Caught in the line of fire

For Jayme C. Harris, general manager of Iraq-based, Unity Logistics and Security Services (ULSS), a big part of what's taking place in Iraq is like a caatch 22 situation. For example, "although they [Americans] want to create jobs for Iraqis they are not letting them into all [military] base camps," she says, where there are many job opportunities in supporting the huge US military effort in Iraq. This wasn't the case, Harris explains, until a suicide bomber walked into a building on a US base camp full of thousands of people and blew it up. In order to alleviate this threat, most camps have stopped letting Iraqis in.

This, however, is not the only problem when it comes to business in Iraq. "The contracts are supposed to be won through a competitive bid with tenders and companies bidding for the projects. You're not supposed to just give a contract to somebody," Harris says. With government contracts, companies should bid on the website, put together a package, show their past performance, legitimacy of the company, explain how they're going to perform, give their dollar amount and then, based on different categories such as price, technical ability, past performance, and mobilisation plans, the companies are rated. In reality, this is not always the case.

"What's happening now with the Iraqis, the government is just a facade. They do it legally but then they're still doing the bribes on the side and making it look like it is legal."

In conventional project contracting, says Harris, companies are entitled to a certain sum of money in the early stages of a contract called "mobilisation costs" to help get the job going. This however, is not the case in many business contracts in Iraq.

"What these guys do is say here's all the money for the project. Then they have the money, they don't care and there goes the funding for that project. This has not happened once but a lot. Additionally, people are finding out that a lot of the areas are very dangerous and they don't have the materials or the skills to do it. People get shot and they are not going to go back to finish the project," she says.

ULSS started as a security company but was expanded by Harris who secured an Iraqi sponsor to help form an Iraqi company.

"We had financial backers, the sponsor and Iraqi citizens, and we did everything by the law from registering with the government and paying all the required money for that. We used our past performance and helped support other sub-contractors," she says.

The company has its main office in Basra and operations in several US military camps. According to Harris, one of the big businesses in Iraq at the moment, also handled by ULSS, is transporting gravel.

"We employ Iraqi drivers. The military keeps losing vehicles and you always have to put gravel down so it's a big business. We get gravel from within Iraq but the prices are crazy."

Gravel per cubic meter can range from US$30-US$180. At the lower end of the price range you can get the same amount for a dollar somewhere else.