downsizing and outsourcing, the American military cannot wage war without them.

“Everything about this is unprecedented,” said Peter W. Singer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington who has written about contractors on the battlefield. “The scope, the numbers, the roles people are performing. This is all new ground.”

In addition to escaping her troubles, Mrs. Khan, who became an American citizen in 2001, thought going to Iraq would give her a chance to repay the country that granted her fulfillment she could never have had in Pakistan, a close friend said.

“She is totally trapped now — only her mind and her soul remain her own,” Betty Linder, Mrs. Khan’s former boss wrote in an e-mail interview. “Her quest for freedom, literally and symbolically, put her in an eternal prison. The sadness of this could almost symbolize the sadness of the whole Iraq situation.”

The Decision to Go

Life was promising for Shaheen Abdul as a young girl in Karachi, where her father was a lawyer. But the family’s fortunes turned after her father died when Shaheen was seven, and she and her older sister, Mumtaz, eventually struck out on their own. Her sister married an India-born American citizen and moved to Houston in 1980. Mrs. Khan attended the University of Karachi, where she was a top student and earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology.

In 1986, at age 26, she followed her sister to Houston and began working in her dry cleaning shop. She returned to Karachi seven years later to marry Abdul Waheed Khan, a welder , a union arranged by their families. When her husband got work papers in 1998, the couple came to the United States.Mrs. Khan began teaching at Mrs. Linder’s pre-school, the Linder Learning Land. “Shaheen does not have children of her own, and she gives all of her love to those that she teaches,” Mrs. Linder wrote.

But as happy as she was at school, things were tense at home, a small apartment in Houston. Her husband, then working for Halliburton, was often away on jobs and sporadically unemployed. The couple was struggling with credit card debt and car loans that by 2004 totaled more than $35,000, Mrs. Khan said. KBR, which until earlier this year was a subsidiary of Halliburton, was hiring for all manner of work in Iraq. Mrs. Khan signed up for a laundry job with a base salary of $48,000 a year and the chance to make as much as $80,000 with overtime, much of it tax-free. She and her husband planned to work a year in Iraq, return to Houston, clear their debts and start anew.

She signed the 13-page employment agreement with KBR on Aug. 12, 2004, without reading it. The contract notes that she would be working in a “potentially hazardous environment” and that her only compensation if she were hurt or killed would be that provided under the Defense Base Act, a World War II-era law that provides death and disability insurance for workers employed at United States military facilities overseas.

Mrs. Khan said that she underwent several days of briefings and training in safety procedures by KBR, and acknowledged that company officials were forthcoming about the dangers. Heather Browne, a KBR spokeswoman, said in an e-mail message that during training, “most of the time is spent on discouraging recruits from taking the job.”

After the contracts were signed, the Khans were told it was company policy not to send spouses to the same war zone, as they had hoped. On Aug. 15, Abdul Khan boarded a plane to work as a welder at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Thirteen days later, Shaheen left Houston for Baghdad.

In the Green Zone

She was assigned a sandbag-ringed trailer in a KBR residential compound known as D2 inside the Green Zone. At 6 a.m. each day, a van would pick up Mrs. Khan and other laundry workers and take them to Camp Warrior at the other end of the Green Zone, where Mrs. Khan worked in a trailer logging in bags of laundry for soldiers and civilian workers.

She found the war zone overwhelming. She had to wear a helmet and a flak vest, and jumped every time she heard a mortar land or a roadside bomb explode. Her husband, with whom she talked every few days by satellite phone, urged her to go home.

On Oct. 3, 2004, she and four other workers at Camp Warrior were preparing to return to D2 for the night. Anice Holmes, a no-nonsense grandmother who lives on a small horse farm outside Livingston, Tex., usually took the wheel. She had been in Iraq for six months to try to accumulate some cash after her husband became disabled.

That day, however, Fitim Konjuvca, a young worker from Kosovo, begged to do the driving. Mrs. Holmes gave him the keys.

