The U.S. Defense Department plans to continue hiring private contractors to provide security at reconstruction projects in Iraq and to train U.S. and Iraqi military officers in counterinsurgency, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

The contracting out of these wartime activities comes at a time when the United States is stretching its resources to provide the additional 21,500 troops in Iraq that are needed under President George W. Bush's new strategy, which involves stepped-up counterinsurgency operations in Baghdad and the expansion of economic reconstruction activities, the report said.

During an appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee last month, Army Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the new top U.S. commander in Iraq, said he counts the "thousands of contract security forces" among the assets available to him to supplement the limited number of U.S. and Iraqi troops to be used for dealing with the insurgency.

A former senior Defense Intelligence Agency expert on the Middle East, retired Army Col. W. Patrick Lang, was quoted as saying last week that contracting out intelligence collection and security for Army units and their contractors "results from actual military forces being too small."

Such jobs traditionally have been done by military personnel, the report said.

Aegis Defence Services Ltd., a British security firm, has about 1,000 employees in Iraq, about 250 of them Iraqis, under a 300 million U.S. dollar contract that began in 2004.

Under that contract, which is up for rebidding, Aegis provides security support services to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers personnel working on reconstruction projects throughout the country. Among its tasks is the operation of six Reconstruction Operations Centers, which disseminate threat warning information and track convoys.

In 2005, the U.S. special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction investigated the Aegis contract and found a number of shortcomings. Among them was that Aegis did not vet all of its Iraqi employees for security, as required, the report said.

Another contract up for bids is the operation of the Counterinsurgency Center for Excellence for up to three years at Camp Taji, north of Baghdad, which is devoted to joint U.S.-Iraqi training.

Source: Xinhua