Theresa Whelan
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs
Remarks to IPOA Dinner
19 November 2003
Washington, D.C.
Thanks very much for asking me to speak tonight. After looking around the room before and after the dinner started, I realized that a lot of you could probably do this better tonight than I could, but unfortunately you’re stuck with me.
What Doug asked me to speak on tonight was our experiences from a DoD perspective in using contractors in Africa in supporting US government objectives.
So what I thought I’d do is take a few examples of how we’ve used contractor support in logistics operations and also in supporting some of our training activities. Then I’ll provide you some thoughts on the advantages and disadvantages of using these contractors. This would be more food for thought than anything else as well as a little bit of commentary for my part.
But first, before I do that, a little bit of historical context. The use of civilians to support military operations isn’t really a new concept. Civilians have been supporting men in arms throughout the history of conflict. Napoleon clearly recognized the advantages of civilian support, in fact, he formalized the arrangement where by civilian contractors supported his garrison and his army while they were on the march.
Nor is contractor support limited to providing just logistical services. U.S. Merchant Marines never wavered in providing critical support during WWII despite casualties in the action. Today contractors, as you all well know, provide critical support across the globe and they live and die right along with their uniformed colleagues, as we’ve seen in Iraq, unfortunately. This is true even in regions that tend to be peripheral in terms of U.S. national interest, such as Africa, where U.S. Government contractors can sometimes be the only support the U.S. provides in a given crisis.
In Africa, as I mentioned, we’re using contractors in a variety of ways, in both logistics and training support.
First, I’m going to focus on the logistics support. Let me start with a couple of examples. Contractors provided support in Somalia in 1992 despite a challenging lack of infrastructure. It was one of the early places that Brown and Root really sunk its teeth into the logistics support business for the US military.
Since the 1990’s, contractors have been used extensively in peace support operations in Africa to provide logistical support to African soldiers. Since those early days of supporting ECOMOG, the Economic Community of West African States monitoring group in Liberia, an operation which launched the idea of sub-regional peacekeeping in Africa, contractors have deployed to support U.S. Government operations in Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, and again, this past summer in Liberia.
The use of contractors, in Africa, is an example of necessity driving policy. The 1990’s saw not only an up-tick in crises in Africa in the Post-Cold War environment, but also an up-tick in crises around the world. This led to our pressing for more regional based PKO operations in order to cover the wide range of crises that had to be addressed. However, those regional forces had some inherent operational weaknesses ---they couldn’t do it entirely on their own --- they needed to get Western support.
We wanted to support those operations, however, we also realized that our forces were tied down elsewhere around the globe and they might not be available for the long-term deployments we were envisioning in some places in Africa, as well as in other areas of the world.
So, consequently, contractors began to play a larger and larger role particularly in the logistical support of sub regional peace operations. As most of you know logistics support is the major weakness for most African militaries. They often times can be very competent and capable in basic peacekeeping operations but they’re not very good in terms of sustaining themselves in the field and that’s where contractors have become a major value added part of our U.S. Government policy to support African military peace support operations.
In the three cases that I mentioned above, the U.S. Government has actually funded the logistics support provided to the African peacekeepers. Some of that support has included vehicles, vehicle maintenance, vehicle recovery, provision of fuel, provision of food, water, [and] ground power. We’ve also had contractors do strategic and tactical airlifts, sealifts, provide uniforms and kits, refurbish buildings and quarters, and also provide airport and seaport services. Pretty much the whole gamut of activities has been provided at one time or another in one operation or another by contractors.
In addition to providing logistical support to deployed African forces, contractors are also starting to play significant roles in supporting, or providing logistical support to deployed U.S. forces, particularly in the context of U.S. forces preparing African soldiers for deployment to PKO missions elsewhere. An example of that is Operation Focused Relief, which took place in three different countries, Senegal, Ghana, and Nigeria.
All three training operations were supported by PAE contractors. PAE provided commercially available military and commercial equipment, including vehicles, communications gear, uniforms, soldier equipment, medical supplies, again, ground power, fuel, water, and trailers. They also assisted in the shipment of weapons and ammunition for the training to include both individual and crew served weapons. They arranged for commercial shipping, they built base camps and provided complete logistical support to the deployed U.S. trainers. So in the Operation Focus Relief case, the contractor was supporting both U.S. trainers, and the African troops that we were training.