Mrs. Holmes and her sister, Kathy Elliott, and Mrs. Khan climbed in the back seat. Another KBR laundry worker they knew only as Mayo took the front passenger seat.

Mr. Konjuvca sped off onto a boulevard near the famous crossed-sabers memorial and began climbing past 70 miles per hour, Mrs. Holmes recalled. “My sister began to yell, ‘Fitim!’ to tell him to slow down and then we saw the box in the road. I figured he was going to slow down and go around it and then he was throwing on the brakes and we’re rolling over. I thought we were gone.”

As the car was tumbling, Mrs. Holmes recalled praying, “Jesus forgive me of my sins.” Mrs. Khan said she recited verses from the Koran before blacking out.

The Struggle for Coverage

Mrs. Khan and Mrs. Holmes were the most badly hurt. They were treated at an Army field hospital in Baghdad and then flown to the Army’s Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany for surgery.

Mrs. Khan’s husband, alerted to the accident by KBR officials in Afghanistan, took a military plane to be by her side. “I am crying and shouting and weeping and asking what is wrong,” Mr. Khan said. “They told me it was her back. I knew right away she would never walk again.”

After five days at Landstuhl, Mrs. Khan was flown to Houston, where she endured weeks of surgery and rehabilitation at two hospitals. She eventually ended up in the Willowbrook nursing home near her old neighborhood, sharing a small room with a dying old woman.

KBR dismissed her, as it does all employees unable to work. Her case was turned over to its insurer, the American International Group, which handles about 80 percent of claims for contract workers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A.I.G. paid Mrs. Khan’s hospital charges and is covering her nursing home costs. The company calculated her disability payments at $208.88 a week, based on her salary as a teacher and the five weeks she worked in Iraq. On the advice of an A.I.G. adjuster, she hired Gary B. Pitts, a Houston lawyer who represents dozens of contractors hurt in Iraq, and sued the insurer for a higher payment, based on her real and anticipated earnings at KBR. A year and a half after her injury, an administrative law judge awarded her $30,500 a year until she is deemed fit to return to work.

She has also disputed her medical benefits with A.I.G. The company rejected a claim for treatment of an infected foot, finally relenting after months of wrangling. But the company has refused to pay for in-home care so that she can leave the nursing home. An A.I.G. official, Chris Winans, said he could not comment on Mrs. Khan’s case for privacy reasons.Some Americans shrug about the casualties among contractors, saying they made their money and they took their chances. Others, though, think the nation owes them something more.

“We should honor their sacrifices and those of their families,” said Frank Camm, an economist at the Rand Corporation who has studied battlefield contractors and is the son of a retired Army lieutenant general. “They’re not in uniform, and there is something special about being in uniform. But they deserve a hell of a lot more than we’re giving them.”

Shaheen Khan does not dwell on such questions, or if she does, she does not talk about it. She looks back with regret on her decision to go to Iraq, the product, she now believes, of desperation and self-delusion.

“I made a big mistake going over there,” she said. “I fooled myself.”

Editorial :Asean-US ties: be seen, be heard

Published on July 16, 2007

America must do more to further its relations with Asean in the face of Chinese enthusiasm for the region
It is sad that the future relationship between Asean and the United States will largely have to do with the planned visits of US senior officials to the region, although such trips are a tangible demonstration that Washington is indeed paying attention to Asean. However, any failure to realise those visits will have the opposite effect. Thus when the news came that President George W Bush was cancelling a scheduled visit to Singapore for a summit meeting with Asean leaders on September 5, there were sighs of disbelief followed by huge disappointment in most Asean capitals.
The meeting date is only a few weeks away. Bush is not cancelling the Apec meeting, but Washington still has the audacity to call off the meeting with the Asean leaders. As if to rub salt into the wound, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice currently has no plan to attend the Asean Regional Forum - the only region-wide security dialogue opportunity - which will be held in early August in Manila. Rice missed the ARF gathering in 2005 in her first year in the job, when Laos hosted the meeting.

