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Lots of people become entrepreneurs because of an unexpected career shock, such as a corporate acquisition or layoff. Dawn Halfaker's military career was ended by an explosion and a catastrophic injury, in Iraq, in 2004. Yet Halfaker would eventually recover and form Halfaker and Associates, an Arlington, Virginia-based contractor in data analytics, cybersecurity, software engineering, and IT infrastructure for the federal government, including the Navy, the Department of Transportation, and the Department of Defense. --As told to Kimberly Weisul

From an early age, I wanted to get a scholarship to play basketball. I was contacted by West Point about playing basketball there and becoming a cadet. At first I dismissed it. I didn't have a good understanding of what West Point was.

The minute I stepped onto the West Point campus, I knew it was the place for me. I was drawn to the intensity and sense of purpose. There was nothing that set any of the other schools I was considering apart--they were all about where you were going to party and hang out.

Part of the great thing about West Point was that I didn't fully understand what I was getting into. I didn't know what the plebe year was all about. It was probably better that way. The basketball coaches paint a rosy picture. Being there was a huge surprise and a culture shock. It was four years of just trying to survive.

After West Point, my first duty station was in Korea. Then I went to Fort Stewart, in Georgia, and deployed from there to Iraq in February 2004.

Our focus was on rebuilding the Iraqi police force. We were working hand in hand with Iraqis, training them, equipping them, going on missions with them. We were responsible for the security of the police station, and for protecting our area of operations from insurgents.

That's where things got a little messy. We were going on missions to flush out insurgents who were planting IEDs, shooting rockets at the embassy, or blowing up the police stations. On one of our patrols, near Baqubah, our Humvee drove into an ambush and was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. I remember being loaded into a medevac helicopter. When I woke up from the coma, my parents and doctors had to explain what had happened--and that I'd lost an arm.

I spent my 25th birthday in the hospital thinking that my life was over. It wasn't just that I'd lost an arm. It was that I no longer had a career. I had been physically fit, mentally fit, at the top of my game, and I went from that to a state of feeling basically useless. I was terrified about being just cast aside while everybody else moved on. That's what fueled me to go into business and to want so desperately to stay connected to the military and the mission.

I was constantly in pain, and I always had to think of a different way to do things. I worried about having to get in line at Starbucks and buy a coffee and get change and carry it back and open the door. Those were the things that plagued my mind, more than the bigger picture of what was going on with my life.

When you think of a wounded warrior, you think of a young male in a wheelchair. I had a hard time identifying as a veteran and fitting in as a female who was wounded in combat. People weren't laughing to my face--it was mostly probably in my head. But I look different. Whenever you're different, you're kind of vulnerable. I did an internship on Capitol Hill. It was really discouraging. There were very important issues that Congress had to deal with. Do the soldiers have the right helmets? Do we have the right equipment? Are vets getting the right care? I was amazed at how many times the debate became partisan, and people were willing to ignore the common-sense solution.

Then I thought I'd maybe work as a contractor focused on supporting the military. That's when I realized there was a big disconnect between what was going on in Washington and what was happening downrange. There were so many people who didn't have combat experience trying to make decisions and influence policy. I thought, you know what? I can do this better. I could start a company. I could hire people who have the right expertise, and provide the support myself.

When I was at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, there was a colonel who wanted me to help him better understand how technology innovations could be used in the field. I was able to leverage that experience and other relationships to learn the industry and start positioning myself for a career, and to begin building the infrastructure of my company in the background.

There's no question that my military training helped me become a better entrepreneur. You go through so much training in the military, but from that first year as a plebe, what the military is teaching you is how to be resilient. You plan your mission, and you execute, but nothing ever goes according to plan. Your job as an officer is to continue to lead in not-ideal circumstances, and you're probably underresourced. Being an entrepreneur and getting something started, you never have everything you need, and things never go according to plan.

You also learn that the people who can make things happen are the ones who are challenging the status quo. There are people who figure out how to make the whole system work for them, as opposed to being a follower. From the start of my company, I recognized there were other people in my situation. As my company grew, I knew I could bring in other wounded warriors.

Hiring other veterans affects my company in a positive way. There's a similar value system, a similar understanding of the mission. Then there's the skill set to do data analytics and IT infrastructure. For the type of work we're doing, we need people who understand the military, so that's critical. But as the company grows, we value diversity. We need to make sure that employees who are not veterans can still do well here. It's something I'm aware of. I don't want to create this in-group.