Operation Focus Relief ultimately trained seven West African light infantry battalions for peace support duty in Sierra Leone. This program, in our view, was unprecedented and demonstrably successful even today. For example, Nigeria’s five Operation Focused Relief trained battalions remain cohesive units today and one was actually deployed to Liberia this August. Based on UN reports (and there’s really no love lost between the UN and the Nigerians), the Nigerian Nibatt 2 in Liberia these days stands above the other African units in terms of its professionalism and its conduct of its mission in the field.
Another recent example, of course, speaking of Liberia, and of contractors providing support to U.S. soldiers, is that the same contractor, PAE again in this case, who is providing support to the ECOMIL forces on the ground in Liberia also provided basic support to U.S. Marines who deployed to Roberts International Airport to support the ECOMIL operation to secure the port in Monrovia.
So, in the aggregate, what would, from our perspective, be some of the big advantages of using contractors? Well, one, is the use of civilian contractors for logistical support generally relates to cost savings in comparison to paying U.S. military to provide similar services. For example, the use of military airlift and sealift is pretty darn expensive. The use of the Defense Transportation Service is expensive when compared to commercial liner service.
Also, relying on military manpower for peripheral U.S. interests can be problematic, particularly when you’re talking about low density and high demand skill sets which are the types of skill sets that are generally needed when providing support to African peacekeeping operations.
Plus, contractors get more bang for the buck in Africa by providing skilled management teams that rely on host nation labor which is generally cheaper. So you get considerable cost savings.
Additionally, LOGCAP contracts, like Brown and Root or AFRICAP contracts as we’re now calling the support contractors in context of some of the log operations we’re doing in Africa, enable both U.S. Government and contractors to move very rapidly to support contingencies. Take this summer’s Liberia operation as an example. If you look at the time between when the decision was made and when things got started on the ground in country, it was pretty darn short, a matter of weeks actually. And if you look at the time between when the Africans made the decision that they were going to send forces to Liberia at the end of July and then look at when we were actually getting the Africans on the ground which was about the middle, or early August, again, very short. And in comparison if you look at the UN current deployment schedule, which is weeks behind, we were actually lightning fast. So there is a big advantage in being able to put the contractors on the ground and get things going fast.
The contractor also guarantees speedy availability of personnel, particularly in the case of suddenly emerging crises like Liberia where U.S. forces may not be available or U.S. policy actually doesn’t support their use on the ground. Again, in the case of Liberia, U.S. forces actually were not available very quickly. We had to move The Amphibious Readiness Group from the East coast of Africa to the West coast of Africa and that was basically a 21-day sail. While they were sailing, we had contractors on the ground doing basic logistics support work. So that was pretty useful in compressing the time schedule.
Plus, the use of contractors in Africa also means that the U.S. can be supportive in trying to ameliorate regional crises without necessarily having to put U.S. troops on the ground, which is often times a very difficult political decision.
Oft times also, contractors provide or hire personnel with on ground local experience which is a bonus in terms of facilitating a mission. Contrarily, if DoD were given the mission, it usually means that we would be providing personnel, often times, who have little or no clue, actually, about local conditions, and indigenous practices. And when you’re doing logistics support, knowing the local business practices actually comes in pretty handy. So using contractors with local knowledge has always allowed a certain amount of cost savings.
Ok. Those are all of the advantages. Are there any disadvantages? Well, let’s put it this way, as opposed to disadvantages, what are the challenges? There are a few.
First, there’s the management challenge. This is a management challenge more for the U.S. government than necessarily the contractors. The challenge for us is that the use of logistics contractors is not really a panacea that excuses the government and government officials from effective oversight and management responsibilities of a particular crisis or policy problem. Essentially, we can’t let ourselves be tempted to treat a contractor-based project or program as a fire and forget program where we say here, you got it, send us a postcard telling us how you’re doing and we launch off and busy ourselves with some higher priority activity elsewhere. We really have to remember on the U.S. Government side that we’ve got to stay engaged with those contractors and actively manage and work with those contractors because essentially, in many cases, those contractors are the only people on the ground really representing the U.S. Government and U.S. Government policy.
In this context, there are a couple of other things that are important. One of them is rules of engagement and rules of conduct for contractors. They’ve really got to be spelled out and it’s really got to be clear from the get-go to avoid incidents of contractor misbehavior. And there have been cases of that. For instance, some problems occurred in the Balkans with some of the contractors that were hired to work police issues in Bosnia, for example. And that has very negative consequences in terms of the overall image of U.S. policy. So you’ve got to set your guard against those kinds of things.
