- This was supposed to be bonanza time in Iraq for engineers,
builders and public policy planners feasting off the billions of dollars
flowing into the country. But with foreign contractors and their Iraqi
employees being targeted in car bombings and gun attacks, there is only
one line of work that is truly thriving, and that is security.
-
- Men with guns - former soldiers, mercenaries, and adventurers
recruited from as far away as Nepal and Fiji - are being employed so quickly
that no one can keep track of them. The proportion of reconstruction contracts
being used to pay them has risen from about 10 per cent a year ago to 25
or 30 per cent.
-
- They are the most sought-after peopleon the recruiting
bulletin boards of the companies struggling to revive Iraq's oil industry,
restore power lines and supply the US occupation forces. And questions
are being raised about who they are, who authorised them and whether Iraq
can enjoy a meaningful reconstruction with them around.
-
- Bathsheba Crocker, who heads the post-conflict reconstruction
project at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said: "There
are an awful lot of foreigners running around Iraq heavily armed. Nobody
has a good handle on them and whether they should be armed or not."
-
- The leading US companies, entrusted with multibillion-dollar
reconstruction contracts, are mired in scandal over accusations of price-gouging
and failure to finish work.
-
- But new questions are arising about how much the US government
is getting for its reconstruction money. Ms Crocker said insurance for
foreign workers sent to Iraq is estimated at about 10 per cent of the costs.
Add to that the security costs and in-built profit margins - calculated
in some cases as a percentage of the money companies are spending - and
little remains for the task at hand.
-
- The Coalition Provisional Authority, the US-run governing
body in Iraq, is redirecting resources to shore up security. Yesterday,
it announced it would be spending an extra $100m (£54.5m) over the
next year on private security forces to protect the "green zone",
the area in central Baghdad housing most of the US government employees.
-
- It has also pledged to devote more resources to tracking
the armed men attempting to enforce Iraq's currently unenforceable stipulation
that firearms carried by private security services be licensed.
-
- Security has has been an ever-present concern since the
US launched its war a year ago to depose Saddam Hussein, but the situation
has grown particularly ugly in the past few weeks, as foreign workers and
Iraqi civilians have borne the brunt of the armed attacks. This week, four
Southern Baptist missionaries were killed in Mosul, in the north, after
their car was ambushed. A German and a Dutch national working on a water
purification project were killed with their driver and a security guard
near Hillah, south of Baghdad. And that was before Wednesday's bomb attack
on the Mount Lebanon hotel in the capital.
-
- Ms Crocker said: It used to be that the attacks were
directed at US soldiers or other specific targets. Now, no matter who you
are, you can't have a good sense of security."
-
- The shift in tactics by the anti-occupation forces comes
at a time when some aspects of the reconstruction are making modest progress.
The main oil pipeline from the Mosul area has started to operate after
months of delays because of sabotage attacks. Electricity supply has also
improved.
-
- With another $18.6bn in reconstruction money about to
be disbursed, the thinking is that there are enough financial incentives
for companies willing to take the plunge.
-
- Public watchdogs in the US are seeing increasing signs
of a "grab-the-money-and-run" mentality and are accusing big
contractors and their government patrons of taking advantage of ordinary
taxpayers.
-
- Halliburton, the oil services company formerly run by
Vice-President Dick Cheney, is at the forefront of these accusations. The
company is under criminal investigation by the Pentagon after government
auditors found evidence that it had overcharged as much as $61bn for petrol
delivered to Iraq from Kuwait.
-
- It returned $36m after accusations that it was overcharging
for meals supplied to the US military and has suspended a further $141m
worth of food invoices.
-
- Two whistleblowers who have presented evidence to Congress
say that Halliburton has developed accounting practices to avoid competitive
bidding and makes no effort to keep costs down because its profits are
calculated as a percentage of its expenses.
-
- One example that had members of a Senate committee shaking
their heads last month was a decision to embroider orange gym towels for
the US military with gold lettering, tripling their cost.
-
- COMPANIES WITH CONTRACTS IN IRAQ
-
- Who will benefit?
-
- American companies have dominated the contracting process
in Iraq, with 70 companies raking in several billion dollars of work. UK
companies have taken a modest share - around £43m. The oil specialist
Foster Wheeler and the power company Parsons-Brinkerhoff are UK subsidiaries
of US firms.
-
- Kellogg Brown & Root
-
- The biggest beneficiary is Kellogg Brown & Root,
a subsidiary of Vice-President Dick Cheney's old company Halliburton, which
has already done more than $2bn in Iraqi business. It washired by the Pentagon
in 2001 to support all US military field operations worldwide under the
Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, or Logcap.
-
- Bechtel
-
- The second biggest beneficiary is the engineering giant
Bechtel with more than $1bn in contracts. Like many companies on the list,
Bechtel is well-connected. The Center for Public Integrity has calculated
that the 70 US companies active in Iraq and Afghanistan have donated more
than $500,000 to President Bush.
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- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=502752</
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