Certifications help tremendously, especially in my industry, where there are hardly any medium-size companies. You're not going to compete with Lockheed Martin. But you can leverage the set-asides to have an opportunity to show what your company can do. Once you're able to do that, then eventually you can compete with Lockheed Martin. I'm not in any rush to do it. We're still finding our sweet spot and trying to refine that before we say we're the best at what we do and we can beat anybody. That's the goal.

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This Iraq Veteran Lost Her Arm--but Found New Purpose as an Entrepreneur - Inc.com

The U.S.-backed military operation to rescue Mosul from the grip of ISIS appears to be on the brink of success. But a military victory over the extremist group is only the beginning of building a stable Iraq, a country where current conditions could incubate an "ISIS 2.0."

In two weeks of meetings in Iraq with dozens of government and civil society leaders, we heard that Iraq's political dysfunction is likely to cripple any recovery and that Iraqis desperately need and still trust the U.S. to help heal their painful divisions.

Human tragedy continues to stoke anger and fear, these leaders said. A tribal sheikh from Nineveh told us that more than 300 people have been killed or kidnapped from just a dozen of his villages. ISIS continues to sow division in the Sunni communities it lost by spreading rumors about who was complicit in its crimes. Officials and activists reported blacklists and said internment camps have been set up for alleged "ISIS families."

These gaping societal wounds, beneath the overlay of existential political power struggles, threaten the military gains of the past three years and will leave Iraq susceptible to violent extremism that spreads beyond its borders. Without a concerted effort to stop revenge killings and promote lasting local and national reconciliation, there is grave potential for an even more virulent form of terrorism to emerge.

Many Iraqis are ready to take on this monumental challenge, but they need help. Bridging the country's deep, complex divisions will require that the U.S., the United Nations and other international players push for political and economic compromise by Iraqis and regional power brokers.

That will require sustained attention to the "Three Rs:" Relief, Reconstruction and Reconciliation, all of which are needed concurrently. Relief means not only continued humanitarian aid but also security assistance to protect reconstruction and reconciliation and to facilitate the return of 3 million displaced people.

Political and social reconciliation, in turn, will be needed to prevent violence and reprisals and make way for sustainable reconstruction. The U.S. should develop a plan to help resolve fundamental national and regional political issues that will allow Iraq's constellation of groups to co-exist in peace.

Already, unity is fraying among forces that stood against ISIS. Sinjar, Tel Afar and Tuz Khurmatu have emerged as flashpoints of incipient conflict. Wrangling between the Kurds and Baghdad over oil, territory and Kurdish independence continues as regional powers such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey as well as Iraqi groups jockey for influence. Since the ISIS onslaught in 2014, for example, Popular Mobilization Forces militias, most supported by Iran, have established offices all over Iraq 16 just in one town south of Mosul, Iraqis tell us in a bid to gain control in areas recaptured from ISIS. As next year's parliamentary elections approach, they'll be well positioned to buy cooperation, exert authority and support to candidates, further solidifying their grip.

At the same time as talks for political reconciliation grind on in Baghdad, it's been shown that Iraqi tribal and community leaders, with solid international backing, can devise local agreements that restore peace to their devastated cities, towns and villages. Experienced Iraqi facilitators have guided six successful negotiations for reconciliation with our Institute's support, including one that averted collective revenge over the 2014 ISIS slaughter of 1,700 Shia cadets near Tikrit in northern Iraq. More than 380,000 people from the city and the surrounding province were able to return home as a result. This month, the same Iraqi organizations helped 114 sheikhs from southwest Kirkuk reach an agreement to revise tribal law so it supports state judicial mechanisms. The tribal leaders are convinced these stunning reforms will help achieve justice, security and stability in their areas after liberation from ISIS.

Such successful examples of reconciliation, accomplished in cooperation with provincial and central government officials, demonstrate that Iraqis can achieve sustainable peace. They just need the bulwark of U.S. and international support for the time being. Certainly, the challenges of unwinding Iraq's kaleidoscope of conflicts can't be underestimated. But it's the only way the country can recover from lingering effects of decades of war and prevent the emergence of yet another threat to U.S. and global security.

Sarhang Hamasaeed is director of Middle East programs at the U.S. Institute of Peace, and Michael Yaffe is vice president of the institute's Center for the Middle East and Africa.

If you would like to write an op-ed for the Washington Examiner, please read ourguidelines on submissions.