Additionally, the legal status of the contractors really needs to be clearly defined and if possible you should try to pull them into existing Status of Forces Agreements. The only problem is, doing that, particularly if you already have an A&T or SOFA on the shelf is that can create a lot of additional time problems and challenges working with the government that you’re supporting. So the legal areas in terms of the status of the contractors are a pretty gray area for both U.S. Government and also the host nation or the recipient nation.
We also have to be careful about unclear statements of work or ever changing scopes of work, scopes of missions. Often times we put too many expectations on contractors partly because policy is changing and the contractor is not necessarily geared to support our rather flexible policy changes.
Those are kind of the management challenges that we have. So what are the policy challenges?
Well, from the policy standpoint, the challenge you have is that the use of contractors really sends a mixed signal about the level of U.S. interest in and support of a regional country or operation. There is usually no question about U.S. resolve and interest if there are U.S. troops on the ground. If we only provide contractors, while they might be really effective in terms of mission accomplishment, they can lead to charges of U.S. ambivalence or lack of interest.
There is also an efficiency versus cost challenge. I talked a few minutes ago about LOGCAP or AFRICAP contracts. Having those standing contracts maximizes efficiency but the challenge is that guaranteed contracts and non-competitive selection can mean that the government is going to pay a higher price than if a mission is put out to bid. However, if you put it out to bid, of course, you have to go through the USG contracting procedures and that takes time and in a crisis situation that isn’t necessarily something that you have a lot of. So there is a challenge in that context.
In sum though, on the Log side, the use of Log contractors in an economy of force-theater like Africa is, from my perspective, kind of a no-brainer. Their use enables U.S. policy goals without relying on hard-to-come by U.S. combat, combat support, or combat service support troops. And contractor use also extends limited available funding to Africa and enables more equipment and logistical support to be provided.
Now let me shift to another area where contractors are playing an increasing role in Africa. It’s really becoming a regular fixture. And that’s the use of contractors for peace support operations training and also for top down reform and restructuring. While the use of contractors in the support world is becoming more common through the means that I just shared with you, the role of civilian contractors as military peace support operation trainers is actually evolving, especially in Africa.
For a number of years, we’ve had civilian contractors, like MPRI, for example, provide invaluable classroom training to African militaries, ranging from defense reform to war gaming and simulation.
In the defense reform area actually, contractors have been particularly important in Africa. When we train a battalion -- an Operation Focus Relief battalion in Nigeria for example -- it’s really of no use in the long term -- its sustainability is really questionable-- if there is no top down organizational structure that is both effective and transparent to help sustain that training, to help to support that unit over the long haul.
This is a huge weakness in African militaries. Ministries of Defense, and also the senior levels of military structures are corrupt and inefficient. And that is one of the reasons why support doesn’t actually get to the troops in the field. The expertise that you need to help organize and create efficiencies and to reform and restructure those organizations is usually found only in the highest levels of the U.S. military. And those guys aren’t usually available for security assistance assignments. They’re usually busy doing assignments elsewhere.
So, the alternative is that that expertise can be found in the contracting community since they Usually get retired military who’ve held very senior positions in the U.S. Government or the U.S. military and have an extensive breadth of experience that they can actually bring to these countries.
A good example of a case like this would be our program in Nigeria, where we utilized MPRI to support reform and restructuring of the Nigerian MOD and also some of the things that we are currently doing with the South African Ministry of Defense in terms of reform and restructuring and strategic planning. So those are some areas where we have traditionally seen the contractors involved in Africa and where contractors have really brought a lot of talent there.
But there is also a new area where we are seeing contractors in Africa ---and I know this is taking place in other areas but we haven’t done this in Africa before ---and that’s field training of peace support operations basic soldier skills which, normally, in Africa has been provided by U.S. military personnel.
The Africa Crisis Response Initiative, ACRI, utilized a combination of contractor trainers for classroom skills and U.S. Special Forces military for field training and also classroom oversight and exercise oversight. However, with the events of September 11th, the U.S. military has found itself in the awkward position of not having enough assets to meet the growing training needs of our African friends.
Under the new African Contingencies Operations Training and Assistance Program, which we call “ACOTA”, which is ACRI’s successor and also a little bit of OFR’s successor, the U.S. Government has had to rely on civilian contractors to conduct field soldier skills training for select African trainers. For example, today, Ghana’s ACOTA training program, both field and classroom, has been conducted entirely by civilian contractors. Now actually some of these contractors were reservists but nonetheless it was all contractor training, we did not have any active duty military participating in the training.
