October 11, 2007
Marines Press to Remove Their Forces From Iraq

By THOM SHANKER
WASHINGTON, Oct. 10 — The Marine Corps is pressing to remove its forces from Iraq and to send marines instead to Afghanistan, to take over the leading role in combat there, according to senior military and Pentagon officials.

The idea by the Marine Corps commandant would effectively leave the Iraq war in the hands of the Army while giving the Marines a prominent new role in Afghanistan, under overall NATO command.

The suggestion was raised in a session last week convened by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and regional war-fighting commanders. While still under review, its supporters, including some in the Army, argue that a realignment could allow the Army and Marines each to operate more efficiently in sustaining troop levels for two wars that have put a strain on their forces.

As described by officials who had been briefed on the closed-door discussion, the idea represents the first tangible new thinking to emerge since the White House last month endorsed a plan to begin gradual troop withdrawals from Iraq, but also signals that American forces likely will be in Iraq for years to come.

At the moment, there are no major Marine units among the 26,000 or so American forces in Afghanistan. In Iraq there are about 25,000 marines among the 160,000 American troops there.

It is not clear exactly how many of the marines in Iraq would be moved over. But the plan would require a major reshuffling, and it would make marines the dominant American force in Afghanistan, in a war that has broader public support than the one in Iraq.

Mr. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have not spoken publicly about the Marine concept, and aides to both officials said no formal proposal had been presented by the Marines. But the idea has been the focus of intense discussions between senior Marine Corps officers and other officials within the Defense Department.

It is not clear whether the Army would support the idea. But some officials sympathetic to the Army said that such a realignment would help ease some pressure on the Army, by allowing it to shift forces from Afghanistan into Iraq, and by simplifying planning for future troop rotations.

The Marine proposal could also face resistance from the Air Force, whose current role in providing combat aircraft for Afghanistan could be squeezed if the overall mission was handed to the Marines. Unlike the Army, the Marines would bring a significant force of combat aircraft to that conflict.

Whether the Marine proposal takes hold, the most delicate counterterrorism missions in Afghanistan, including the hunt for forces of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, would remain the job of a military task force that draws on Army, Navy and Air Force Special Operations units.

Military officials say the Marine proposal is also an early indication of jockeying among the four armed services for a place in combat missions in years to come. “At the end of the day, this could be decided by parochialism, and making sure each service does not lose equity, as much as on how best to manage the risk of force levels for Iraq and Afghanistan,” said one Pentagon planner.

Tensions over how to divide future budgets have begun to resurface across the military because of apprehension that Congressional support for large increases in defense spending seen since the Sept. 11 attacks will diminish, leaving the services to compete for money.

Those traditional turf battles have subsided somewhat given the overwhelming demands of waging two simultaneous wars — and because Pentagon budgets reached new heights.

Last week, the Senate approved a $459 billion Pentagon spending bill, an increase of $43 billion, or more than 10 percent over the last budget. That bill did not include, as part of a separate bill, President Bush’s request for almost $190 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Senior officials briefed on the Marine Corps concept said the new idea went beyond simply drawing clearer lines about who was in charge of providing combat personnel, war-fighting equipment and supplies to the two war zones.

They said it would allow the Marines to carry out the Afghan mission in a way the Army cannot, by deploying as an integrated Marine Corps task force that included combat aircraft as well as infantry and armored vehicles, while the Army must rely on the Air Force.

The Marine Corps concept was raised last week during a Defense Senior Leadership Conference convened by Mr. Gates just hours after Admiral Mullen was sworn in as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

During that session, the idea of assigning the Afghan mission to the Marines was described by Gen. James T. Conway, the Marine Corps commandant. Details of the discussion were provided by military officers and Pentagon civilian officials briefed on the session and who requested anonymity to summarize portions of the private talks.

The Marine Corps has recently played the leading combat role in Anbar Province, the restive Sunni area west of Baghdad.

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior Army officer in Iraq, and his No. 2 commander, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, also of the Army, have described Anbar Province as a significant success story, with local tribal leaders joining the fight against terrorists.

Both generals strongly hint that if the security situation in Anbar holds steady, then reductions of American forces can be expected in the province, which could free up Marine units to move elsewhere.

In recent years, the emphasis by the Pentagon has been on joint operations that blur the lines between the military services, but there is also considerable precedent for geographic divisions in their duties. For much of the Vietnam War, responsibility was divided region by region between the Army and the Marines. As described by military planners, the Marine proposal would allow Marine units moved to Afghanistan to take over the tasks now performed by an Army headquarters unit and two brigade combat teams operating in eastern Afghanistan.

That would ease the strain on the Army and allow it to focus on managing overall troop numbers for Iraq, as well as movements of forces inside the country as required by commanders to meet emerging threats.

The American military prides itself on the ability to go to war as a “joint force,” with all of the armed services intermixed on the battlefield — vastly different from past wars when more primitive communications required separate ground units to fight within narrowly defined lanes to make sure they did not cross into the fire of friendly forces.