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In Iraq, military defeat of ISIS is only the beginning - Washington Examiner

By Thomas Simonetti By Thomas Simonetti June 26 at 9:53 AM

After midnight on a recent Michigan summer night, the streets were alive with activity. Not for a Detroit Redwings game or a music festival but for a large Muslim American community there celebrating Ramadan. After dawn-to-dusk fasting, Muslims around the world celebrate the holy month. Dearborn, Mich., with one of the largest populations of Arab Americans in the United States, is especially lively during Ramadan.

Photographer Salwan Georges, an Iraqi American who came to the United States from Syria as a teenager, has been documenting the area since 2014. The photographer notes its not just Muslims out celebrating. Iraqi Chaldeans, Americans and others also drive from the suburbs to enjoy the late night food.

The work is part of a long-term project that will explore the Iraqi American community in Michigan. Dearborn and nearby Dearborn Heights, within the Detroit metropolitan area, have many immigrants of Lebanese, Yemeni, Iraqi, Syrian and Palestinian descent.

Georges pursues the project as he chases a nostalgia for his home country, for a culture he left as a boy. I didnt have a chance to experience the culture [in Iraq] growing up for long because I moved away at a young age, he said.

Georges worked as staff photographer at the Detroit Free Press for over a year, living and working in the Motor City. He is currently a staff photographer at The Washington Post. His work often explores the intersection of his birthplace with a new way of life in the United States.

To me the work shows people who are just happy to have the chance to celebrate their faith in the land of freedom, Georges said. Thats part of the beauty of the United States. Michigan has welcomed refugees for a long time and helps them to become American without giving them a culture shock. Its an easier place to resettle and to slowly become American.

After all, he said, Whats more American than getting a hot dog from a stand at 2 a.m. during Ramadan?

More on In Sight:

These opulent villas are 50 miles from the Islamic States front line in Mosul

Detroits graveyard of cars in the shadows of the citys revival

Inside one photographers powerful catalogue of the human condition

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A photographer's thirst for Iraq, quenched in a Detroit suburb - Washington Post

(Washington, DC) US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson should return Burma and Iraq to the US list of governments using child soldiers, Human Rights Watch said today. Reuters reported that Tillerson overruled State Department officials and senior US diplomats in ordering the two countries to be removed from the list, which will be announced on June 27, 2017.

The United Nations and nongovernmental organizations, including Human Rights Watch, have continued to report on the use of children by regular or militia forces in Burma and Iraq. The UN documented child recruitment by Burmas armed forces in 2016, and just last week the Burmese army released dozens of child soldiers. Human Rights Watch has documented child recruitment by militias linked to Iraqs government. In March, a State Department report said that at least a dozen children fighting with government-affiliated militia in Iraq had been killed in combat in 2016.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson

Taking Burma and Iraq off the list when they continue to use child soldiers is both contrary to US law and harms children still in the ranks, said Jo Becker, childrens rights advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. Secretary of State Tillerson apparently believes the list is subject to backroom political calculations, rather than facts on the ground and US law. Unless Tillerson reverses this action, he will gravely damage US credibility in ending the use of children in warfare.

The State Department is required by the Child Soldiers Prevention Act to annually identify and list governments that recruit or use child soldiers in their armed forces or provide support to militias that do so. Absent a presidential waiver, the law prohibits governments on the list from receiving several categories of US military assistance.

Burma has been listed under the Child Soldiers Prevention Act each year since the list was first published in 2010. In 2012, Burma signed an action plan with the UN to end its use of child soldiers. Since then, it has allowed the UN limited, periodic access to military facilities, and has released 849 children and former child soldiers from its ranks, including 67 on June 23.

However, new cases of child recruitment, although fewer in number, continue to be documented, and the government still has multiple steps to fully implement its action plan. For example, Burma has not yet adopted a law to criminalize the recruitment and use of children for military use, nor allowed the UN access to ethnic armed groups using child soldiers in order to negotiate action plans with those groups.

This isnt the time to let Burma off the hook for its use of child soldiers, Becker said. US and UN pressure has led to important progress, but as long as children are still being recruited and found in its armys ranks, Burma should stay on the list.

In Iraq, units of the governmentsPopular Mobilization Forces(Hashd al-Shaabi orPMF) have recruited and used children to fight Islamic State forces (also known as ISIS). Human Rights Watch found that two units, commanded by Sheikh Nishwan al-Jabouri and by Maghdad al-Sabawy, recruited children as young as 14 from a camp for displaced persons near Erbil throughout 2016. A 17-year-old who joined one of the units told Human Rights Watch that when he added his name to a list that fighters were passing around, he saw that of the 31 names on the list before his, eight were younger than 18.

