Schooner, who conducted a recent study on contractor deaths published in Service Contractor (PDF), an industry newsletter, said entrepreneurs now account for more than 25 percent of total deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan — a proportion that has steadily grown during conflicts. Official figures show that between the start of hostilities in 2001 and June 2010, 5,531 soldiers and 2,008 civilian contract workers died in Iraq and Afghanistan. We collected open source data from iCasualties, a website that collects basic data on victims of soldiers and contractors. Using this data, we collected demographic information from obituaries and news articles about 238 entrepreneurs who died in Iraq between 2006 and 2016. In May 2005, U.S. soldiers saw Blackwater contractors “smash a civilian vehicle” along the “Irish Road,” the code name for the road leading to Baghdad airport, before speeding away in a white armored vehicle. The driver of the civilian vehicle was killed, his wife and daughter were maimed. The field report noted that the contractors also fired at U.S. soldiers during the incident. Among the contractors previously deployed as military personnel are many former officers and about half of them are special forces veterans. They are more likely to have a college diploma than their active duty counterparts, but less likely than their fellow Veterans in the general population. Labor Department figures show that since 2001, more than 44,000 contractors have reported injuries, compared to about 40,000 U.S. troops.
The figures are not quite comparable, as contractor injuries include minor work accidents. As frightening as the new revelations are, they far underestimate the number of murders committed by private security companies. First, they only include cases where U.S. soldiers observed contractors directly in action or entered the scene shortly after the violence. The simple truth is that there is little reliable data on this industry. Without this data, scientists can`t even ask themselves the most basic questions about whether using contractors works better than the alternative, namely personal or local military forces – or whether it works at all. With the support of entrepreneurs, Schooner said, “We can send countless troops anywhere in the world, at any distance, in any weather, in any geography, and we take better care of them than any army has ever taken care of their people for as long as you need them.” Army Colonel Joseph M. Yoswa, the army`s spokesman in Iraq, said in an emailed statement: “The responsibility for tracking deaths, injuries, locations and other essential requirements rests with the contractor. Unless the contract specifically states anything about staff billing, the U.S. government has no obligation to track these numbers. “Private military and security companies have no real incentive to share this data, but the public interest is clear: the public needs it. However, these numbers are likely to be surpassed by those of American entrepreneurs, who quietly performed some of the most dangerous functions of the war – and whose deaths the Pentagon never felt compelled to correct to Americans.
The death toll is even bleaker, although Brown University`s Costs of War project gives a figure of nearly 8,000 if americans and non-Americans are counted. “They are,” in the words of Ori Swed and Thomas Crosbie, researchers who investigated the deaths of entrepreneurs, “the war dead of corporations.” America`s dependence on private contractors in the war did not begin with 9/11, but it exploded in the wars that followed these attacks. The political imperative to limit troop sizes and the need to rebuild in the midst of conflict meant that contractors filled gaps where there were not enough troops or the appropriate capabilities in the military to do the job. They could often work cheaper than American troops. You may receive limited compensation for death or injury, compared to lifetime veterans` benefits; They could be sent to places where the U.S. didn`t want to or could not legally send the military, Steven Schooner, a professor of public procurement law at George Washington University, told me. Many of the entrepreneurs killed were foreigners. This has led to double exploitation, using foreign workers for dangerous jobs and paying them less than U.S. employees earn, said Heidi Peltier, who is part of the Costs of War project at Boston University and Brown University. “It`s very likely that a generation ago, each of these entrepreneurs would have been a military death,” Schooner said. “As the number of soldier deaths has decreased, the number of contractor deaths has increased.
It`s not a beautiful picture. Our contribution to the ongoing debate on entrepreneurs is important but modest. Our sample represents less than a quarter of the total population of private military contractors. The public still knows almost nothing about military contractors or the organizations they are affiliated with. Truck drivers and translators account for a significant proportion of the victims, but the recent death toll includes others who make up a private army. Jessica Maxwell, a Pentagon spokeswoman, told Insider: “When a contractor`s death occurs, the disclosure of names and other information will be handled by the next of kin or the organization where the person was employed.” Other lawmakers have also expressed concern about the numbers. Rep. John P. Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who is chairman of the Defense Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, said he was shocked by the scale of the losses among contractors and planned to hold hearings on the use of private workers in Iraq this fall. Click here to see the number of deaths and injuries of private U.S. government contract workers from September 1, 2001 to June 30, 2010.
In contrast, the American press has tried to protect private security companies. Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced a plan last month to drastically reduce the number of contractors, saying the Pentagon had become too dependent on private workers to do the work once done by the soldiers. Most of our samples worked safely, a particularly dangerous job. In fact, these contractors were more likely to be killed by enemy actions than the American soldiers they worked with. “Some analysts believe that poor contract management also played a role in abuses and crimes committed by some contractors against local nationals, which may have undermined U.S. counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the report said. But a spokesman for American International Group, the insurance company that covers about 80 percent of entrepreneurs in Iraq, said it had seen a sharp increase in the number of deaths and injuries in recent months. Labor Department records show that in addition to the 146 deaths in the first three months of this year, another 3,430 contractors filed claims for injuries or injuries sustained in Iraq, also a quarterly record.
However, the number of victims can be much higher because the government`s statistical database is not complete. Hamid`s death highlighted the prevalence of entrepreneurs in the United States. Bases around the world over the past two decades, a presence that obscures the true cost of war, according to a study on the commercialization of the U.S. war effort. Labor Department statistics show that the number of deaths and injuries among contractors has increased during periods of increased U.S. military activity. For example, the number of entrepreneurs killed from January to March surpasses the previous quarterly record of 112 deaths at the end of 2004, during the US military offensive in Fallujah and related operations nearby. U.S.
military casualties in Iraq have reached nearly 3,400 deaths. New statistics from entrepreneurs suggest that for every four U.S. soldiers or Marines who die in Iraq, one entrepreneur will be killed. “I don`t think most entrepreneurs expect to be treated as nobly as our soldiers, but they also don`t expect to be forgotten,” said Hascall Clark, who runs a group called American Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I think there should definitely be some recognition of what they`re doing.” What was it like to be an entrepreneur in Iraq? According to our sample of war dead, most of their missions were short, between a week and a month. Many entrepreneurs treated it as a temporary job and did a few rounds. .