Contractors in Iraq Have Become U.S. Crutch
By Walter Pincus
Monday, August 20, 2007; A13

When years from now historians and government officials reexamine precedents set by the U.S. experience in Iraq, many "firsts" are likely to pop up.

One still playing out is the extraordinarily wide use of private contractors. A Congressional Research Service report published last month titled "Private Security Contractors in Iraq: Background, Legal Status, and Other Issues," puts it this way: "Iraq appears to be the first case where the U.S. government has used private contractors extensively for protecting persons and property in potentially hostile or hostile situations where host country security forces are absent or deficient."

Only estimates are available for the total employment by contractors in Iraq that perform "functions once carried by the U.S. military," according to the study. Testimony at an April 2007 congressional hearing gave the impressive figure of 127,000 as the number working in Iraq under Defense Department contracts. Breakdowns don't exist, but one Pentagon official said less than 20 percent were American.

CIA and the Pentagon intelligence agencies have hired contractors in Iraq, but the tasks and the funds involved are secret.

Surge or no surge, the work that contractors do there remains highly dangerous. The study reports that private contractors risk death and injury handling security for convoys that carry gasoline, oil and all sorts of supplies and equipment into and around Iraq.

It quotes U.S. Army Corps of Engineers data that show "an increasing proportion of registered supply convoys has been attacked." In the first 18 weeks of 2007, 14.7 percent of the convoys were struck, according to the data, while only 5.5 percent were hit in 2005. Earlier this month, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) reported that Labor Department figures show 1,001 civilian contractors had died in Iraq as of June 30, 2007.

While U.S. contractors have provided personal security to officials in other conflict zones, those in Iraq are now being used in all aspects of the struggle because, as the CRS report says, doing otherwise would require policymakers "to contemplate an increase in the number of U.S. troops, perhaps increasing incentives to attract volunteers or re-instituting the draft."

But the expanded contractor use has evoked new attention to a 1995 criticism of the practice. According to the study, a Defense Department Commission on Roles and Missions found then that depending on contractors was detrimental and that it kept the Pentagon "from building and maintaining capacity needed for strategic or other important missions."

An advertisement last week on IntelligenceCareers.com illustrates part of the problem. It seeks an "Intelligence Analyst" to work in Iraq for a Dayton, Ohio-based outfit called MacAulay-Brown, or MacB, which in turn is a subcontractor to the giant Lockheed Martin information technology group. The client is Counterintelligence Field Activity, the Defense Department's newest intelligence arm, which is responsible for coordinating force protection for the military services inside the United States and abroad.

The capabilities required for the job include "CI Analysis, related Intelligence Analysis experience, or similar CI/Intelligence community experience." The employee, the ad says, would work in Baghdad supporting CIFA's participation in the Strategic Intelligence Directorate to counter foreign intelligence and terrorist activities. That directorate, which includes members of Navy, Air Force and Army security units, will "recruit informants, investigate terrorist attacks, process evidence from raids, and interrogate detainees," according to the ad.

MacB analysts also support other major U.S. military outfits in Iraq, the ad says, analyzing captured documents and supporting counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations while using "our extensive understanding of Iraqi former regime forces, current government elements, and insurgent and terrorist factions affecting the present security situation into intelligence products for national-level special projects."

MacB is needed now because the military did not foresee the need to do this work itself 12 years ago.

National security and intelligence reporter Walter Pincus pores over the speeches, reports, transcripts and other documents that flood Washington and every week uncovers the fine print that rarely makes headlines -- but should. If you have any items that fit the bill, please send them tofineprint@washpost.com.

August 19, 2007
Ireland Learns to Adapt to a Population Growth Spurt

By EAMON QUINN
DUBLIN — Inside a north Dublin warehouse, 15,000 cardboard boxes containing the documents of Ireland’s most recent census rise on new shelving from the concrete floor. The sight is nondescript, but the collated and computer-scanned documents contain evidence that the Republic of Ireland is the fastest repopulating small country in the world.

