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Begin New Search Topic Security Political Geography Iraq Content Type Working Paper

41. The Privatisation of Security in Failing States: A Quantitative Assessment

Author:
Željko Branović
Publication Date:
04-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF)
Abstract:
Failing and collapsed states are a common marketplace for the private military industry, which has grown significantly in size and scope over the last decade. Today the private sector supplies a broad spectrum of military and security services to governments facing a lack of territorial control and law enforcement capacities. These services range from combat support to training for military and policing units, logistics and the protection of individuals and property. Yet a quantifiable picture of the extent to which these private security services are being used by failing or weak governments and the implications this use might have for the security environment has not been properly painted.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Cold War, and Fragile/Failed State
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Iraq, and United Nations

42. The Iraq Federal Police

Author:
Robert M. Perito
Publication Date:
10-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
In 2004, the U.S.-led coalition and Iraqi security forces faced a growing challenge from insurgents and militia groups as the country drifted toward civil war. In street battles with heavily armed insurgent and militia groups, Iraq's fledgling police units mutinied under fire and resigned en masse, pointing out shortfalls in the U.S. police training program. In response, the U.S. government transferred leadership of the U.S. police assistance program from the State Department to the Defense Department, which created heavy police tactical units capable of dealing with armed groups. At the same time, the Iraqi interior ministry independently organized police commando units composed of former Iraqi soldiers that successfully fought alongside U.S. military forces. In 2005, the installation of a new Iraqi government and the escalation of sectarian violence brought a change in the composition of the Iraqi police commando units. The new interior minister, a senior Shiite party official, enabled members of Shiite militia groups to take over the police commando units and engage in the kidnap, torture, and murder of Sunnis. To control police death squads, the U.S. military combined all of Iraq's heavy police and police commando units into a new entity, the Iraq National Police (INP). In October 2006, the U.S. military began a program to retrain police commando units that were engaged in sectarian violence. Over the following year, Iraq's new interior minister, Jawad al-Bolani, undertook a program to reform the INP, appointing a new commanding general, purging the officer corps, and inviting a training team from the Italian Carabinieri to provide advanced instruction for INP units. In 2007, INP units successfully partnered with U.S. combat brigade teams that were deployed to Baghdad as part of President Bush's surge of U.S. military force into Iraq. Over the next two years, the valor of Iraqi constabulary units and their acceptance in both Sunni and Shiite areas brought a new name, the Iraq Federal Police (IFP), and the deployment of an IFP unit to every province in the country. Lessons learned in the development of an indigenous police constabulary in Iraq should be applied to current and future stability operation.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, Law Enforcement, and Sectarian violence
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, Middle East, and Arabia

43. Lessons from Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Iraq

Author:
John K. Naland
Publication Date:
10-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
Embedded provincial reconstruction teams (ePRTs) were small State Department- led units inserted into U.S. combat brigades in Iraq from 2007 to 2010 to support military counterinsurgency efforts at the local level. During major combat operations in 2007 and into 2008, ePRTs provided important support to military counterinsurgency efforts. As U.S. combat units wound down these efforts and withdrew from towns and cities, ePRTs did useful-but harder to quantify-work in mentoring local officials. Combat brigades and ePRTs generally worked well together. However, some units were unsure of how best to employ civilians. The military and civilians also sometimes had differing views on issues of short-term versus long-term goals. Despite problems, ePRT veterans believe that they had a positive effect in both supporting military counterinsurgency efforts and helping local Iraqi officials prepare for self-reliance. Interviewees identified a variety of operational problems that detracted from ePRT mission accomplishment. The Iraq ePRTs are now history, but as the United States continues to use civil-military teams in Afghanistan, these observed lessons need to be learned and acted upon.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, War, and Counterinsurgency
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, Iraq, and Arabia

44. Building a new military? The NATO Training Mission-Iraq

Author:
Florence Gaub
Publication Date:
04-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
NATO Defense College
Abstract:
The military is the cradle of the state - simply because security precedes any social or economic development. In the 1990s, this consideration led to the advent of Security Sector Reform, essentially the consequence of the perception that building up strong and viable security institutions under civilian control is a precondition of state consolidation. The multiple defense reforms NATO assisted in many former Warsaw Pact member states, and the NATO Training Cooperation Initiative launched in 2006, are part of the consequent logic of military development aid, which is not entirely altruistic. Security is an intertwined construct, and the Alliance relies on stability and security in other states in order to ensure its own. In this context, NATO's Training Mission-Iraq (NTM-I) is just a logical step - although surprising to some, given that it was Iraq that caused the Alliance a "near-death experience." Four years later it was followed by a sister mission in Afghanistan, indicating a trend in security force assistance that is likely to grow.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, and Military Strategy
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Iraq, and Middle East

45. Intervention hangovers in stabilisation operations: Case studies from Afghanistan and Iraq

Author:
Dr. Ann M Fitz-Gerald and Christian Dennys
Publication Date:
11-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
This paper argues that the emergence of stabilisation as a concept out of peace-building, state- building and counter-insurgency theories has carried with it some of the key weaknesses of international intervention, in particular the idea that imposing western liberal systems on non- western societies will contribute towards stability. With reference to two case studies, the Wheat Seed project in Afghanistan and a gas cylinder distribution project in Iraq, the paper argues that stabilisation activities do not engage fully with the underlying premise that stabilisation must support and engender local political legitimacy, in part because of the conceptual baggage that stabilisation has adopted from other areas. The paper concludes by arguing that greater use should be made of the knowledge and histories of non-western state formation, characterized as being non- Weberian, as a counter to the overuse by interveners of the desire to support rational Weberian state structures in other countries.
Topic:
Security, Development, Foreign Aid, and Neoimperialism
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Iraq, and Arabia