In Ethiopia, additionally, civilian contractors provided peace support operations training to the Ethiopian Defense Force in preparation to their deployment to an African Union sponsored peacekeeping mission in Burundi. The reason that had to happen was again because we needed to do something very quickly and we needed a longer lead-time in order to provide U.S. military trainers. The contract trainers, as I mentioned in the logistics case, were available very quickly to respond to that need.
As with logistics support issues, there are both advantages and disadvantages to using contractors in the area of training.
Some of the advantages: First, the ability of contractors to meet short expense requirements ---Ghana and Ethiopia are great examples.
Also, the use of funding. We have a lot more flexibility in getting contractors to do training than we do in getting the U.S. military to do training because of the rules and regulations governing expenditures of Foreign Military Financing money and the involvement of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency and the military departments in terms of generating the cases and all of the other legal requirements in order for us to send out a mobile training team.
Also, contractors, are self-sufficient. They come with all of their own logistical support. Also, unlike the military where we might require subject matter experts from various units, who you have to cobble them together, you can get one contractor who can supply all the different types of personnel that you need.
Also, contractors can provide continuity that is not readily offered by the military. You can have the same contractors going back to the country over and over again. Whereas, with the military, depending on the frequency of training, odds are that you might only have the same military guys going back twice but no more than that because they will have rotated out of the unit or they would have another operational or training cycle assignment.
So what are some of the disadvantages from our perspective? Well, one of them is that both the U.S. military and our African partners are actually deprived of valuable cooperation opportunities. In terms of promoting interoperability that’s actually a downside.
Also, the current International Criminal Court situation leaves the civilians out in the open with regard to potential criminal sanctions. Again, this is an area that needs to be explored more. The military are automatically covered by SOFAs, but the contractors are hanging out there. It gets back to my earlier comments that we have to try to work the contractors into the SOFAs in order to provide protection.
There is also a lot of visibility. Everyone essentially recognizes the U.S. soldier in uniform doing the training and that gets back to the issue of policy and demonstrating U.S. interests in a particular area or problem set. That, of course, cuts both ways, some times we may not what to be very visible. But, bottom line, if we do want to be very visible, if we do want to be flying the American flag --certainly the contractor can fly the American flag and they all do -- but there is that psychological impact of seeing -- as Secretary Powell said at a meeting this summer on Liberia – “guys in cammies” on the ground.
Additionally, if you’ve got civilians doing the training, there is also, in our perspective, the loss of direct military to military connections – “the brotherhood thing” -- the shared experience thing which can be very important when we’re trying to get certain points across. Sometimes certain things are easier to accept when coming from someone wearing the same boots.
A good example of this is the human rights and law of war training we conducted in Nigeria. The Special Forces gave that training to the Nigerian troops. It was our military guys talking to the Nigerian military guys and telling them that these are the rules under which you need operate, these are the responsibilities that you have as a soldier. I, as a soldier, am telling you -- a fellow soldier to a fellow soldier--- so there was a psychological bond there and actually the special forces folks who did that training said that was some of the most intense and interesting training that they did because of the dialogue that they got going back and forth with the Nigerian soldiers who asked really penetrating questions --- “What would you do if……” and “Well I was in a situation like this……what would I do then?” The questions were really challenging but the soldier to soldier bond helped the communications.
Now, arguably, almost all of the contractors that we are going to use or would use for field training are retired military and all have that experience and knowledge base and they can refer to their own experience when they were in uniform. So there is that shared experience. But there is a little bit of a difference between someone who is currently in uniform and a contractor.
The other issue that we found in Africa was that there is a prestige factor for units that are trained by American troops. It’s a big deal. And we’ve heard this a number of times from the Africans that it’s a badge of honor if they were trained by the Special Forces. So we lose that bit of psychological boost.
Another issue, from a more practical standpoint, is that sometimes it can be time consuming to make changes to a training plan when you are dealing with contractor statements of work. So, you really have to think about your statement of work up front in order to give yourself the flexibility to adjust the training plan.
Disadvantages or challenges aside, I think that from our perspective, contractors are here to stay in supporting U.S. national security objectives overseas and really in the aggregate we think that they add considerable value to the process by bringing a dimension of flexibility that we really didn’t have before and that we desperately need now as things in the world are so fluid and changing.
The key for us in utilizing contractors is to find the right mix between the contractors and the U.S. military to ensure that we are both achieving our military to military objectives like promoting interoperability, promoting the experience of U.S. and foreign soldiers contacting each other and getting to know each other and also getting U.S. soldiers experience in operating in different environments and also our national security objectives in terms of promoting stability, democracy, and responding effectively to crises.
So that is the perspective from the Department of Defense.