Findings from the April 2006 census, which are being published in a series of releases this summer, showed that in the four years since a previous survey, the Irish population swelled by 322,645, roughly split between immigrants and births. That lifted the total population to 4.2 million.

No European Union country has a younger population: statistically, the Irish have been barely aging at all, with the median age staying close to 33. The country will remain young for decades, say the experts, and escape the “graying” fate of the rest of Europe.

Further, demographers now predict that the population could rise to over five million in about a dozen years, and to six million within a generation. With a growing population in Northern Ireland, the island could match its largest population — more than eight million before the devastating 19th-century famine that prompted waves of emigration — by 2032.

Edgar Morgenroth, a member of a panel of experts who predict Irish population growth, said the famine started a diminishing of the population that lasted to the late 1960s. “It was only in the 1990s that our population stabilized and started to grow, rapidly,” he said. The population might reach the 19th-century level, but it will look very different.

The population changes have been uneven geographically. New houses stretch in a wide arc from north Dublin to the west of the city. But the city’s core, despite being replenished by an influx of immigrants, has lost residents to the suburbs and to once unimaginably distant commuting centers in the midlands. In the south, the city of Cork shrank while the county grew.

Some experts think the scale is beyond most citizens’ imaginations: in about half a generation, the population may grow by another Dublin, which has 1.1 million people in its greater metropolitan area.

“The worst is that we find ourselves without growing our services to cope with the numbers,” Mr. Morgenroth said. “The benign outlook is that we have tackled our services and, like Switzerland or Luxembourg, we have great wealth and a great quality of life. The smaller countries can do it right.”

Eunan King, an economist at NCB Stockbrokers in Dublin, has long argued that a rising population — more workers and more consumers — will help sustain Ireland’s remarkable economic renaissance of the past dozen years.

The largest increases in immigration since 2002 have been from Poland, Lithuania and Nigeria. The latest census showed 63,276 Poles living permanently in Ireland, up from 2,124 four years earlier. In some small districts in Dublin, Limerick and Cork, the census showed, 52 percent of residents were non-Irish, said Aidan Punch, a senior census statistician.

Ireland permits all residents, not just Irish citizens, to cast ballots in local elections. That has helped immigrants win seats in local councils. The mayor of the midlands town of Portlaoise, Rotimi Adebari, is from Nigeria.

To encourage assimilation, the government recently named a minister for integration, Conor Lenihan. The department was organized, Mr. Lenihan said in an interview, to show Ireland’s commitment to share and develop its new wealth with new arrivals. “We have chosen a midpoint between the U.S. and Europe in terms of our economic success,” he said. “I think we can choose a midpoint in integration as well.”

Mr. Lenihan said his department would investigate ways to provide extensive language classes for adult immigrants and to increase training for unskilled local Irish workers.

But immigrants’ representatives say the government needs to do more.

“Ireland should be taking a lead in Europe,” said Jean-Pierre Eyanga Ekumeloko, a naturalized Irish citizen from Congo and a co-founder of Integrating Ireland, an independent support group for immigrants.

Mr. Ekumeloko said the Irish prime minister should lay out a plan for welcoming and integrating immigrants. He said many were working jobs for which they were overqualified. “A lot of things have changed in interactions between the Irish community and immigrants,” he said, adding that in the past he had heard racist remarks. “Things have changed very positively. Now Irish people know Africans.”

At a restaurant table in Lucan, in western Dublin, Dulce Huerta, a Mexican, and her husband, an Irishman named Lorcan Donnellan, cradled their 5-week-old child. They talked about the strains population growth was causing in their area, near the district of Lucan Esker, which according to the census numbers is the youngest spot in the country. More children under 4 live there than anywhere else in Ireland.

“The maternity hospital was packed and needed more staff,” Ms. Huerta said.

They fretted about how the huge housing estates under construction would add to local traffic. “The roads cannot cope already,” Mr. Donnellan said. “It’s going to get more choked.”