The Marine Corps is designed to fight with other services — it is based overseas aboard Navy ships and is intertwined with the Army in Iraq. At the same time, the Marines also are designed to be an agile, “expeditionary” force on call for quick deployment, and thus can go to war with everything needed to carry out the mission — troops, armor, attack jets and supplies.

General Petraeus is due to report back to Congress by March on his troop requirements beyond the summer. His request for forces will be analyzed by the military’s Central Command, which oversees combat missions across the Middle East and Southwest Asia, and by the Joint Staff at the Pentagon. All troop deployment orders must be approved by Mr. Gates, with the separate armed services then assigned to supply specific numbers of troops and equipment.

Marines train to fight in what is called a Marine Air-Ground Task Force. That term refers to a Marine deployment that arrives in a combat zone complete with its own headquarters, infantry combat troops, armored and transport vehicles and attack jets for close-air support, as well as logistics and support personnel.

“This is not about trading one ground war for another,” said one Pentagon official briefed on the Marine concept. “It is about the nature of the fight in Afghanistan, and figuring out whether the Afghan mission lends itself more readily to the integrated MAGTF deployment than even Iraq.”

If there is such a thing as ‘politigraphics’ as there are ‘demographics’, China looks to be on the road to change.
This is an interesting article for a true student of international geopolitics.
The 6th generation (since Mao) will be part of a world change.
Enjoy.

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New Crop of Leaders Could Radically Alter China
They're called the Sixth Generation. (Everything starts with Mao, of course.) When their day comes, they may well be the country's best hope for change.
By Melinda Liu and Jonathan Ansfield
Newsweek
Oct. 15, 2007 issue - Colleagues at the fast-track Communist Youth League have seen a change in their recently appointed boss. "In the past, Hu Chunhua was known within the Youth League for being polite," says a powerfully connected Beijing scholar. "But now he seems to be acting much tougher." Earlier this year Hu, 44, unceremoniously dismissed one of his subordinates, Lu Shizhen, from her post as party chief at the China Youth College for Political Sciences in Beijing. Even though Lu, at 60, had technically hit retirement age, she was hoping to stay on the job a little longer, according to the scholar, who requested anonymity because he isn't cleared to speak to the media. But Hu didn't even warn her in advance that she was being replaced. "Old Lu's time is up," he said at a meeting soon afterward. People in the room were shocked at such open disrespect for a cadre 16 years his senior.

Life has been unusually tense in the past few months for officials like Hu and their underlings. On Oct. 15, more than 2,000 select Chinese Communist Party cadres will gather for a pivotal meeting at Beijing's Great Hall of the People. Participants' careers could soar or stall, depending on political currents far outside their control. Although president and party leader Hu Jintao (no relation to the Youth League chief) and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao are slated to keep their jobs until they retire in 2012, the No. 1 item on this Party Congress's agenda is the advancement of China's future leaders. Many analysts—and many ambitious young party members—are focusing not only on Hu Jintao's likely successor (or successors) but on the generation after that: rising officials now in their 40s who can expect to take power around 2022. Most people have never heard of Hu Chunhua or others of his age like Zhou Qiang and Sun Zhengcai. But they're likely to become far more widely known in the future. They and others like them could be China's last, best hope for political change.

Even before the leaders of the 2020s make their national debut at the upcoming Congress, Chinese have begun calling them the Sixth Generation. (Everything starts with Mao, of course.) Party chief Hu, 64, is the foremost member of generation No. 4, placing Li Keqiang, the 52-year-old front runner to become his heir apparent, in the front ranks of Gen Five. But no one in China is freighted with taller expectations than the offspring of the 1960s. The '60s Generation, as they're also known, are seen as worldlier, more traveled and less doctrinaire than any previous Chinese generation.

And—though China's state-run media would never admit it—some Gen-Sixers were probably among the students who rallied at Tiananmen Square in 1989. China will be a different place when they come to power, says Renmin University professor Mao Shoulong. "These younger officials will have liberal thinking and open minds. They'll see an era of change."

As a mirror of the society around them, the Gen-Sixers are less ideological and more market-savvy; their peers include private-sector millionaires and environmental activists. But they're also apt to be nationalistic, even arrogant, some analysts say. "They lack the humility of [their elders]," says Cheng Li, a Sinologist at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "Some of them are quite spoiled, in my view." They certainly have been fortunate compared with earlier generations. For one thing, their higher education was uninterrupted by the traumatic Cultural Revolution of 1966-76, when universities were shuttered and students were shipped off to the backcountry to toil in the fields. Instead, they grew up in the era of "opening up and reform," as (Gen Two) Deng Xiaoping's quasi-capitalist policies were called.

The Gen-Sixers' schooling outdid their predecessors' in breadth as well as depth. All nine current members of the party's supreme decision-making body, the Politburo Standing Committee, were trained as engineers. By contrast, says Prof. Wang Yukai of the National School of Administration in Beijing, "those born in the ' 60s have a broader knowledge base—law, economy and so on—that isn't limited to engineering and science. So their thinking is more international." Gen-Six grads from elite schools like Peking University can understand how prosperity helped topple dictatorships in South Korea and Taiwan. They're likely to apply those lessons at home, says Tianjian Shi, a political scientist at Duke University. "When they encounter a problem in society, they may allow more people to have more input in the political process," says Shi.

