The invisible side of US wars around the world

Mike Jabar never met his deputy. But when Naures Hamid died in a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base after Christmas, Jabar saw photos of ruins, and recognized among them the American flag he had painted himself at the door of a room that had already been destroyed.

“Imagine that something like this happened at a time when I was still there, and when the person who replaced me died”- he told me that just like Hamid served as an interpreter for the American Army. “I feel very bad” he added. Jabar was a lucky man.

He left his country in Iraq last fall, at the age of 23 to the US, where he is already a permanent resident, living with a friend in North Carolina. The United States relies on thousands of contractors like him and Hamid to help develop its wars, the roles of translators, the logistics, the safety, even the cleaning services.

America cannot go to war without its contractors. But presidents usually ignore thousands of dead, including many American citizens. The contractors are everywhere, although largely invisible to the American public, which overshadows the real size and cost of America's wars.

That also means that a president can selectively exploit the death of a contractor for other purposes. Senior American officials called Hamid, an American citizen of Iraqi origin, just days before the public learned his name.

Donald Trump, who has vowed to end the wars in the Middle East, was willing to risk the launch of a new war to avenge the death of an American contractor, including the murder of Iranian General Casam Sulejmani, a step that for previous presidents could trigger a violent Tehran reaction.

When a terrorist attack killed two contractors and an American soldier in Kenya about a week ago

Later, Trump reacted dry. We lost a great man” -- he told the soldier. And he didn't mention contractors. While US interventions abroad have become more complex, the country is relying increasingly on contractors for important missions, such as preserving diplomats' lives and providing troops.

Even though the U.S. is trying to end these wars and bring home more troops, contractors remain in large numbers on the ground to manage the consequences, especially since many are employed as good connoisseurs of the area.

The government has no official record of how many US contractors have died in the wars after September 11th 2001. In fact, it is difficult to know how many contractors are involved in such wars. The Department of Defence, publishes three-month reports on the number of troops it has in the Middle East. Nearly 50,000 troops have been in the region since October 2019, with about 30,000 of them found in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

Americans make up less than half the total in a region where the number of American troops fluctuates between 60,000,000. Even the number of contractors fluctuates, while military data does not include contractors working for other agencies like the CIA or the State Department. The death toll is even harder to know. Brown University gives an estimated 8,000 deaths, but this includes Americans and non-Americans.

Jabar told me he was happy to take that risk. Like Hamid, he was born in Iraq and wanted to become an American citizen at high school. He learned English himself, in part by listening to the songs of the Eminem rapper, and by looking at the famous serial” Pririson Break”.

He left the university at the age of 19 to serve as an interpreter in the US war against Islamic State. He was wounded along with American troops when they entered the Iraqi capital of I SIS in Mosul in 2016. Later, he served as an interpreter of a NAVY unit SEC in Kirkuk, near his home country, officially becoming part of the team.

He lived with them, he ate bread with them, he patrolled with them. On one occasion, Jabbar was even beaten and arrested while buying food products for them. “Those people were very devoted to our military mission”- says Joseph Votel, former commander of American forces in the Middle East, who withdrew from service last year's March 3 years

to war against I SIS.

The interpreters in the contract with the American Army were much more than translators. They helped us to understand the cultural context of events taking place on the ground. They were always very useful in managing very complex situations. And they did this by risking their lives”- he says.

US support to private contractors did not begin on September 11, 2001, but expanded greatly in the wars that followed that day's attacks. The need to keep the number of American troops in these conficiates limited, meant that contractors would fill gaps where there wasn't enough bodies, or where they lacked the necessary skills for a certain task.

Pretty soon, they work cheaper than American troops. And they compensate less financially if they get killed or injured. They can be placed in countries where the United States does not want, or could not legally send its army, says Steven Guner, law professor at George Washington University.

During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, 1 out of every 50 troops on the battlefield was an American civilian with contracts. In the peacekeeping mission in Bosnia in 1996, the ratio was 1 to 10. In Afghanistan, according to the latest military data, the ratio of American contractors to American troops is nearly 1 to 1. If domestic contractors are involved, and third countries, this ratio is about 2 to 1.

Their greatest advantage is not as military as political. Americars don't care how much war they cost. They care about how much money or loss it is, and how many of our boys and girls go home in coffins”- says Guner.

But this practice will not always work. Especially Iraq has shown how the deaths or errors of contractors can bring serious political consequences, or even escalate conflicts. The contractors have often committed crimes that damaged US cooking in Iraq, including the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in 2003, or the murder of 17 Iraqi civilians in 2007 in Baghdad Square.

In Hamid's case, Jabar thinks that with Solomon killed, Trump put justice in the country. He took a visa to go and live in the United States. Jabar believes that this saved his life, but he wants to serve again in the army, this time in the Air Force. As for Solomon, he is happy with his house. He's the one who ordered others to kill the traitors and translators”- he says. / “The Atlantic” the world.al