A new mother at a nearby table, Suzanne Leyden, an actuary, said the authorities seemed to have anticipated the growing needs by opening or expanding primary schools. “Secondary schools will be the next big challenge,” she said.

Derek Keating, a local councilor for the Lucan area, said: “The big picture is that we are playing catch-up all the time. There is a lack of infrastructure, in everything from schools to recreational activities.”

In the northern Dublin suburb of Swords, Gerard Kelly, a teacher for 25 years and now a principal, said his school would struggle to meet the demand for classroom seats when it opened in September. “Back in 2001 we had 21 children,” Mr. Kelly said. “Next September we will have 340. We have children from 40 countries.”

Iraqi Leaders' Talks Yield Scant Results
De-Baathification Law Under Review
By Megan Greenwell
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 19, 2007; A17

BAGHDAD, Aug. 18 -- Iraq's top five government leaders began a review of the country's de-Baathification law Saturday but appeared not to have reached an agreement on that topic or any of the other critical issues that have plunged the country into a political crisis.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, met with President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd; Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni; Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, a Shiite; and Massoud Barzani, president of the semiautonomous Kurdish region.

Spokesmen for Hashimi and Abdul Mahdi and a written statement from Talabani's office characterized the meeting as productive but did not provide any specific information about the progress made during the two-hour gathering.

The lack of concrete results from meetings this week diminishes hopes of creating a unified government by Sept. 15, when President Bush and Congress are to receive a report about conditions in Iraq.

Movement on several key pieces of legislation has been stalled for weeks, and the country's minority Sunni politicians have refused to join a new political alliance announced Thursday.

Ali Yass, a spokesman for Hashimi, said the meeting was aimed at preparing for a larger political summit, which Maliki hopes will include leaders from every national political party. That meeting was originally scheduled to open earlier this week but has been repeatedly delayed in favor of more planning meetings among the five top leaders.

"Today, we agreed on a number of matters, the main one being the agenda that should be forwarded to the leaders of the political blocs and whoever will attend the meeting of the political leaders," Talabani's office said in its statement.

Yass said more meetings would be necessary to draft a new de-Baathification law, which is expected to loosen restrictions on former members of Saddam Hussein's political party who want to work in the government or the military.

Another of Iraq's most contentious issues, a proposal to equally divide the country's oil revenue among sects, was not discussed at Saturday's meeting, Yass said. Maliki and the Bush administration consider the oil law crucial to achieving national reconciliation, but several political blocs based in oil-rich areas oppose its passage.

Meanwhile, seven people, including an infant, were killed Saturday when mortar rounds rained down in the town of Khalis, 50 miles north of Baghdad, police said.

At least four people were killed in the northern city of Kirkuk when two car bombs exploded in an outdoor market. Kirkuk has been the site of frequent violence in the past few months as Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen battle for control of the city.

Special correspondents Naseer Nouri and Dalya Hassan contributed to this report.

August 19, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Seeing Is Believing

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Is the surge in Iraq working? That is the question that Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker will answer for us next month. I, alas, am not interested in their opinions.

It is not because I don’t hold both men in very high regard. I do. But I’m still not interested in their opinions. I’m only interested in yours. Yes, you — the person reading this column. You know more than you think.

You see, I have a simple view about both Arab-Israeli peace-making and Iraqi surge-making, and it goes like this: Any Arab-Israeli peace overture that requires a Middle East expert to explain to you is not worth considering. It’s going nowhere.

Either a peace overture is so obvious and grabs you in the gut — Anwar Sadat’s trip to Israel — or it’s going nowhere. That is why the Saudi-Arab League peace overture is going nowhere. No emotional content. It was basically faxed to the Israeli people, and people don’t give up land for peace in a deal that comes over the fax.

Ditto with Iraqi surges. If it takes a Middle East expert to explain to you why it is working, it’s not working. To be sure, it is good news if the number of Iraqis found dead in Baghdad each night is diminishing. Indeed, it is good news if casualties are down everywhere that U.S. troops have made their presence felt. But all that tells me is something that was obvious from the start of the war, which Donald Rumsfeld ignored: where you put in large numbers of U.S. troops you get security, and where you don’t you get insecurity.