Smart political prognosticators—and ambitious Gen-Sixers—are keeping a particularly close eye on several young party leaders. By some rankings the fastest-rising star at present is Zhou Qiang, 47, an alumnus of the Communist Youth League system. The Youth League has been a favored path to the heights ever since former Youth League chief Hu Jintao took over China's top job five years ago. Zhou was appointed governor of Hunan province last year. His rate of ascent has been rivaled, if not exceeded, by Agriculture Minister Sun Zhengcai, at 44 the youngest minister in China's cabinet. But neither of them can match Youth League leader Hu Chunhua's inspired career path.

After graduating at the top of his Peking University class in 1983, Hu turned down a cushy job in the capital. Instead, official accounts say, he volunteered to go to Tibet. The remote Himalayan outpost, where altitude sickness is often a debilitating affliction for lowlanders, is generally viewed as a hardship assignment rather than a springboard for promotion. Hu spent 12 years there, at first working for a newspaper and later as political commissar of a state-run hotel. His tenure has become a "mark of distinction," says Yang Dali, director of the East Asian Institute in Singapore. "He's portrayed as a striver who was willing to follow his beliefs and act on them." It didn't hurt that his Lhasa stint overlapped with that of Hu Jintao, the party boss in Tibet back then. The connection has served the younger Hu well.

Assertive Gen-Sixers like Hu may stand out against China's prevailing political backdrop of timidity, inertia and opacity—"the bland leading the bland," as some call it. Even so, they're anything but rogues by Western standards. In the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, only the most doggedly faithful young party members had any hope of speedy advancement. Those who kept protesting in the spring of 1989 after the rallies were declared subversive need not apply. Today the Mao-era cult of personality has given way to a cult of consensus. President Hu's Fifth Generation understudy Li even looks like his bespectacled boss. "The young are more likely to be independent and individualistic," says Shi, "but as they grow older, collectivism is still the dominant norm."

Still, China's political climate is changing. Internal party decisions and personnel appointments are submitted to piaojue—"decision by vote"—"a new term being endorsed as part of the party platform," says Li at Brookings. One recent straw poll among party members gave high marks to Shanghai party boss Xi Jinping, 54, prompting speculation that he could "helicopter" into the Standing Committee alongside Li Keqiang. Xi has the support of Hu's Gen-Three predecessor as party head, Jiang Zemin, who even in retirement wields major influence in the party. Hu might even be compelled to elevate Xi to a post that would make him marginally senior to Li. Then again, rumor mongering is a favorite tactic in attempts to manipulate the Congress's decisions.

All of which makes it that much tougher to tell the Sixth Generation's future. "Hu cannot even decide his own successor," says Cheng Li. "So how can he decide his successor's successor?" Even within the party, some observers speculate that the longstanding structure for orchestrating the succession—including the formalized system of generational politics—may be headed for a breakdown. "The rules will change," says Cheng Li. "Expect the unexpected ... By the time the Sixth Generation comes to the top of the leadership, the Communist Party might be gone." Still, the party's critics have prophesied its collapse for decades. The one sure thing is that the currents now sweeping China are beyond any one leader's control. Old Mao's time is definitely up.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21162317/site/newsweek/page/0/

by Daniel Pipes
Jerusalem Post
October 11, 2007
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/4997

"We are all Keynsians now," Richard Nixon famously asserted just as the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes fell into disrepute. Likewise, one could have said with similar confidence in 1989, as Israel's existence reached wide acceptance, "We are all Zionists now." No longer.

Count the ways Israel is under siege: from Iranians building a nuclear bomb, Syrians stockpiling chemical weapons, Egyptians and Saudis developing serious conventional forces, Hizbullah attacking from Lebanon, Fatah from the West Bank, Hamas from Gaza, and Israel's Muslim citizens becoming politically restive and more violent.

World-wide, professors, editorialists, and foreign ministry bureaucrats challenge the continued existence of a Jewish state. Even friendly governments, notably the Bush administration, pursue diplomatic initiatives that undermine Israeli deterrence even as their arms sales erode its security.

Let's suppose, however, that the country muddles through these many problems. That leaves it face to face with its ultimate challenge: a Jewish population increasingly disenchanted with, even embarrassed by, the country's founding ideology, Zionism, the Jewish national movement.

As developed by Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) and other theoreticians, Zionism's call for a sovereign Jewish state fit the political context and mood of its time. If Chinese, Arabs, and Irish sought to establish a national state, why not Jews?

Indeed, especially Jews, for through nearly two millennia they had paid the greatest price of any people for their political weakness, having been expelled, victimized, persecuted and mass murdered as none other. Zionism offered an escape to this tragic history by standing tall and taking up the sword.

From its inception, Zionism had its share of Jewish opponents, ranging from the Haredim (Ultra-Orthodox) to nostalgic Iraqis to reform rabbis, But, until recently, these were marginal elements. Now, due to high birth rates, the once-tiny Haredi community constitutes 22 percent of Israel's current first-grade class; add to this the roughly equivalent number of Arab first-graders and a sea-change in Israeli politics can be expected about 2025.

