IRAQ - Focusing On The Non-Oil Sector - Part 6D - Security First.

Nothing good can be expected of Iraq, unless its security problems have been resolved and the power struggle between the Pentagon and the State Department under President George W. Bush ends. A new survey conducted for the US government shows that some of the dozens of daily attacks on allied forces are taking place in areas that had been thought largely secure. Senior senators from President George W. Bush's Republican Party complained recently that matters were "getting worse" in Iraq.

Special Operations Consulting-Security Management Group, a private security firms which compiles and analyses data as a regular part of its operations in Iraq, said in September, more than 2,300 attacks were directed against civilians and military targets in a pattern that spread over nearly every major population centre outside the Kurdish north. Secretary of State Colin Powell on Sept. 26 said on ABC's This Week programme the Iraq insurgency was intensifying, in a departure from the Bush administration's recent assessments of security in the country.

President Bush, campaigning for re-election on Nov. 2, has insisted that "freedom is winning" in Iraq and has pointed to "steady progress" in rebuilding the country. Iraq's interim Premier Iyad Allawi, on a visit to the US, insisted that the security situation in Iraq was not as bad as it was being portrayed by the media. But Powell's Sept. 26 comments echoed those of Tim Spicer, head of Aegis Defence Services - a private UK firm co-ordinating security for contractors in Iraq - who on Sept. 26 said insurgents will try to make it ungovernable in the run up to the elections. Spicer warned: "There are spikes and troughs [in the violence], and we think there will be a 'lost' period between now and January. There's a very serious insurgency problem going on. In the period running up to both the US and Iraqi elections, the enemy will try to make the place as dangerous and as ungovernable as possible".

Earlier this year US officials said the growing violence was aimed at preventing the transfer of sovereignty, which occurred on June 28. But instead of falling in the wake of the handover, attacks by insurgents have escalated.

Aegis runs Iraq's National Civil Military Operations Centre, in conjunction with the US-led MNF. The insecurity facing the companies rebuilding Iraq has been highlighted by kidnappings and beheadings, including two Americans, in recent weeks. (Concerns about the ability of a relatively small company such as Aegis to provide security services throughout Iraq led to a dispute with Dyncorp, a rival security firm, over the US Defence Department decision's to award it the contract. DynCorp's complaint to the US government's general accountability office focused on Aegis's relative inexperience and Spicer's personal involvement in controversial military activities. The US government rejected DynCorp's complaint in September 2003).