Departing US troops pack millions of items in Iraq

JOINT BASE BALAD, Iraq Everything from helicopters to printer cartridges is being wrapped and stamped and shipped out of Iraq. U.S. military bases that once resembled small towns have transformed into a cross between giant post offices and Office Depots.Soldiers who battled through insurgents and roadside bombs are now doing inventory and accounting. Their task: reverse over the course of months a U.S. military presence that built up over seven years of war.”We’re moving out millions of pieces of equipment in one of the largest logistics operations that we’ve seen in decades,” President Barack Obama said in a speech Monday hailing this month’s planned withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops from Iraq.

The orderly withdrawal is a far cry from the testosterone-fueled push across the berm separating Kuwait and Iraq, when American Marines and soldiers pushed north in the 2003 invasion, battling Saddam Hussein’s army while sleeping on the hoods of their vehicles and eating prepackaged meals.”I think it’s probably more challenging leaving, responsibly drawing down, than it is getting here, because you just have to figure out where everything is and getting it out of here. Are there enough airplanes, ships, containers, and do we have enough time to do that and meet the president’s mandate?” said Col. David F. Demartino, who is responsible for infrastructure and support services at Balad, which is home to 25,000 troops and civilians.

In essence the drawdown has been happening since late 2008. That’s when the U.S. started to reduce its numbers following the surge, which raised the American presence to about 170,000. Now the U.S. has just under 65,000 troops in the country, and the withdrawal is reaching a more furious pace as the August deadline approaches.Only 50,000 U.S. service personnel will remain after August. All troops are supposed to leave and all bases close by the end of next year, unless Iraq asks the U.S. to renegotiate their agreement to allow a continued American presence.In mid-July, JSS Mahmoudiya – once a U.S. position just south of Baghdad in one of Iraq’s most dangerous areas – was a ghost town. Tents were abandoned, covered with foam to retard fire, and the white-walled cafeteria was barren except for a few refrigerators holding drinks. The joint operations command was stripped of almost everything, including the big-screen TVs on which military personnel once watched operations.

The next day, it was handed over to the Iraqi government to become an army facility.Each handover involves a painstaking process of inventorying everything on the base that the soldiers aren’t taking with them. Every item is assessed to see if it can be moved and if so, whether it is needed anywhere else in the country. Many of the materials – water tanks, generators, and furniture – are eventually donated to the Iraqi government. As of July 27, $98.6 million worth of equipment has been handed over, most to the Iraqi army and Interior Ministry.More than 400 bases are being closed down or handed over to the Iraqi military. By September, the American military will have fewer than 100 bases in the country, down from a high of 505 in January 2008.

Some of these bases look somewhat like small towns with elaborate dining facilities serving tacos and crab legs and gyms with rows of treadmills.About half the vehicles – what the military describes as “rolling stock” – that have left Iraq have gone to Afghanistan. More than 180,000 items like weapons or communications equipment have also been sent to Afghanistan over the past year.In the past, when troops rotated into Iraq they brought some weapons and other equipment with them. But they inherited most of their equipment – including Humvees and other armored vehicles – from the unit they replaced.But now as troops aren’t being replaced, the last guys out must leave their equipment at the door to be redistributed, whether back to the U.S., other units in Iraq or to Afghanistan.

That makes places like the Central Receiving and Shipping Point at Balad “the center of the universe,” as one visiting officer nicknamed it. Equipment such as howitzers and helicopter blades or shipping containers and pallets arrives for redistribution.Sgt. 1st Class Stephen Latch runs the CRSP. He spent his first tour in Iraq with the infantry kicking down doors and hunting down members of Saddam’s regime. The only time he really thought about logistics was to wonder when his ammo and food would arrive.Now he’s at the center of the logistical version of a major offensive, helping ensure that the equipment goes south to Kuwait, the main exit point. Most material is driven down the heavily guarded main highway from Baghdad to the border, a more than 300-mile route. So far there have been no reports of significant attacks on any convoys.

Latch said when he started his deployment last summer, they moved an average of about 2,500 items a month. Now he’s moving almost six times that amount, and it’s mostly going south.And people want it faster. It used to be something could sit in the CRSP yard for 45 days before heading to Kuwait, Latch said. But now if it’s there for five days, people start calling and want to know why.”We have a very, very aggressive attitude,” Latch said. “Everybody knows the stuff is going south. It’s going to move no matter what. You can either fight the current or you can just push as hard as you can to get that stuff down there fast.”The drawdown has not been without hiccups. The military was embarrassed by a report in the Times of London that contractors did not properly dispose of environmental waste removed from U.S. military bases.But U.S. commanders say they are addressing problems and are confident they will be able to meet the president’s deadline.