Worse for Israel, Jewish nationalism has lost the near-automatic support it once had among secular Jews, many of whom find this nineteenth-century ideology out of date. Some accept arguments that a Jewish state represents racism or ethnic supremacism, others find universalist and multi-cultural alternatives compelling. Consider some signs of the changes underway:

Young Israelis are avoiding the military in record numbers, with 26 percent of enlistment-age Jewish males and 43 percent of females not drafted in 2006. An alarmed Israel Defense Forces has requested legislation to deny state-provided benefits to Jewish Israelis who do not serve.
Israel's Attorney General Menachem Mazuz has up-ended the work of the Jewish National Fund, one of the pioneer Zionist institutions (founded in 1901) by determining that its role of acquiring land specifically for Jews cannot continue in the future with state assistance.
Prominent Israeli historians focus on showing how Israel was conceived in sin and has been a force for evil.
Israel's ministry of education has approved school books for third-grade Arab students that present the creation of Israel in 1948 as a "catastrophe" (Arabic: nakba).
Avraham Burg, scion of a leading Zionist household and himself a prominent Labor Party figure, has published a book comparing Israel with 1930s Germany.
A 2004 poll found only 17 percent of American Jews call themselves "Zionist."



Abraham Burg, a former Labor Party leader, compares Israel with 1930s Germany.Seen in a larger context, this turn from Zionism echoes trends in other Western countries, where old-style patriotism and national pride have also declined. In Western Europe, citizens tend to see little of special value in their own history, customs, and mores. Last month, for example, the Netherlands' Princess Máxima, wife to the heir to the throne, announced to wide acclaim that "The Dutch identity does not exist." This Western-wide decline of patriotism aggravates Israel's predicament, suggesting that developments there fit into a larger trend, making them the more difficult to resist or reverse.

To top it off, Arabs are moving these days in the opposite direction, reaching a fever pitch of ethnic and religious bellicosity.

As a Zionist myself, I watch these several trends with foreboding about Israel's future.

I console myself by recalling that few of today's problems were evident in 1989. Perhaps in 2025, Zionism's prospects will again brighten, as Westerners generally and Israelis specifically finally awake to the dangers posed by Palestinian irredentists, jihadists, and other extremist Middle Easterners.

Security Contractors in Iraq: Tactical -- and Practical -- Considerations
October 10, 2007 2000 GMT

By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart

As Stratfor CEO George Friedman discussed Oct. 9, some specific geopolitical forces have prompted changes in the structure of the U.S. armed forces -- to the extent that private contractors have become essential to the execution of a sustained military campaign. Indeed, in addition to providing security for diplomats and other high-value personnel, civilian contractors conduct an array of support functions in Iraq, including vehicle maintenance, laundry services and supply and logistics operations.

Beyond the military bureaucracy and the geopolitical processes acting upon it, another set of dynamics is behind the growing use of civilian contractors to protect diplomats in Iraq. These factors include the type and scope of the U.S. diplomatic mission in the country; the nature of the insurgency and the specific targeting of diplomats; and the limited resources available to the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service (DSS). Because of these factors, unless the diplomatic mission to Iraq is dramatically changed or reduced, or the U.S. Congress takes action to radically enlarge the DSS, the services of civilian security contractors will be required in Iraq for the foreseeable future. Those contractors provide flexibility in tailoring the force that full-time security officers do not.

Civilians in a War Zone

Although it is not widely recognized, the protection of diplomats in dangerous places is a civilian function and has traditionally been carried out by civilian agents. With rare exceptions, military forces simply do not have the legal mandate or specialized training required to provide daily protection details for diplomats. It is not what soldiers do. A few in the U.S. military do possess that specialized training, and they could be assigned to the work under the DSS, but with wars going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, they currently are needed for other duties.

For the U.S. government, then, the civilian entity responsible for protecting diplomatic missions and personnel is the DSS. Although the agency's roots go back to 1916, Congress dramatically increased its size and responsibility, and renamed it the DSS, in 1985 in response to a string of security incidents, including the attacks against the U.S. embassies in Lebanon and Kuwait, and the security debacle over a new embassy building in Moscow. The DSS ranks swelled to more than 1,000 special agents by the late 1980s, though they were cut back to little more than 600 by the late 1990s as part of the State Department's historical cycle of security booms and busts. Following 9/11, DSS funding was again increased, and currently there are about 1,400 DSS agents assigned to 159 foreign countries and 25 domestic offices.

The DSS protects more dignitaries than any other agency, including the U.S. Secret Service. Its list of protectees includes the secretary of state, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and the approximately 150 foreign dignitaries who visit the United States each year for events such as the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) session. It also provides hundreds of protective details overseas, many of them operating day in and day out in dangerous locations such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Colombia, the Gaza Strip, Pakistan and nearly every other global hot spot. The DSS also from time to time has been assigned by presidential directives to provide stopgap protection to vulnerable leaders of foreign countries who are in danger of assassination, such as the presidents of Haiti and Afghanistan.

