Britain's secret army in Iraq: thousands of armed security men who answer to nobody

[Mr Grimsdale]

Britain's secret army in Iraq: thousands of armed security men who answer to nobody

By Robert Fisk in Baghdad and Severin Carrell in London
28 March 2004


So many British security firms are cashing in on the violence in Iraq that armed private security men now outnumber most of the national army contingents in the country.

Thousands of former soldiers and police officers from Britain, the US, Australia and South Africa are earning wages as high as £600 a day to protect Western officials, oil company executives and construction firm bosses in Iraq. The SAS is said to be suffering an unprecedented loss of personnel as its highly trained soldiers are lured by lucrative private security work.

With business of around £1bn, British companies are estimated to have the biggest share of private security contracts in Iraq. According to experts, between 1,200 and 1,500 former British soldiers and police officers, including former SAS, Marines, paratroopers and RUC officers, are working in Iraq. Some privately estimate that the total number of foreigners working for private security companies now exceeds the 8,700 British troops there.

Apart from the major US and British companies, dozens of small firms have set up shop in Iraq. Former British and American special forces members speak of their concern that smaller firms are hiring personnel with little experience with firearms and have no interest in setting out the circumstances in which their employees may use their weapons.

The presence of thousands of armed Westerners and others, including Gurkhas and Fijians, says much about America's fear of military casualties. Security firms are escorting convoys. Armed men from an American company are guarding US troops at night inside the former presidential palace where Paul Bremer, the American proconsul, has his headquarters. When a US helicopter crashed near Fallujah last year, an American security firm took control of the area and began rescue operations.

Details of the number of companies here - there may be as many as 400 - are further complicated by the number of security firms that are subcontracted by larger companies on a daily or weekly basis. Larger companies such as Control Risks complain that many are unregistered and uninsured.

Much of the money being earned by British companies is coming from the British taxpayer. The Independent on Sunday has learnt that the Foreign Office and Department for International Development have spent nearly £25m on hiring private bodyguards, armed escorts and security advisers to protect their civil servants. That figure is set to increase sharply in July when sovereignty is handed over to an Iraqi administration.

The largest contract is with Control Risks, which has earned £23.5m. It employs about 120 staff to protect about 150 British officials and contractors.

[Mr Grimsdale]

Weary Special Forces
Troops Quit For Security Jobs
By David Rennie in Washington and Michael Smith
Defence Correspondent
The Telegraph - UK
3-30-4


Exhausted American and British special forces troopers, the West's front line in the war on terrorism, are resigning in record numbers and taking highly-paid jobs as private security guards in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Senior US commanders are so alarmed that they have held emergency meetings to agree new deals on pay and conditions for the men.

Men from the SAS in Britain and Australia and America's Delta Force are said to be weary after almost 30 months of nearly continuous service since the September 11 attacks.

Gen Bryan "Doug" Brown, head of the US special operations command, summoned his commanders to Washington for a crisis meeting last week. He told the Senate armed services committee that the retention of special forces had become "a big issue".

US special forces troopers earn up to £30,000 but are being offered packages of £60,000 to £120,000 to work in combat zones.

For SAS soldiers earning £250 a week in Iraq, the lure of up to £1,000 a week is easily understood. The most experienced men in the most dangerous jobs are reported to be making £5,000 a week.

The manning crisis comes as Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, pushes the military to use special forces more and more widely, favouring them over conventional forces, for their speed, small scale and ability to operate in complete secrecy with only minimal legal oversight.

Gen David Grange, a retired army Ranger, Green Beret and member of Delta Force - the elite, top-secret unit modelled on the SAS - told The Telegraph yesterday that family pressures were also taking their toll on his former colleagues.

"In my Vietnam platoon two people were married. Now it's maybe 60 per cent. Even if special forces are wild characters, with high divorce rates, there's still enormous pressure from families. They've been away more or less continuously since September 11 and wives are asking, 'Where the hell are you?' "

The war on terrorism has placed unprecedented strains on special forces. Gen Grange said: "The US army alone has people in 120 countries.

"A lot of those people are special forces - counter-drug, counter-insurgency or counter-terrorism - as well as our own insertions."

The US government is also increasingly privatising its most sensitive missions, hiring defence contractors for such tasks as guarding Paul Bremer, the Iraq occupation chief, or Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, or heading overseas to train foreign militaries.

Peter Singer, author of Corporate Warriors, a study of such privatisation, said the US defence department was the largest client for such private security contractors, paying companies large sums to supply them with former special forces whose training was paid for by US taxpayers.

Gen Grange said special bonuses were now being paid to special forces for overseas deployment and hazardous duty. But money was never the key factor for many of his comrades, he said. "In the private sector you don't have the brotherhood or the sense of duty and country."

Though many of Gen Grange's missions remain secret, he conceded that special operations offered greater excitement than private work.

"Going out to destroy something or capture or kill someone - those have to be government or military missions unless you're a mercenary or doing something illegal."

Green Berets and other special forces receive 18 months' training in combat and survival skills, including airborne and amphibious warfare, and are also required to learn at least one foreign language. They may apply only after six to eight years in the military. Army Rangers are also counted as special forces, specialising in seizing airfields and ports.

The precise number of US special forces is shrouded in secrecy, though an overall figure of between 49,000 and 66,000 is quoted for Special Operations Command.

However, Jennifer Kibbe, an intelligence specialist at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, said such large numbers included administrative and support personnel. "What they call 'trigger pullers' is more in the vein of 10,000," she said.

British officials say more than 300 soldiers have left the armed forces in the past six months to take up lucrative jobs with private companies such as Olive Security, Armour Security, Global and USDID. The problem goes beyond elite special forces. There are more than 160 British former paratroopers working in Baghdad, where the Coalition Provisional Authority has hired a battalion of Fijian soldiers to guard money deliveries to banks.

More than 500 former Gurkhas, working for Global Logistics Security, are guarding buildings for the CPA.

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.

[Mr Grimsdale]

A reporters' exageration?

Some of the stories I've heard are that there are a lot of people wandering around over there claiming to be ex-this or that but barely know how to fire a rifle. They're probably more dangerous than some of the locals.

[Elitest]

gosh