There’s only one thing at this stage that would truly impress me, and it is this: proof that there is an Iraq, proof that there is a coalition of Iraqi Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds who share our vision of a unified, multiparty, power-sharing, democratizing Iraq and who are willing to forge a social contract that will allow them to maintain such an Iraq — without U.S. troops.

Because if that is not the case, even if U.S. troops create more pockets of security via the surge, they will have no one to hand these pockets to who can maintain them without us. In other words, the only people who can prove that the surge is working are the Iraqis, and the way they prove that is by showing that violence is down in areas where there are no U.S. troops or where U.S. troops have come and gone.

Because many Americans no longer believe anything President Bush says about Iraq, he has outsourced the assessment of the surge to the firm of Petraeus & Crocker. But this puts them in an impossible position. I admire their efforts, and those of their soldiers, to try to salvage something decent in Iraq, especially when you see who we are losing to — Sunni suicide jihadists and Shiite militants, who murder fellow Muslims by the dozen and whose retrograde visions offer Iraqis only a future of tears. But we could never defeat them on our own. It takes a village, and right now too many of the Iraqi villagers won’t work together.

Most likely the Bush team will say the surge is a “partial” success and needs more time. But that is like your contractor telling you that your home is almost finished — the bricks are up, but there’s no cement. Thanks a lot.

The Democrats should not fight Petraeus & Crocker over their answer. They should redefine the question. They should say: “My fellow Americans, ask yourselves this: What will convey to you, in your gut — without anyone interpreting it — that the surge is working and worth sustaining?”

My answer: If I saw something with my own eyes that I hadn’t seen before — Iraq’s Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni leaders stepping forward, declaring their willingness to work out their differences by a set deadline and publicly asking us to stay until they do. That’s the only thing worth giving more time to develop.

But it may just be too late. Had the surge happened in 2003, when it should have, it might have prevented the kindling of all of Iraq’s sectarian passions. But now that those fires have been set, trying to unify Iraq feels like doing carpentry on a burning house.

I’ve been thinking about Iraq’s multi-religious soccer team, which just won the Asian Cup. The team was assembled from Iraqis who play for other pro teams outside Iraq. In fact, it was reported that the Iraqi soccer team hadn’t played a home game in 17 years because of violence or U.N. sanctions. In short, it’s a real team with a virtual country. That’s what I fear the surge is trying to protect: a unified Iraq that exists only in the imagination and on foreign soccer fields.

Only Iraqis living in Iraq can prove otherwise. So far, I don’t see it.

Maureen Dowd is off today.

http://www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/printStoryId.aspx?StoryId=6305

Globalist Perspective > Global Culture
Tunisia as an Arab Women's Rights Leader (Part I)

By Andrea Barron | Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Women’s rights and what Islam says about marriage, divorce, modesty and domestic violence, are a major source of contention in the Arab world. Government policies, traditional customs and misinterpretation of the Qur’an prevent women, and Arab societies, from reaching their full potential. But as Andrea Barron explains, the North African country of Tunisia has a different approach to women’s rights.

Under the brutal but secular regime of Saddam Hussein, Iraqi women benefited from some of the most female-friendly policies in the Arab world. Now, under the new Shia-dominated government, Islamist militias threaten women who do not follow their conservative dress code — and assassinate female teachers for educating illiterate women.

In Jordan, Syria, Egypt and most other Arab countries, a man who murders his female relative to defend family “honor” receives a reduced penalty — or may not be sent to prison at all. Jordanian feminists and the Hashemite Royal Family have tried to abolish the law, but conservative legislators refuse to change it.

Women in Tunisia

In the Palestinian territories, despite the existence of a strong and vibrant women’s movement, rapists are not prosecuted, while victims are forced to marry their assailants to “protect” the family’s reputation.

Compare the Tunisian interpretation of the Qur’an to the one in Saudi Arabia, which last March allowed a 110-year-old Saudi man to marry a 30-year-old woman because his 85-year-old wife “could not satisfy him.”