The DSS is charged by U.S. statute with providing this protection to diplomats and diplomatic facilities overseas, and international conventions such as the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations permit civilian agents to provide this kind of security. Because of this, there has never been any question regarding the status or function of DSS special agents. They have never been considered "illegal combatants" because they do not wear military uniforms, even in the many instances when they have provided protection to diplomats traveling in war zones.

Practically, the DSS lacks enough of its own agents to staff all these protective details. Although the highest-profile protective details, such as that on the secretary of state, are staffed exclusively by DSS agents, many details must be augmented by outside personnel. Domestically, some protective details at the UNGA are staffed by a core group of DSS agents that is augmented by deputy U.S. marshals and agents from the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Overseas, local police officers who operate under the supervision of DSS agents often are used.

It is not unusual to see a protective detail comprised of two Americans and eight or 10 Peruvian investigative police officers, or even a detail of 10 Guatemalan national police officers with no DSS agents except on moves to dangerous areas. In some places, including Beirut, the embassy contracts its own local security officers, who then work for the DSS agents. In other places, where it is difficult to find competent and trustworthy local hires, the DSS augments its agents with contractors brought in from the United States. Well before 9/11 and the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the DSS was using contractors in places such as Gaza to help fill the gaps between its personnel and its protective responsibilities.

Additionally, for decades the DSS has used contract security officers to provide exterior guard services for U.S. diplomatic missions. In fact, contract guards are at nearly every U.S. diplomatic mission in the world. Marine Security Guards also are present at many missions, but they are used only to maintain the integrity of the sensitive portions of the buildings -- the exterior perimeter is protected by contract security guards. Of course, there are far more exterior contract guards (called the "local guard force") at critical threat posts such as Baghdad than there are at quiet posts such as Nassau, Bahamas.

Over the many years that the DSS has used contract guards to help protect facilities and dignitaries, it has never received the level of negative feedback as it has during the current controversy over the Blackwater security firm. In fact, security contractors have been overwhelmingly successful in protecting those placed in their charge, and many times have acted heroically. Much of the current controversy has to do with the size and scope of the contractor operations in Iraq, the situation on the ground and, not insignificantly, the political environment in Washington.

The Iraq Situation

With this operational history in mind, then, we turn to Iraq. Unlike Desert Storm in 1991, in which the U.S. military destroyed Iraq's military and command infrastructure and then left the country, the decision this time was to destroy the military infrastructure and effect regime change, but stay and rebuild the nation. Setting aside all the underlying geopolitical issues, the result of this decision was that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has become the largest U.S. diplomatic mission in the world, with some 1,000 Americans working there.

Within a few months of the invasion, however, the insurgents and militants in Iraq made it clear that they would specifically target diplomats serving in the country in order to thwart reconstruction efforts. In August 2003, militants attacked the Jordanian Embassy and the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad with large vehicle bombs. The attack against the U.N building killed Sergio Vieira de Mello, the U.N.'s high commissioner for human rights in Iraq. The U.N. headquarters was hit again in September 2003, and the Turkish Embassy was attacked the following month. The U.S. Embassy and diplomats also have been consistently targeted, including by an October 2004 mortar attack that killed DSS Special Agent Ed Seitz and a November 2004 attack that killed American diplomat James Mollen near Baghdad's Green Zone. DSS Agent Stephen Sullivan was killed, along with three security contractors, in a suicide car bombing against an embassy motorcade in Mosul in September 2005. The people being protected by Sullivan and the contractors survived the attack.

And diplomatic targets continue to be attacked. The Polish ambassador's motorcade was recently attacked, as was the Polish Embassy. (The embassy was moved into the Green Zone this week because of the continuing threat against it.) The Polish ambassador, by the way, also was protected by a detail that included contract security officers, demonstrating that the U.S. government is not the only one using contractors to protect diplomats in Iraq. There also are thousands of foreign nationals working on reconstruction projects in Iraq, and most are protected by private security contractors. The Iraqi government and U.S. military simply cannot keep them safe from the forces targeting them.

In addition to the insurgents and militants who have set their sights on U.S. and foreign diplomats and businesspeople, there are a number of opportunistic criminal gangs that kidnap foreigners and either hold them for ransom or sell them to militants. If the U.S. government wants its policy of rebuilding Iraq to have any chance of success, it needs to keep diplomats -- who, as part of their mission, oversee the contractors working on reconstruction projects -- safe from the criminals and the forces that want to thwart the reconstruction.

Practical motivations aside, keeping diplomats safe in Iraq also has political and public relations dimensions. The kidnappings and deaths of U.S. diplomats are hailed by militants as successes, and at this juncture also could serve to inflame sentiments among Americans opposed to the Bush administration's Iraq policy. Hence, efforts are being made to avoid such scenarios at all costs.