Asean-US ties are 30 years old. It is one of the world's oldest dialogue partnerships. Still, the Asean-US leaders have not yet institutionalised summit-level meetings - unlike China, Japan, Russia, Australia, New Zealand and other dialogue partners that are happy to associate with the top leadership level of Asean. The so-called "Asean plus one" summit with the US has been quite elusive.

Leaders from both sides have held talks while attending the annual leaders' meetings of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation. But the US president has never met all the Asean members at once. Singapore, as host, had been hoping that this time it could bring together all Asean members to talk with President Bush face-to-face. If such a summit meeting could have taken place, it would have been for the betterment of all. Nobody knows if Bush will be able to make it in November when the Asean leaders meet in Singapore to mark the 40th anniversary of the founding of Asean.

For decades, Asean-US friendship has been shaped by the political oppression within Burma. Long before Burma's admission to Asean in 1997, the crisis in the country was a bone of contention between the US and the regional grouping. In May 1990, Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy won a general election but the military junta refused to acknowledge the victory. Since then the US has maintained a hard-line position against Burma, and its strong views are not lost on Asean. After nearly two decades, while Burma remains an impediment, both sides are still getting used to their common positions. Yet they still hope to move forward on cooperation. Meanwhile, any hope Asean might have had of Burma changing for the better has been dashed by peer pressure. Asean has learned the hard way that even while Burma is a member, it acts as it wishes without conforming to Asean principles and norms.

Meanwhile, Washington devised a long-term plan to help Asean with economic integration. Member countries that are ready to enhance economic cooperation with the US are welcome to do so. If their economic cooperation with the US proves effective, then it could lead to some form of free trade agreement.

As the US struggles with its ties with Asean, China, another dialogue partner with only a decade-old friendship, is consolidating its partnership with the regional grouping. Chinese leaders have unfailingly attended Asean summits. Indeed, they have used, quite effectively, all available regional venues to show that China's role in the region would be that of engagement and commitment. China has more cooperative programmes covering the whole gamut of bilateral cooperation, which of late also includes cultural and media development.

So again this year the US could lose a good opportunity to further strengthen ties and cooperation with Asean. Already, the US is lagging behind because of its focus on the Middle East and the Iraq war. Eventually, this will affect other aspects of its relations in the future, especially in the counter-terrorism campaign. In the region, Asean leaders believe in the saying that "out of sight" will result in "out of mind". Be seen and be heard are still valuable mottoes in Asean.

Corps Commander Sees No Need for More U.S. Troops in Iraq
By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, July 16, 2007 – The Multinational Corps Iraq commander said he does not envision a scenario that would require more U.S. troops in Iraq.

Army Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno told reporters traveling with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine Gen. Peter Pace that the coalition and Iraqi forces are making significant progress in the country.
"Since January 2007, we have seen a significant increase in Iraqis rejecting al Qaeda," Odierno said.
The movement started in Qaim in western Iraq and followed the Euphrates River Valley to Baghdad, he said.
"We're seeing people coming to us and wanting to help," the general said. "We're seeing Iraqi citizens wanting to reconcile with the government, wanting to reconcile with us. We are seeing true military progress."
However, he said he is afraid the coalition will not have time to finish the job militarily. "I think what we have to do is give an assessment back to Congress and the president that says this is how much time we need in Iraq before we can think about reducing the size of our force in Iraq," Odierno said.
"I think the long-term threat to Iraq is al Qaeda, and that has never changed," he said.
But, he added, sectarian violence is down, partly because of actions against al Qaeda and the Shiia extremist group Jaysh al-Mahdi.
"We believe that sectarian violence is no longer the No. 1 threat we have," Odierno said. "We're now focused again on eliminating al Qaeda as a threat to the government of Iraq and the future of Iraq."
Coalition and Iraqi forces have cleared and are holding more than 50 percent of Baghdad. Troops are going into and staying in neighborhoods that previously had no coalition presence. "The surge and the additional forces we have available to us has enabled us to go into these areas," he said.
Odierno said the al Qaeda leadership is disrupted, and the country is becoming inhospitable to the terror group. The group's area of operations is shrinking, he said. Foreign fighters coming in via Syria are being so boxed in that there are reports they turn around and leave.
Iran continues to be a problem, because the country continues to support Shiia extremists with money, training and equipment, Odierno said. "In fact, we are seeing some indicators that they may be increasing their support here leading up to September for the Shiia extremists trying to influence the outcome in Iraq," he said.
The general said he has received reports that Iran is trying to ship more explosively formed projectiles, the most deadly form of improvised explosive device, into Iraq. He also said he has intelligence that Iraqi operatives are training with Iran's Quds Force.
Finally, Odierno said he is very proud of the way American servicemembers are operating in Iraq. The temperature is well over 110 degrees, but they are taking the temperature in stride and operating with enormous professionalism, he said.

