U.S. troops are on track to leave Iraq before the end of December

December 10, 2011

U.S. troops are on track to leave Iraq before the end of December

U.S. troops are on track to leave Iraq before the end of December, but the U.S. involvement there is anything but over—meaning local resistance to Americans, and the security challenges that come with it, will continue.

In place of the military, the State Department will assume a new role of unprecedented scale, overseeing a massive diplomatic mission through a network of fortified, self-sufficient installations. After the troops have left, the U.S. presence in Iraq—which peaked at 170,000—will number between 15,000 and 16,000, including federal employees and private contractors.

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Federal officials are busily signing hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts for on-site health care, food, protection and other needs, so that American personnel can steer clear of a perilous security situation on Iraq's city streets.

The State Department will hire more than 5,000 private security contractors for armed details and has contracted with a private service to ferry U.S. personnel in helicopters and planes.

The State Department will command four major diplomatic centers and seven other facilities, a total of 11 sites around the country. The tab will be around $3.8 billion for the first year, far above the operating cost of any other U.S. diplomatic mission—but far lower than the more than $40 billion in U.S. spending budgeted for fiscal 2011 in Iraq.

With the new mission, U.S. officials hope to redefine a strategic relationship that has rested for nearly nine years almost solely on war. They say they will work with Iraq's central bankers, justice officials and agriculture experts, while trying to improve its police and armed forces.

The U.S. posture is likely to be controversial within Iraq. The militant cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has called a truce through year-end to allow U.S. troops to leave, but has called on followers to resist the "occupiers" that remain.

U.S. Ambassador James Jeffrey acknowledged the dangers. "If we move out into the Iraqi economy, out into the Iraqi society in any significant way, it will be much harder to protect our people," he said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Jeffrey said Iraq still has "significant and highly trained, quite large terrorist groups, with very potent weapons that are trying to target us, and we have to be prepared for that."

The U.S.'s reliance on private security contractors troubles many in Washington, particularly since a 2007 incident in which guards working under a State Department contract opened fire in a crowded Baghdad traffic circle, leaving 17 Iraqis dead.

"The long history of the lack of transparency and accountability and the legal limbo in which these contractors operate mean that it could be a formula for problems," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D., Ill.), a longtime critic of the U.S. government's reliance on contractors overseas.

U.S. officials said they hope eventually to reduce reliance on security contractors, or at least shift to hiring more local guards, as Iraq's security improves.

Meanwhile, officials have awarded a series of contracts, including a $974 million deal to SOC Inc. for a "static guard" force at the Baghdad embassy and a $1.5 billion award to Triple Canopy Inc. to operate diplomatic convoys. DynCorp International Inc., a subsidiary of Tucker Holdings Inc., will run the State Department's air operations.

The four main U.S. diplomatic facilities—the embassy in Baghdad, consulates general in Basra and Irbil and a consulate in Kirkuk—will be comparable in size to important diplomatic posts in other countries, with one crucial difference:

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