In non-Arab Iran, women are stoned to death for adultery, while men can enter into legal “temporary marriages” if they want to have extra-marital sex.

But the picture looks very different for women in the small North African country of Tunisia — which is proud of its Arab, Islamic and Mediterranean heritage and its commitment to the values of “moderation, tolerance, religious pluralism and equality for women.”

Women constitute one-third of Tunisia’s university professors, 58% of its university students, more than one-fourth of its judges, 23% of the members of parliament and are represented in the police and the armed forces. The illiteracy rate for women has dropped dramatically from 82% in 1966 to 31% in 2004.

Women in business

The Tunisian Solidarity Bank makes loans to female entrepreneurs like Gamra Zeid, a 38-year-old mother with a sixth grade education, who received 10,000 Tunisian dinars ($7,700) to start a shoe sole factory.

Women have been given bank loans to open pastry shops, daycare centers, dress stores and other micro-enterprises. And their businesses make a significant contribution to Tunisia’s economy: Female-owned businesses are almost twice as likely to survive after five years as those run by men.

Progressive policies

But what really sets Tunisia apart from other Arab countries and most majority-Muslim states are its policies on marriage, divorce, child support, abortion, honor crimes and domestic violence. After all, what does it matter if a woman can attend university,

Female-owned businesses are almost twice as likely to survive after five years as those run by men.

own her own business and run for political office if she cannot choose her own husband and be free from violence perpetrated by her own family members?

Tunisia has had the most progressive policies on women in the Arab world ever since President Habib Bourguiba proclaimed the Code of Personal Status in August 1956, five months after declaring its independence from France.

The code abolished polygamy without exception and punished a man who married a second wife with a year in prison and a fine. It forbid husbands from unilaterally divorcing their wives and gave women more child custodial rights.

Equality in people

Bourguiba and the liberal nationalists who came to power in 1956 were not responding to the demands of a feminist movement, as there was none at the time.

They saw improving women’s rights as an integral part of their effort to turn Tunisia into a modern country free from “anachronistic traditions and backward mentalities.”

The Qur'an limits polygamy

They also drew on the ideas of Tahar Haddad, the Tunisian Islamic reformer who wrote the famous book "Our Women in the Shari 'a and Society" over 70 years ago. “Islam is an endless source of progress,”

The Code abolished polygamy without exception and punished a man who married a second wife with a year in prison and a fine.

Haddad wrote. “It preaches the equality of all people, particularly between men and women, whom God created as equals.”

Haddad spoke out against forcing young girls into early marriages and giving women the right to work outside the home.

Dr. Kamel Omran, a leading Tunisian Imam and a lecturer in the Arabic Department of Al-Zaytouna University, follows the tradition of Islamic modernists in his interpretation of Quranic verses on polygamy. Most Muslims — and non-Muslims as well — believe the Qur’an allows a man to marry up to four wives.

Misinterpretation of the Qur'an

But that is not what it says at all. Dr. Omran explains, “The Qur’an limits polygamy to a specific context — men were allowed to marry widows or orphan girls during a state of war when many Muslim men were killed” (Qur’an: Sura 4, Verse 3).

“Because of the widespread consensus among both religious scholars and the general public, polygamy in Tunisia is now unthinkable.”

Religion and women

Compare the Tunisian interpretation of the Qur’an to the one in Saudi Arabia, which last March allowed a 110-year-old Saudi man to marry a 30-year-old woman because his 85-year-old wife “could not satisfy him.”

Following the Qur'an and the traditions of the prophet Muhammad should make people more, not less, lenient toward women.

This man was not acting according to Qur’anic principles but from a widespread mistaken interpretation of the Muslim sacred text.

“It is custom, not faith, which is responsible for this kind of patriarchal interpretation of Islam,” says Imam Omran. “Following the Qur’an and Sunna, the traditions of the prophet Muhammad, should make people more, not less, lenient toward women.”