After Iraq was included in the State Departments list for the first time in 2016, President Barack Obama issued a presidential waiver, which allowed military assistance to Iraq that would otherwise have been prohibited under the law. In fiscal year 2016, Iraq received over US$3 billion in categories covered by the Child Soldiers Prevention Act, including foreign military financing, training, and excess defense articles. While presidential waivers by the Obama administration undermined the effectiveness of the law, the list itself was generally accurate and fact-based, Human Rights Watch said.

One omission from previous lists was Afghanistan, where the Afghan Local Police, a government-backed militia engaged incombat operations against the Taliban and other insurgents, recruits and uses children as soldiers. The State Department excluded Afghanistan, claiming that the Afghan Local Police fell into a gray area not covered by the Child Soldiers Prevention Act. That decision appears contrary to the plain meaning of the law, Human Rights Watch said. The law covers governmental armed forces or government-supported armed groups, including paramilitaries, militias, or civil defense forces, that recruit and use child soldiers.

The State Department typically publishes the list of countries subject to the Child Soldiers Prevention Act every June as part of its Trafficking in Persons report. The president has until the end of September to decide whether or not to waive any of the military sanctions imposed by the law in the interests of national security.

The Child Soldiers Prevention Act gives the president some discretion in applying sanctions against countries using child soldiers, but it doesnt give the State Department discretion to take off countries that belong on the list, Becker said. Tillerson should do what the law requires and return Burma and Iraq to the list.

Read more from the original source:
US: Return Burma, Iraq to Child Soldier List - Human Rights Watch (press release)

Bill Clinton ordered the attack on Friday, June 25. But the raid was delayed a day so it would not fall on the Muslim Sabbath. | AP Photo

On this day in 1993, President Bill Clinton ordered U.S. warships stationed in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea to launch Tomahawk cruise missiles against the headquarters of the Iraqi Intelligence Service in downtown Baghdad.

In all, 23 Tomahawk missiles were fired from the destroyer USS Peterson in the Red Sea and from the cruiser USS Chancellorsville in the Persian Gulf, destroying the building. Iraq claimed that nine civilians were killed in the attack and three civilian houses destroyed.

Story Continued Below

The early Sunday morning American missile attack was meant to retaliate for an Iraqi plot to assassinate George H.W. Bush during the former presidents visit to Kuwait, where he was to be honored for his role in leading the coalition that drove Iraqi invaders from that country during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Clinton administration officials told The Washington Post that Brent Scowcroft, Bush's former national security adviser, was kept apprised of the investigation into the assassination plot, and that Clinton called Bush minutes after the missile attack was launched to give him the news. Secretary of State Warren Christopher flew to Kennebunkport, Maine, to brief the former president.

(Bush, asked to comment after being reached at his summer home in Kennebunkport by The Associated Press, said: I'm not in the interview business, but thank you very much for calling.)

On April 13, the day before Bush was scheduled to arrive for a three-day visit, Kuwaiti authorities foiled a plan to assassinate him. They arrested 16 alleged perpetrators. The plots ringleaders, they said, were two Iraqi nationals. The next day, they found a car bomb hidden in a Toyota Land Cruiser that had been driven across the Iraqi border into Kuwait City on the night before.

In ordering the missile strike, Clinton cited compelling evidence of direct involvement by Iraqi intelligence operatives in the thwarted assassination attempt. Two days later, Madeleine Albright, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told the U.N. Security Council that the attack was designed to damage the terrorist infrastructure of the Iraqi regime, reduce its ability to promote terrorism, and deter further acts of aggression against the United States.

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Clinton ordered the attack on Friday, June 25. But the raid was delayed a day so it would not fall on the Muslim Sabbath, a White House aide said. About a dozen U.S. allies and friends in the region were told in advance that the attack was coming; the reaction, the aide said, was mostly favorable.

The missiles struck between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. Baghdad time because Clinton reportedly wished to minimize possible deaths of innocent civilians.

The regime, led by Saddam Hussein, organized a protest rally in Baghdad and vowed to retaliate against what it termed an unwarranted act of aggression one that it said dashed any hope of reconciliation with Washington.

SOURCE: THE SURVIVOR: BILL CLINTON IN THE WHITE HOUSE, BY JOHN F. HARRIS (2005)

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Clinton orders attack on Iraq, June 26, 1993 - Politico