Related Sites:
Multinational Corps Iraq

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Globalism

July 16, 2007

The recent defeat of the amnesty bill in the Senate came after outraged Americans made it clear to the political elite that they would not tolerate this legislation, which would further erode our national sovereignty. Similarly, polls increasingly show the unpopularity of the Iraq war, as well as of the Congress that seems incapable of ending it.

Because some people who vocally oppose amnesty are supportive of the war, the ideological connection between support of the war and amnesty is often masked. If there is a single word explaining the reasons why we continue to fight unpopular wars and see legislation like the amnesty bill nearly become law, that word is “globalism.”

The international elite, including many in the political and economic leadership of this country, believe our constitutional republic is antiquated and the loyalty Americans have for our form of government is like a superstition, needing to be done away with. When it benefits elites, they pay lip service to the American way, even while undermining it.

We must remain focused on what ideology underlies the approach being taken by those who see themselves as our ruling-class, and not get distracted by the passions of the moment or the rhetorical devices used to convince us how their plans will be “good for us.” Whether it is managed trade being presented under the rhetoric of “free trade,” or the ideas of “regime change” abroad and “making the world safe for democracy” -- the underlying principle is globalism.

Although different rhetoric is used in each instance, the basic underlying notion behind replacing regimes abroad and allowing foreign people to come to this country illegally is best understood by comprehending this ideal of the globalist elite. In one of his most lucid moments President Bush spoke of the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” Unfortunately, that bigotry is one of the core tenets at the heart of the globalist ideology.

The basic idea is that foreigners cannot manage their own affairs so we have to do it for them. This may require sending troops to far off lands that do not threaten us, and it may also require “welcoming with open arms” people who come here illegally. All along globalists claim a moral high ground, as if our government is responsible for ensuring the general welfare of all people. Yet the consequences are devastating to our own taxpayers, as well as many of those we claim to be helping.

Perhaps the most seriously damaged victim of this approach is our own constitutional republic, because globalism undermines both the republican and democratic traditions of this nation. Not only does it make a mockery of the self-rule upon which our republic is based, it also erodes the very institutions of our republic and replaces them with international institutions that are often incompatible with our way of life.

The defeat of the amnesty bill proves though that there is no infallible logic, or predetermined march of history, that forces globalism on us.

Pakistan Truce Appears Defunct
Insurgents Strike Police, Troops; At Least 44 Die
By Griff Witte and Imtiaz Ali
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, July 16, 2007; A01

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, July 15 -- A controversial peace deal between the Pakistani government and local tribal leaders in an area where al-Qaeda is known to be regrouping appeared to collapse Sunday, as tensions escalated and a fresh wave of bombings killed at least 44 people.

The 10-month-old deal in the restive region of North Waziristan was designed to curb cross-border attacks against U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan. But it has been widely criticized by security analysts and, lately, U.S. officials, who said it provided terrorist groups including the Taliban and al-Qaeda with a safe haven in which to train recruits and plot attacks.