Demartino said that while going through shipping containers, buildings and offices at Joint Base Balad, soldiers have been stunned at the materials hoarded over the years in nooks and crannies all over the base.The biggest surprise was the thousands of printer cartridges tucked away by soldiers worried they would one day run out.”I walked through a few of these buildings, and I was thinking this is like Office Depot, and it’s just people going ‘I don’t want to run out. Let’s get them!'” he said. “I think it’s the mindset of ‘We’re never going to leave.'”(AP)

contractor attacks in Afghanistan

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan  The message, very often, is sent with bloodshed.There was the suicide bombing last week on a fortified Kandahar guesthouse shared by Western contracting companies, killing four Afghans and injuring several Americans. There was the Afghan engineer, shot dead in March as he helped inspect a school not far from the Pakistan border. Or the Afghan woman, an employee for a U.S.-based consulting firm, shot by motorbike-riding gunmen as she returned home from work in this southern city.

As the United States presses ahead with an Afghan counterinsurgency strategy that depends on speeding up development of one of the world’s poorest countries, the U.S. contractors, construction companies and aid organizations needed to rebuild Afghanistan have faced a surge in attacks that puts the plan in jeopardy.

Overall figures for contractor attacks remain elusive, since the employees come from dozens of nations and work for hundreds of different organizations.But the death toll has jumped precipitously in the months since President Barack Obama launched a massive troop surge last December.

Of the 289 civilians working for U.S. contractors killed between the start of the Afghanistan war in late 2001 and the end of last year, 100 died in just the last six months of 2009, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service.To a degree, those killings have mirrored an increase in U.S. service member deaths, which roughly doubled in the first three months of 2010 compared to the same period in 2009.

Many of the recent attacks against civilian contractors have been around Kandahar, the one-time Taliban capital where the U.S. is poised to launch a major operation in the coming weeks, but the rash of violence has spiked across Afghanistan.”The insurgents are trying to say ‘You can’t do it,'” Gen. Stanley McChrystal said in a speech last week in Paris, shortly after two bombings shook Kandahar. “I think we’ll see that for months as they make an effort to stop progress. But I don’t think that they’ll be successful.”

In some ways, though, they already have been successful.Although contractors say they are not leaving the country, the attacks have forced them to retreat even further behind blast walls and heavily armed security perimeters. The security drives up costs, makes it more difficult to interact with regular Afghans and slows reconstruction projects.

The attacks have forced many contractors, aid groups and Afghan officials to retreat even further behind blast walls and heavily armed security perimeters. The security drives up costs, makes it more difficult to interact with regular Afghans and slows reconstruction projects.

“We have become the targets of the Taliban,” said Azizullah, the owner of a construction company that builds bridges and irrigation projects in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand, strongholds of the militant Muslim fighters. “If we travel, they try to kidnap us and hold us for huge ransoms. If we don’t pay, they kill us,” said Azizullah, who like many Afghans has only one name.

His workers now travel in U.S. military convoys whenever possible, he said, to give them additional protection.That doesn’t surprise Gulali, a tribal elder from Kandahar province.”Of course the Taliban are against any of these people working for the Afghan government or the Americans or other foreigners,” said the elder, who also uses only one name.

He believes many of the recent attacks are by militants simply looking for softer targets. While nearly all foreign companies in Afghanistan now work out of guarded compounds, they do not have the massive fortifications and overwhelming firepower found at nearly any American military installation.The Taliban “want to use the easiest option,” he said.But the attacks are challenging a key part of America’s aims in Afghanistan.

Washington’s counterinsurgency plans call for aggressive development to build up everything from Afghanistan’s roads to its sewer systems to its irrigation networks. Much of the actual work is paid for by USAID, the government’s main international aid agency, then contracted through corporations that often subcontract the actual the work to smaller companies. On the ground, many employees are Afghans overseen by small groups of Western administrators.

The attacks “are not about armed confrontation. They are about subversion of the government,” said Terrence K. Kelly, a senior researcher at the Washington-based RAND Corporation who has studied how rebuilding efforts work in war zones. America’s strategy counts on development work to increase the legitimacy and reach of the Karzai government. With these attacks the Taliban can “turn off the delivery of services – which makes the government look bad,” he said.USAID insists it will not scale back its work in Afghanistan because of the attacks, according to Rebecca Black, the agency’s deputy mission director for Afghanistan.

Contractors insist they are also staying.The Louis Berger Group/Black & Veatch, a joint venture building major infrastructure projects across the country, was among the companies based in the Kandahar guest house attacked last week.In a statement, the joint venture said they were “currently conducting a comprehensive review of the recent events in Kandahar to assess what changes, if any, are required to continue our work.”(AP)