Casualties, injuries increase among defense contractors

Statistics suggest deaths have more than tripled during the past 13 months.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
WASHINGTON -- As the nation focused last week on the 2,000th U.S. soldier who died in Iraq, Gloria Dagit of Jefferson, Iowa, got a box filled with the belongings of her son, Keven, who was killed when his convoy of trucks was ambushed in northern Iraq.
Keven Dagit's death Sept. 20 -- along with two other truckers -- didn't register on the tally of Iraq deaths broadcast daily. That's because they were civilians working for U.S. defense contractors.
As the violence of the protracted war continues and some 75,000 civilian employees struggle to rebuild the war-torn nation and support the military, contractor casualties mount. Their deaths have more than tripled in the past 13 months.
As of Monday, 428 civilian contractors had been killed in Iraq, and another 3,963 were injured, according to Department of Labor insurance-claims statistics obtained by Knight Ridder.
Incomplete data
Those statistics, which experts said were the most comprehensive listing available on the toll of the war, are far from complete: Two of the biggest contractors in Iraq said their casualties were higher than the figures the Labor Department had for them.
The dead and injured come from many walks of life, drawn by money and patriotism. Some are American citizens. Most are not. They are truckers, police officers and translators. They're counted only if they were paid by companies hired by the Pentagon. Their deaths and injuries were compensated by insurance policies required by federal law.
The Labor Department lists 156 dead for an L-3 Communications subsidiary in Virginia. The company, which provides translators who work with the military, puts the death toll at 167, of whom 15 were Americans. The Labor Department's accounting reports that Halliburton, the largest contractor in Iraq, has had 30 employees killed in Iraq and 2,471 injured. A Halliburton spokeswoman, Melissa Norcross, said Tuesday that the company had lost a total of 77 workers in Iraq, Afghanistan and its base in Kuwait. One worker is unaccounted for. Halliburton couldn't give a breakdown by country.
The government's listing shows the contractors' casualty rate is increasing. In the first 21 months of the war, 11 contractors were killed and 74 injured each month on average. This year, the monthly average death toll is nearly 20, and the average monthly number of injured is 243.
Dangerous environment
"You've got a greater number of contractors on the ground carrying out a greater number of roles putting them in danger," said Peter W. Singer, a contracting expert at the Brookings Institution, a Washington research center. "And issue No. 3, you've got a much more dangerous environment."
Keven Dagit, a truck driver for Halliburton, knew it. The day before he was killed he told his mother, "Now, it's really getting dangerous," she recalled.
He left two daughters, ages 9 and 11.
"I want more people to realize that these guys are out there defenseless," Gloria Dagit said. "It was an ambush. ... They are not allowed to carry weapons."
So far this year, 196 contractors in Iraq have been killed, and 2,427 have been injured, according to Labor Department statistics.
In August, Mike Dawes of Stillwell, Okla., a longtime police officer who'd been hired to train Iraqi police, was killed by a suicide bomber in downtown Baqoubah, 36 miles northeast of Baghdad. He'd worked for DynCorp International and had survived as a private contractor in Kosovo, where he also taught police from Poland, India and Pakistan.