Reality Check

Due to enormity of the current threat and the sheer size and scope of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, the DSS currently employs hundreds of contract security officers in the country. Although the recent controversy has sparked some calls for a withdrawal of all security contractors from Iraq, such drastic action is impossible in practical terms. Not only would it require many more DSS agents in Iraq than there are now, it would mean pulling agents from every other diplomatic post and domestic field office in the world. This would include all the agents assigned to critical and high-terrorism-threat posts in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Lebanon; all agents assigned to critical crime-threat posts such as Guatemala and Mexico; and those assigned to critical counterintelligence-threat posts such as Beijing and Moscow. The DSS also would have to abandon its other responsibilities, such as programs that investigate passport and visa fraud, which are a critical part of the U.S government's counterterrorism efforts. The DSS' Anti-Terrorism Assistance and Rewards for Justice programs also are important tools in the war on terrorism that would have to be scrapped under such a scenario.

Although the current controversy will not cause the State Department to stop using private contractors, the department has mandated that one DSS agent be included in every protective motorcade.

Since 2003, contractors working for the DSS in Iraq have conducted many successful missions in a very dangerous environment. Motorcades in Iraq are frequently attacked, and the contractors regularly have to deal with an ambiguous opponent who hides in the midst of a population that is also typically heavily armed. At times, they also must confront those heavily armed citizens who are fed up with being inconvenienced by security motorcades. In an environment in which motorcades are attacked by suicide vehicle bombs, aggressive drivers also pose tactical problems because they clearly cannot be allowed to approach the motorcade out of fear that they could be suicide bombers. The nature of insurgent attacks necessitates aggressive rules of engagement.

Contractors also do not have the same support structure as military convoys, so they cannot call for armor support when their convoys are attacked. Although some private outfits do have light aviation support, they do not have the resources of Army aviation or the U.S. Air Force. Given these factors, the contractors have suffered remarkably few losses in Iraq for the number of missions they have conducted.

It is clear that unless the United States changes its policy in Iraq or Congress provides funding for thousands of new special agents, contract security officers will be required to fill the gap between the DSS' responsibilities and its available personnel for the foreseeable future. Even if thousands of agents were hired now to meet the current need in Iraq, the government could be left in a difficult position should the security situation improve or the United States dramatically reduced its presence in the country. Unlike permanent hires, the use of contractors provides the DSS with the flexibility to tailor its force to meet its needs at a specific point in time.

The use of contractors clearly is not without problems, but it also is not without merits.

Mobile Phones in Africa
Occasionally in my posts I have mentioned the fact that the African continent has embraced mobile phone technology at an amazing rate. A recent BusinessWeek Special Report discusses how mobile phones are "sparking economic hope and growth" in both emerging and non-emerging nations ["Upwardly Mobile in Africa," by Jack Ewing, 24 September 2007 print edition]. The report begins in Kenya.

"Precious little would seem to connect the Kenyan village of Muruguru to the 21st century. The red dirt roads become impassable in the rainy season. Only a few homes have electricity, indoor plumbing, or even a floor other than earth packed by bare feet. The villagers survive on corn, potatoes, and bananas they raise in hand-tilled fields, and earn a little extra cash by cultivating coffee beans that they dry outdoors on burlap sacks. But a couple of years ago, a red and white tower appeared on a nearby hill. The structure is a cell-phone base station, and its arrival has changed life in Muruguru as much as any development in the past century. 'I'm saving time, I'm saving money,' says Grace Wachira, who runs a small business knitting cardigan sweaters in the village. Before the tower was built, she had to walk several hours to the nearest town or ride in a communal taxi to buy yarn or meet customers, and she never knew whether the person she wanted to see would be there. Now she uses her Motorola handset to arrange for delivery of yarn and to communicate with buyers. These days, just about every tradesman, shopkeeper, and farmer in town has a phone—or at least access to one."

It's not surprising that new technology helps improve existing relationships, what is more surprising is how quickly so-called "backward" societies adapt technologies to create new relationships. Word of mouth, for example, becomes a much more powerful concept when making connections becomes easier.

"'Customers give my number to other customers. The business has grown,' says Susan Wairimu, whose tailor shop sits in the row of one-story buildings that constitute the village center. And Willson Maragua's transport business in Muruguru, which consists of him and a used pickup truck, could hardly function without mobile technology. Local farmers, members of the Kikuyu tribe prevalent in the area, summon him to haul their coffee beans to a growers' cooperative in a nearby valley. Now Maragua, an ebullient man wearing a baseball cap that says 'Bachelorette Party,' lives in a home with a concrete floor and a solar panel on the roof to power a radio and a lightbulb—and recharge his family's two handsets. With a mobile phone, he says over a lunch of corn, potatoes, and stewed goat, 'You can manage your business.' Only a few years ago, places like Muruguru didn't even register in the plans of handset makers and service providers. What would a Kenyan farmer want with a mobile phone? Plenty, as it turns out."

Pundits were amazed that people occupying the bottom of the economic pyramid would use (or could afford) mobile phone technology. I have noted before, however, that companies are rapidly learning that there are profits to be made at the bottom of the pyramid. It simply takes a little imagination and a different business model.

