Large number of Iraq security units triggers ineffectiveness in war on militants
Multitude of Iraqi security services, competition, varying orders between them hurt efforts to fight militants.
Middle East Online April 18, 2012
The multitude of Iraqi security services and the competition and varying orders between them hurts efforts to fight militants here, high-ranking interior ministry officers and an analyst say.
While violence has fallen sharply in Iraq compared to its peak in 2006 and 2007, amid a bloody sectarian war, militant groups including the Islamic State of Iraq, Al-Qaeda’s front organisation here, remain active, and attacks common.
“The main reason for the failure to eliminate violence completely and control the leaders of the terrorist organisations is the multiplicity of security services,” one high-ranking interior ministry officer in Baghdad said.
“Each department operates in accordance with instructions … that are different from the other one, and that complicates cooperation among them,” said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Iraq became a stronghold for a variety of militant groups, both Sunni and Shiite, following the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled now-executed dictator Saddam Hussein.
The US disbanded Iraq’s military following the invasion, creating a large pool of men who were unemployed, disgruntled and armed, and thus ripe for recruitment into the insurgency.
People also journeyed to Iraq from around the region to fight the US “occupiers.”
But the worst violence was reserved for the Iraqis, tens of thousands of whom were killed in an orgy of bombings and death squad murders that erupted after the bombing of the Shiite Al-Askari shrine in Samarra in 2006.
A surge of US troops combined with the Sunni tribesmen turning against Al-Qaeda reduced the violence, but it still continues, with 14 Iraqi security agencies now working to fight it.
ITT Systems Corp wins Kuwait Base Operations and Security Support Services Contract
Defpro July 19, 2011
ITT Systems Corp., Colorado Springs, Colo., was awarded a $267,918,208 cost-plus-award-fee contract.
The award will provide for the modification of an existing contract to provide base operations and security support services in support of the military troops and equipment moving through the country of Kuwait. Work will be performed in Kuwait, with an estimated completion date of Sept. 28, 2015. The bid was solicited through the Internet, with five bids received. The U.S. Army Contracting Command, Rock Island, Ill., is the contracting activity (W52P1J-10-C-0062).