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Levin: Contractor cuts could strain troops

A move by the Senate Armed Services Committee to limit the role of private security contractors in Iraq could have an unintended consequence of increasing the strain on Army and Marine Corps ground troops.

The Senate committee’s version of the 2009 defense authorization bill includes two provisions related to contractors.

One, effective when the bill is signed, would prohibit contract employees from performing “inherently governmental” security operations, including situations involving combat or extremely hazardous duties. The second would prohibit contract employees from conducting interrogations of detainees during or after hostilities.

“We’ve seen a real problem … where some contractors have been performing what are essentially governmental functions in combat areas,” said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman.

The Pentagon already has a policy preventing private security contractors from being given combat-related work, but the State Department does not, Levin said.

“We are putting into law requirements that will now apply for the first time to the Department of State so that their contractors who perform these hazardous duties in these areas of combat are treated the way DoD contractors are now treated, which is, they must not be able to perform combat or hazardous duty in combat areas of operations,” Levin said.

He said this would not drive security contractors in Iraq out of business, but would limit where they can operate.

It is unclear who would become responsible for providing security in combat areas if private guards are not allowed; the defense policy bill would not provide for any increase in military police or other security personnel to take up the slack.

The bill would authorize increases of 7,000 active-duty soldiers, 5,000 active-duty Marines and 3,371 full-time Army National Guard and Army Reserve personnel, but none of these increases is directly tied to proposed limits on private security.

Levin said a result of the restrictions, if they were to become law, could be an increased demand on Army and Marine personnel, but “it is a fairly small number of people.”

He could not provide additional details on the numbers.

A report last year by the Congressional Research Service estimated that about 180,000 private security guards were working in Iraq under U.S. government contracts, including about 1,400 working directly for the State Department and another 13,000 providing security for convoys.