"To the astonishment of the industry, people living on a few dollars a day have proven avid phone users, and in many parts of the world cellular airtime has become a de facto currency. The reason is simple: A mobile phone can dramatically improve living standards by saving wasted trips, providing information about crop prices, summoning medical help, and even serving as a conduit to banking services. 'The cell phone is the single most transformative technology for development,' says Columbia University economist and emerging markets expert Jeffrey Sachs. Mobile phones are changing developing markets faster than anyone imagined. Today there are some 3 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide, and that will grow to 5 billion by 2015, when two-thirds of the people on earth will have phones, predicts Finnish handset maker Nokia Corp. Nowhere is the effect more dramatic than in Africa, where mobile technology often represents the first modern infrastructure of any kind. The 134 million citizens of Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, had just 500,000 telephone lines in 2001 when the government began encouraging competition in telecommunications. Now Nigeria has more than 30 million cellular subscribers. Muruguru, meanwhile, had just a single pay phone before people started getting handsets a few years ago. 'Communications used to be a barrier,' says Paul Ndiritu, the former village head man. Since the advent of mobile phones, he says, 'the burden has eased.' Yet billions of people around the world have still never used a telephone. Most of these unconnected masses live in rural areas that are much poorer and more remote than Muruguru. Now cell-phone makers and service providers understand that they can make money by bringing cell-phone service within reach of people who live on $2 a day. Users buy new phones for as little as $20—and secondhand models for far less—as well as airtime in increments of just 75 cents in Kenya, enough for nearly 10 minutes of off-peak calling. That's a far cry from the European or U.S. monthly subscription model, but it works for such outfits as Millicom International Cellular. The Luxembourg-based company invests almost exclusively in poor countries often rocked by violence, and in the second quarter of this year saw its profits climb 65%, to $263 million. Millicom doesn't even wait for the gunfire to die down before moving into new markets, which include the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sri Lanka, and Colombia."

When I discuss Enterra Solutions' Development-in-a-Box™ approach, I stress that development efforts must often begin while bullets are sill flying. Economic progress can have a dampening effect on violence as people begin to see a brighter and more hopeful future. Even being able to talk to loved ones in danger can bring a community together quicker than when people remain isolated. But the greatest benefit of technologies like mobile phones is increased productivity. When people don't have to waste time making needless trips to find supplies or customers, they can use the saved time to make more money, get more education, or get involved in other activities that improve their lives.

"A growing body of evidence suggests that access to communications boosts incomes and makes local economies far more efficient. Consider a group of poor fishermen in the Indian state of Kerala studied by Robert Jensen, an associate professor at Brown University. They increased their profits by an average of 8% after they began using mobile phones to find out which coastal marketplaces were offering the best prices for sardines. Yet consumer prices for fish dropped 4% because the fishermen no longer had to throw away the catch they couldn't sell when they sailed into a port after all the buyers had left. 'That's what economic efficiencies are about—everyone is better off,' says Jensen."

The types of activities in which Enterra Solutions is getting involved in Kurdistan are those that improve economic efficiencies. They don't involve mobile phones per se, but they do rely heavily on improving connectivity between businesses, suppliers, and customers.

One of the most interesting uses of mobile phones that has emerged is financial services. People at the bottom of the pyramid have had little need for banks or banking accounts, but with improved living conditions they now find themselves in a position to use some financial services even if they rarely involve depositing funds locally.

"With characteristic ingenuity and resourcefulness, villagers are proving that handsets aren't just for talking. Mobile phones, for instance, are becoming a way to extend financial services to the billions of poor people who have never seen the inside of a bank. David Omuchilili, who works as a security guard at a church in the town of Ngong, outside Nairobi, uses his battered, 1990s-era Ericsson to send a portion of his modest wages to his wife and five children in a village 180 miles away. Omuchilili pays cash to an agent for M-Pesa, a service offered by carrier Safaricom Ltd. In this case, the agent is a cell-phone dealer on a Ngong street that is crowded with stray goats and donkey carts hauling cans of water. The agent then sends a code number via text message to Omuchilili's wife, who uses the code to redeem cash from an M-Pesa agent close to her home. Although few Kenyans have any experience with e-commerce, the M-Pesa service—pesa is Swahili for 'money'—has been a runaway success since Safaricom launched it in March. Some 6,000 people a day are signing up, and Vodafone Group PLC—which owns 40% of Safaricom—is thinking of extending the concept to India."

M-Pesa wasn't taking too much of a risk providing mobile phone financial services because the practice has taken off elsewhere and proved profitable. For example, "more than 5.5 million Filipinos now use their cell phones as virtual wallets, making the Philippines a leader among developing nations in providing financial transactions over mobile networks." ["Filipinos use cell phones as wallets," Oliver Teves, Associated Press, 30 September 207]. Filipinos make enormous international money transfers, not just in-state transfers.

"Tapping into the cash flow from overseas Filipinos -- who sent home $12.7 billion last year -- [Globe Telecom and Smart Communications] forged partnerships with foreign mobile providers and banks, as well as with local banks and merchants, to create a network that allows users to send and receive cash internationally."

The BusinessWeek Special Report asserts that the impact of mobile phone technology on national economies has been significant. It is not just the efficiencies created by the technology, but the new businesses and jobs that come with it.

