The Circuit (33 page)

The range sessions were a ball and the classroom work was equally as interesting. The lads had mixed military backgrounds so everyone brought something new to the table when discussing exercise scenarios.

I encouraged everyone to make suggestions and share their own experiences, especially mistakes they’d seen or made. In the security game, your first mistake can be your last. I’ve always tried to learn from my errors and, whenever possible, from the mistakes of others. In this respect, records of incidents both written and taped can be invaluable training tools.

So-called ‘trophy videos’ of CP teams operating in hostile environments had become quite common by 2005. Many show real advisers in real contacts. It disgusts me when people outside The Circuit view these videos for voyeuristic reasons. For security professionals, however, trophy videos can offer lifesaving insights.

While I was working the embassy contract in Kabul, a trophy video hit the internet featuring an eight-man CP team travelling in a convoy on Baghdad’s infamous airport road. The video, which lasts approximately six and half minutes, recorded the team immediately before, during and after a contact with Iraqi insurgents. It was sent to me along with an unofficial post-operations report written by one of the advisers involved in the incident and a sanitized report released by the company employing the team; Edinburgh Risk Security Management.
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I thought it would be useful to watch the Edinburgh Risk video with the rest of my team so we could refer to it during our training exercises. I’ve viewed the video many times since for training purposes and each time my heart goes out to the lads involved. Tragically, the team committed what I see as a series of mistakes. The video is a shambles from the moment you press ‘Play’. Shot by a camera mounted on the dashboard of the third vehicle in an Edinburgh Risk convoy, the video begins with two cars stopped on the road heading towards the airport. The vehicles appear to be isolated on their stretch of highway.

When I first viewed the video I immediately thought, ‘Why are three cars sitting on an empty road?’ After reading the report, I learned that the US military had closed the road heading to the airport following an IED attack. The Edinburgh Risk lads were on their way to the airport to collect a client. Rather than turn around and go back to Baghdad, the team decided to wait until the road reopened. As I’ve said already, a basic rule of operating in hostile environments is to never sit idle on an open road; that was the team’s
second
mistake.

The
first
mistake happened before the video starts. The video shows and the reports corroborate that the convoy was comprised of three low-profile cars: an armoured Mercedes sandwiched between two soft-skin vehicles. As much as I go on about the virtues of travelling low profile, cars are not the best choice for Baghdad; they seriously limit a team’s manoeuvrability. A 4x4 that fits the signature of civilian 4x4s around Baghdad can blend in just as easily and offer enough clearance to bump up on kerbs, jump drainage systems and cross highway medians. Sadly, the Edinburgh Risk lads on the video didn’t have that option.

A few seconds after the video starts, the convoy is fired on by insurgents. Given their direction of travel, it was a contact right flank. Following the initial burst of gunfire two members of the CP team dismount their vehicles from the right side.
Third
mistake; you never get out on the side of a contact. You get out on the opposite side of the vehicle to give yourself some protection from the line of fire.

Fourth
mistake: the team should have immediately responded to the contact with covering fire followed quickly by smoke cover. It took the Edinburgh Risk team around seventeen seconds to respond with their first shot and just over a minute to discharge their first smoke grenade. To the uninitiated, seventeen seconds may not sound like a long time but remember; during live-fire training, my team and I aimed to break contact with the enemy completely within twelve seconds. Anything longer is loitering in my view.

Other novice mistakes come out during the video. There’s a lot of shouting; an instinctive reaction during a contact but not an effective means of team communication. About a minute and a half into the incident, the team appears to totally dissolve; the occupants in each vehicle are doing their own thing. An adviser is visible in front of the rear vehicle. He seems to be in shock and is carrying an MP5, a 9 mm submachine gun. A 9 mm is a low-velocity weapon and is not suitable for CP vehicle moves. Primary vehicle weapons should be high velocity so the round can punch into an attacking vehicle. The MP5 is totally ineffective for answering towards the enemy in a situation like the one the Edinburgh Risk lads were in.

At six minutes, twenty-seven seconds, the video ends with the Edinburgh Risk team still no closer to safety. The post-incident reports revealed that one adviser died during the contact and two died shortly after as a result of their injuries. Poor fellas.

Each time I watch that video my stomach turns. I’m sure the Edinburgh Risk team were a great bunch of lads but it was painfully obvious from the video that they had no clue how to respond to a bad situation and more importantly how to avoid one in the first place.

Practically every adviser on The Circuit has seen or at least heard of the Edinburgh Risk trophy video. Outside The Circuit, it’s barely known because the public, in general, isn’t aware that commercial security advisers die all the time in hostile environments.

How many fatal incidents go unnoticed by the public? No one knows for sure because when an adviser dies on the job in Iraq, Afghanistan or any other hostile environment, commercial security companies aren’t required to report it. Even when the adviser in question is a British citizen working for a British CSC there’s no provision to register the death with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. It’s outrageous. When a British soldier dies abroad, its headline news; the soldier’s remains are returned home in a flag-draped coffin; respect is shown, questions are asked and if mistakes were made people are held accountable and hopefully errors aren’t repeated. When an adviser working for a CSC dies in a hostile environment, the body can sit for weeks before it’s repatriated. I’ve known cases of advisers being shipped home, unceremoniously, in wooden crates. There’s no public mourning and no public inquiry into whether the death could have been prevented. The entire incident is simply swept under the rug.

It’s taken a while, but thankfully the public is starting to ask questions. Two enterprising journalists from the
New York Times
tried to uncover how many security personnel have died in Iraq working on US government contracts.
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According to their findings, between March 2003 and March 2007 917 security personnel assigned to US government contracts in Iraq were killed and more than 12,000 were wounded or injured on the job. The journalists reckoned that private security personnel were dying in Iraq at a rate of one to every four US soldiers.