46. Private Contractors in Conflict Zones: The Good, the Bad, and the Strategic Impact

Author:
T.X. Hammes
Publication Date:
10-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
In Iraq and Afghanistan, the use of contractors reached a level unprecedented in U.S. military operations. As of March 31, 2010, the United States deployed 175,000 troops and 207,000 contractors in the war zones. Contractors represented 50 percent of the Department of Defense (DOD) workforce in Iraq and 59 percent in Afghanistan. These numbers include both armed and unarmed contractors. Thus, for the purposes of this paper, the term contractor includes both armed and unarmed personnel unless otherwise specified. The presence of contractors on the battlefield is obviously not a new phenomenon but has dramatically increased from the ratio of 1 contractor to 55 military personnel in Vietnam to 1:1 in the Iraq and 1.43:1 in Afghanistan.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Privatization, War, and Counterinsurgency
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, and Iraq

47. Loose Ends: Iraq's Security Forces Between U.S. Drawdown and Withdrawal

Publication Date:
10-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
Much is at stake in the never-ending negotiations to form Iraq's government, but perhaps nothing more important than the future of its security forces. In the seven years since the U.S.-led invasion, these have become more effective and professional and appear capable of taming what remains of the insurgency. But what they seem to possess in capacity they lack in cohesion. A symptom of Iraq's fractured polity and deep ethno-sectarian divides, the army and police remain overly fragmented, their loyalties uncertain, their capacity to withstand a prolonged and more intensive power struggle at the top unclear. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has taken worrying steps to assert authority over the security apparatus, notably by creating new bodies accountable to none but himself. A vital task confronting the nation's political leaders is to reach agreement on an accountable, non-political security apparatus subject to effective oversight. A priority for the new cabinet and parliament will be to implement the decision. And a core responsibility facing the international community is to use all its tools to encourage this to happen.
Topic:
Security, War, and Peacekeeping
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, Middle East, and Arab Countries

48. State of Affairs: Three Years After Nisoor Square: Accountability and Oversight of U.S. Private Security and Other Contractors

Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Human Rights First
Abstract:
On September 16, 2007, Black water Worldwide (now X e) private security contractors working for the U.S. Department of State killed 17 unarmed civilians and wounded 24 more in an unprovoked incident in Baghdad's Nisoor Square. A political firestorm immediately ensued in Iraq, the United States and around the world. The incident exposed what had been clear for several years: The United States lacked a coordinated, systematic policy for overseeing private contractors abroad and holding them accountable for serious violent crimes. Now, the United States' reliance on private security contractors in zones of armed conflict is increasing as is the urgent need for effective contractor oversight and accountability. Private contractors continue to outnumber U.S. military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and both the surge in Afghanistan and the drawdown in Iraq require additional support from private security and other contractors. It is estimated that up to 50,000 contractors will be required to support the Afghan surge and, with the military drawdown in Iraq, the Department of State plans to more than double the number of private security contractors it employs from 2,700 to 7,000. As Iraq and eventually Afghanistan move from military to civilian control and private contractors replace military forces there, the so-called jurisdictional gap over non-Defense contractors widens. If we learned anything from Nisoor Square it is that oversight and accountability gaps must be filled prior to increasing our private contractor force in conflict zones.
Topic:
Security, Crime, Human Rights, and Counterinsurgency
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, and Arabia

49. Parliamentary War Powers: A Survey of 25 European Parliaments

Author:
Sandra Dieterich, Hartwig Hummel, and Stefan Marschall
Publication Date:
12-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF)
Abstract:
This paper presents a survey of parliamentary 'war powers' based on a comprehensive and detailed review of the degrees and institutional forms of parliamentary involvement in military security policy-making. As our original research project focused on the involvement of European Union (EU) states in the recent Iraq war, we present data for the then 25 member and accession states of the EU as of early 2003. This survey of parliamentary war powers covers the legislative, budgetary, control, communicationrelated and dismissal powers of the respective parliaments relating to the use of military force. Referring to this data, we distinguish five classes of democratic nation-states, ranging from those with 'very strong' to those with only 'very weak' war powers of the respective national parliament.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Democratization, Governance, and Law
Political Geography:
Iraq and Europe

50. MRAPs, Irregular Warfare, and Pentagon Reform

Author:
Christopher J. Lamb, Matthew J. Schmidt, and Berit G. Fitzsimmons
Publication Date:
09-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
Mine resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles offer an excellent case study for investigating the current debate over the Pentagon's approach to developing and fielding irregular warfare capabilities. MRAPs first gained prominence for their ability to protect U.S. forces from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and because the Pentagon did not deploy them en masse to Iraq until almost 5 years of fighting had passed. More recently, following extraordinary efforts to field more than 10,000 MRAPs quickly, the program has been criticized as wasteful and unnecessary.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Nationalism, and War
Political Geography:
United States and Iraq