"Economists are still trying to calculate the macroeconomic effect of this communications explosion, but no one doubts that it's big. Leonard Waverman, chairman of the economics faculty at London Business School, figures that a 10% increase in a developing country's mobile-phone penetration adds 0.6 percentage points to the economic growth rate. Indeed, the advent of mobile communications in Africa coincides with a surge in growth. The continent's economy will expand as much as 7% this year, a 25-year high, according to the International Monetary Fund. Many other factors are contributing, including high commodity prices, fewer armed conflicts, and better government in countries such as Kenya and Tanzania. But a fundamental principle of economics is that markets need information to function efficiently, and cell phones are providing information to people who never had it before. The telecommunications industry itself is enjoying a new level of entrepreneurship and job creation in the developing world. Nahashon M. Macharia, a Nairobi-based businessman, is opening new stores selling cell phones and airtime in step with the expansion of Safaricom's network. 'Whenever they put up a new mast, we try to provide coverage,' Macharia says above the blare of reggae music during opening celebrations for a new outlet in Othaya, a town about 50 miles from Nairobi. There is even a whiff of startup frenzy as companies spring up to serve the mobile industry. Lagos (Nigeria)-based M-Tech Communications, founded in 2001, develops content—everything from ringtones to crop price information—for mobile-service providers in Kenya, Uganda, Ivory Coast, and elsewhere."

The Report asserts that profits are being made even though the per minute charge for using cell phones is more expensive in emerging countries than in more developed nations.

"That's because users in poor rural areas often must bear the higher cost of building out networks in areas without electricity or good highways. Safaricom, for instance, wrecks a vehicle a month on Kenyan roads. And theft of generators and fuel means some companies post armed guards at their cell towers. To keep calling costs to a bare minimum, villagers keep conversations extremely short and make heavy use of text messaging. Flashing—calling and hanging up after the first ring—is also popular. The flash can signify, 'I've arrived,' 'call me,' or any number of other prearranged meanings. Phone sharing is also common. Some users just buy a SIM card (which is plugged into the phone to grant access to the network) for less than a dollar and borrow a phone from someone else. Many users rarely make outgoing calls, maintaining just enough prepaid credit to keep their accounts active and receive calls. Meshack Onsinyo Getuba, a TV and radio repairman in the Nairobi suburb of Rongai, alternates between SIM cards from two rival carriers, choosing the one that's cheapest at any given time. Mobile technology, he says, 'has improved the lifestyle I am living,' because he can call for delivery of spare parts rather than having to fetch them from a dealer himself."

Just as exciting as the changes that mobile phones make in individual lives are the infrastructure changes that mobile phone technology is bringing about.

"As mobile networks proliferate, they're pushing the development of other infrastructure. Some operators, frustrated with slow-moving power monopolies, build their own electrical lines to base stations. And mobile operators are the driving force behind new networks of fiber-optic cables. South Africa-based MTN, for instance, has installed its own fiber in Nigeria. That will likely lead to better broadband connections, which could enable English-speaking countries such as Nigeria and Kenya to become major outsourcing centers."

Such infrastructure construction makes countries prime candidates for Development-in-a-Box implementation of standards and best practices, which can help make them trusted international partners. In an interesting twist, bottom of the pyramid consumers are not just getting developed world leftovers but are actually driving innovations going into phones being sold there.

"The mobile-phone industry is increasingly listening to people like these village operators, who are at the frontier of telecommunications expansion. Nokia's latest phone for emerging markets, which retails for about $37 in Kenya, contains features such as a hookup for an external antenna, to better reach distant base stations, and software making it easier to track the length and cost of calls. 'If we look at the next billion subscribers, the vast majority will come from emerging markets,' says Kai Öistämö, Nokia's general manager for mobile phones. In India, Nokia Siemens Networks, an equipment joint venture with Germany's Siemens, is taking the village phone concept a step further. The company is testing its so-called Village Connection, which allows a local entrepreneur to set up a wireless phone network for a few thousand dollars. Villagers can talk within the local system at a reduced rate, connecting to the more costly national network only for long-distance calls."

The Report concludes with a caveat. Although the upside of technology far outweighs its downside, there is a downside.

"Of course, the spread of technology to places that have had none is bound to bring unforeseen consequences. Mobile phones can also be used to organize a guerrilla army. ... And a new class of resentful have-nots could emerge among the millions of extremely poor people who still can't afford cell phones. ... But that seems to be the minority view. 'Mobile technology has brought many fruits, and no bad things,' insists Isaac Mahenia, a schoolteacher and part-time farmer in Muruguru. Abraham Maragua, truck driver Willson Maragua's 77-year-old father, agrees that life is finally getting better in the village, and that mobile phones are part of the change. 'We feel it,' says Maragua, who lives in a house with a dirt floor and old newspapers covering the interior walls. As a onetime political prisoner during Kenya's civil strife in the 1950s, he knows what he's talking about. Says Maragua: 'We didn't suffer for nothing.'"

Reports like the one found in BusinessWeek renew my enthusiasm for helping get businesses connected in a more efficient way. Lives can be changed for the better and innovative uses of technologies emerge when they are put in the hands of people who desperately need them, but have not previously had access to them.