He also says there is no religious commandment that obligates women to cover their hair. “Islam requires women to dress modestly, which means covering her arms and legs. The hair is optional.”

===========
Tunisia as an Arab Women's Rights Leader (Part II)

By Andrea Barron | Thursday, July 12, 2007
Tunisia continues to set the bar for Arab women's rights in the 21st century, legalizing abortion and actively combatting domestic violence. As Andrea Barron explains, for anyone who wants to see a renaissance in the Arab world, the remarkable progress of Tunisian women is a success story they cannot afford to ignore.

Tunisia is the only Arab and majority-Muslim country where abortion is legal during the first trimester and where women can obtain government-subsidized abortions without their husband’s permission.

Women do not have to use abortion as a method of birth control like they do in some developing countries. An ambitious family-planning program has successfully reduced population growth through education and making contraceptives readily available.

Women's movement

In 1993, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who succeeded Bourguiba as president, amended the Code of Personal Status to give women more rights. This time an active women’s movement could take much of the credit for the changes.

Tunisia has established a special fund to support divorced mothers.

A wife was no longer required to obey her husband, a special fund was established to support divorced mothers and Tunisian women could now transfer their nationality on to their children.

And Article 207 in the penal code reducing the penalty for honor crimes was abolished.

A man who murders his wife after catching her in an act of adultery used to be guilty of just a misdemeanor. Now, however, he faces life imprisonment for manslaughter. Compare this to the situation in Pakistan, where a brother who kills his sister can escape any punishment at all by “confessing” to his father, who then promptly “forgives” him.

Article 207

Souad Khalfallah, President of the Alliance of Women Lawyers, recalls the opposition from Islamic fundamentalists when Article 207 was eliminated.

“I was a student at the University of Tunis at the time. I can remember the fundamentalists distributing flyers around the campus saying, “Apply the Quranic Law! The CPS (Code of Personal Status) is anti-Quranic.” But the government refused to back down.

Combatting domestic violence

Tunisia continues to raise the bar for Arab women’s rights in the 21st century. This year, encouraged by the National Union of Tunisian Women, the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women and other women’s groups,

The government has launched a full-scale campaign to combat domestic violence.

the government has launched a full-scale campaign to combat domestic violence.

Nabila Hamza from the National Board for Family and Population, which directs family planning and reproductive health programs, is the project’s national coordinator.

The project is conducting the first national survey on the frequency of domestic violence and is working with imams, religious counselors, policemen, judges, doctors, midwives and social workers to raise awareness of family violence and advocate for measures to reduce it.

Rejecting violence toward women

Since January 2007, they have organized workshops in four governorates, or states (Gabes, Kairouan, Monastir and Jendouba), meeting with male and female imams and religious scholars. “Last March in Jendouba, we met with over 60 imams and scholars,” says Hamza.

“People talked about how the wives of the prophet Muhammad, especially his young wife Aisha, were military and religious leaders, and how he turned to them for advice.”

Setting the pace

“The imams agreed that the correct interpretation of Islam completely rejects all violence toward women. They differed only on whether this violence is an isolated phenomenon or a more pervasive social problem, with some saying they had not seen any evidence of this problem themselves. Some imams have made

According to the 2005 Arab Human Development Report, women’s advancement is “a prerequisite for an Arab renaissance."

a commitment to begin speaking against domestic violence in the khutba, or sermon, they deliver in the mosques every Friday.

Can a small country like Tunisia — population ten million — set the pace for the future of women in the Arab world? According to the 2005 Arab Human Development Report, published by the United Nations Development Program, women’s advancement is “a prerequisite for an Arab renaissance, inseparably and casually linked to the fate of the Arab world and its achievement of human development.”

For anyone who wants to see this kind of renaissance in the Arab world, the remarkable progress of Tunisian women is a success story they cannot afford to ignore.

Editor's Note: Read Part I here.


Copyright © 2000-2007 by The Globalist. Reproduction of content on this site without The Globalist's written permission is strictly prohibited. Terms of Use | Privacy Policy

McPherson Square, 927 15th Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20005