What makes these findings even more disturbing is that they pertain only to security personnel working specifically in Iraq on US government contracts. They don’t, for example, cover security personnel working in places like Afghanistan on British government contracts. The full picture is impossible to ascertain, but individually, CSCs know exactly how much blood is spilled to boost their bottom lines.

Of all the dirty secrets CSCs have, adviser fatalities in hostile environments is by far the worst. I got an idea of how deep the problem runs in 2006, when I was working in Afghanistan for another British firm. During my assignment, I became acquainted with a logistics manager employed by the same company. Over a brew, we’d talk about the state of the The Circuit. Time and again, we’d revisit the same subject: the lack of duty of care to both clients and advisers on the ground. As a logistics manager, he was privy to company information classed as ‘confidential’; information that revealed the true cost of putting poorly trained, poorly supported and poorly equipped security personnel to work in hostile environments.

One day his disgust boiled over. By then, he knew my views well and I guess he needed to unload on someone. He invited me to look through the contents of his laptop. For nearly two hours he showed me file after file of confidential information detailing the company’s operations in Iraq: graphs, post-incident reports, memos written by in-country ops managers begging for basic equipment. Most troubling of all were the lists of employees killed and wounded on the job; in less than two years nearly sixty employees had been killed in Iraq.

Many of the deaths involved personnel running military supply convoys. The logistics manager told me each incident was recorded on three reports; one written by the team leader on the ground (if he or she hadn’t died), an interim report and a final edited version. The families of the deceased were given the final, sanitized report.

Even more outrageous, the incidents were not disclosed to employees working similar tasks in Iraq and other hostile environments. That meant if mistakes were made, no one was learning from them. The same fatal errors were destined to be repeated again and again.

The logistics manager thought the whole thing was horrendous. He couldn’t understand why the company’s managers refused to pull the plug on contracts they knew were killing employees by the dozen.

‘Is moving 50,000 plastic chairs really worth dying for?’ he asked.

I was seething as well.

Some time later I had the opportunity to look at a financial report produced by a British CSC. The report boasted how the firm had maintained its profits in Iraq despite declining sales. What it failed to mention is whether any employees were killed or maimed keeping those Iraq profits buoyant.

CHAPTER 33

Six months into the Kabul embassy job, KR London was still dragging its heels on getting us basic equipment. By that point, all we had received were three medical packs, none of which was complete. The armoured car, meanwhile, had become a real sticking point. Colin absolutely refused to provide us with a level B6/7 backing vehicle for the ambassador, insisting that the client not KR should pay for it. Equipment costings, including an armoured vehicle, should have been included in KR’s original bid for the embassy contract. I can only assume that the company left it out in order to make its bid more competitive.

As an interim measure the embassy agreed to loan us a B/4 armoured 4x4 it used as a floating vehicle. It was a nice gesture but at the end of the day the B/4 wasn’t up to scratch. As I said, the ambassador needed a backing vehicle that provided the same level of protection as his primary vehicle. The situation was nearing crisis point, as far as I was concerned. Diplomats were being increasingly targeted in and around Kabul. In addition to the Canadians, staff from another high-profile embassy had suffered two IED attacks. In all three instances, fatalities were avoided, in part due to poor initiation by the bombers but also because the vehicles targeted were top-of-the-line B6/7 armoured.

Equipment wasn’t the only issue I was grappling with from my end. KR’s mismanagement of the contract also extended to wages. New advisers were being paid less than those already on the team, which seriously undermined morale. In theory I didn’t have a problem with different members of the team earning different wages; advisers with more advanced skill sets deserve to make more money. But skills had nothing to do with the wage discrepancies. The most recent hires were the lowest paid regardless of ability. It was ludicrous. The two best advisers on the team were fresh out of the Special Boat Service, had fantastic skills and were a real asset, yet they were making less than everyone because they had the least seniority.

Quite rightly, the ex-SBS lads were very upset when they found this out. They came to see me about it. I told them KR had indeed been useless but that the contract was moving to a new department. I assured them that I’d take up the issue with the new managers.

I was fed up and ready to walk. I didn’t want to stick around for another Bravo Two Zero, but I decided to stay with the job for two reasons. First, the ambassador asked me personally if I would continue with the embassy for at least another six months. I gave him my word that I would. Secondly, I’d promised the SBS lads that I’d do my utmost to get them what they deserved.

During my home leave the new managing department asked if I would come into KR London for a meeting. I was sure Colin had slated me to them and I was going to be sacked.

It turned out firing me was not on their agenda. The new London-based Operations Manager, a man I’ll call Ken, was full of praise for me. He went on and on about how professional I was and what a great job I was doing. My head was so big afterwards I was surprised I could get out of the building. I didn’t shy away from telling Ken about the conflicts I’d had with Colin, from the lack of kit to the armoured car to the wage dramas. Ken apologized and told me not to worry; his division was more ‘professional’ and had a much better understanding of the team’s needs. To underscore his commitment, Ken planned to fly to Kabul in the near future to meet directly with the client and the rest of the team.

When Ken arrived in Afghanistan, I met with him privately to review again the outstanding issues we’d covered in London. While Ken assured me again that we’d soon be receiving weapons and kit from London, he now insisted that the armoured car would have to be paid for by the client.

At that moment, I knew that nothing had changed. I’d have to continue fighting tooth and nail for even the most basic support from KR London. I told Ken that if KR London wouldn’t pay for a proper vehicle, then at the very least they needed to impress upon the embassy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs the urgent need to upgrade the ambassador’s backing vehicle to a B6/7. Ken suggested that would be going behind the embassy’s back. Rubbish. I had a great working relationship with the embassy. Mr K, the embassy’s head of security, and I always discussed how to get the best out of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and KR. I told Ken as much.