On Sunday, local Taliban fighters proclaimed the deal dead and announced the start of an all-out guerrilla war against the Pakistani army. Pakistani officials stopped short of conceding the agreement's demise, but the military has been moving tens of thousands of troops toward troubled spots along the border in recent days, after the president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, last week announced a new crackdown on extremism.

Military officials said the troops were being deployed in a bid to keep the peace following last week's raid on the Red Mosque in Islamabad. That effort appeared to be breaking down Sunday, as security forces continued to take heavy losses in a series of attacks that killed more than 70 people over the weekend. Most of those killed were soldiers or police.

The most recent attack occurred Sunday afternoon, when a suicide bomber targeted a room full of hundreds of police recruits taking an entrance exam in the city of Dera Ismail Khan. The blast killed at least 26 people and wounded 60, security officials said.

Earlier in the day, a military convoy in the Swat Valley was targeted by insurgents who unleashed two suicide bombers and a roadside bomb. Eighteen people were killed in those blasts, and 47 were wounded.

On Saturday, troops were attacked in North Waziristan, despite the peace deal, and at least 24 were killed. A purported spokesman for Taliban fighters said that the government had violated the terms of the deal by setting up checkpoints in the area. Residents of North Waziristan have also reported that the government has raided suspected militant hideouts.

The spokesman, Abdullah Farhan, said in a telephone interview that the group had given the government until Sunday to remove the checkpoints. When the government did not comply, the Taliban declared war, he said.

"We are ending the agreement today," said a statement circulated by the fighters in North Waziristan's district center, Miram Shah.

Pakistani government officials on Sunday accused the fighters of violating terms of the deal and said local leaders would be held responsible. They were vague about the deal's future.

When the agreement was signed in September, Musharraf touted it as a way to use local tribal influence to stem the tide of extremism in Pakistan. According to the terms of the deal, leaders in the area agreed to police their neighborhoods and prevent fighters from launching cross-border raids into Afghanistan. In return, the Pakistani military volunteered to withdraw troops to their barracks after five years of conflict in which hundreds of soldiers were killed.

As recently as this spring, government officials had been pointing to clashes between local militias and foreign fighters as evidence that the deal was working. The tribes, officials said, appeared to be banding together to oust Uzbeks, Chechens and other fighters who had been sheltered in the region.

But criticism of the deal has grown in recent months. U.S. and NATO troops have confronted escalating violence in Afghanistan, with much of it traced back across the border into Pakistan. Meanwhile, Pakistani tribal areas have increasingly come under the Taliban's sway, with the group using force to push its extreme vision of Islamic law.

The apparent collapse of the agreement came after U.S. intelligence officials reported last week that al-Qaeda was reestablishing itself in ungoverned areas in Pakistan. In a series of televised interviews Sunday, national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley identified the North Waziristan deal as part of the problem Musharraf faces in attempting to confront extremism.

"It has not worked the way he wanted," Hadley said Sunday in an interview on the ABC program "This Week." "It has not worked the way we wanted."

Musharraf, who also leads the army and is considered a crucial U.S. counterterrorism ally, is facing growing challenges to his eight-year rule. In recent months, he has come under assault from extremists who consider him a pawn of the United States, and moderates who want a return to a civilian, democratic government in Pakistan.

The moderates have also criticized Musharraf for not doing enough to counter extremism.

Last week, however, he ordered a raid on a mosque in Islamabad where clerics had been pushing for a theocratic government modeled after the Taliban rule in Afghanistan.

Since then, the raid has become a rallying cry among hard-line religious leaders who have accused the government of covering up the true death count. The government has said that fewer than 100 people died in the raid, while hard-liners have alleged the toll was far higher.

"The Red Mosque was a created problem," said Hafiz Riaz Durrani, information secretary for the Jamiat-e-Ulema-i-Islami party. "America pressured Musharraf to take action, and he pressured the armed forces to take action against the Islamists."

Ali reported from Peshawar, Pakistan. Special correspondent Shahzad Khurram in Islamabad contributed to this report.