Outsourcing the Zaytun Unit

The Chosun Ilbo has an article about the increasing amount of outsourcing for the Zaytun unit in Iraq.  I found this note about the unit quite interesting:

In October 2004, an advance team of the Zaytun Unit arrived in Irbil in northern Iraq, at the end of a 1,115 km trip under U.S. aerial protection. The location was a barren field, where soldiers faced huge difficulties. At one point, they had difficulty securing even tent cloth. They could not afford to roam about the downtown area to buy more: if any of them should be attacked by insurgents, public opinion back in the country would turn immediately against their presence in Iraq.

What is your army doing in Iraq when you are afraid to go to the local market to buy cloth?  Especially in the peaceful area of Kurdistan where they are stationed at.  US soldiers go to Kurdistan for R&R, while the ROK Army goes there to pretend they are at war.  The Korean government might as well as just outsource the entire Zaytun unit and bring them all home. 

Just for the record I have been against the Zaytun deployment since before the unit was ever deployed because I figured the unit would not be allowed to do much of anything meaningful which is evident by the fact they can’t go to the market to buy cloth.  Plus if there was a mass casualty attack or as we see with the Taliban, a pro-longed hostage crisis, the anti-US groups, politicians, and media would waste no time capitalizing on it.  Additionally, the Korean government would expect unrealistic political benefits from the dispatch. 

I’m not the only thinking this way either; Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki has already hinted that he would prefer 2,300 Korean businessmen instead of 2,300 Zaytun soldiers.  The Kurds are literally laughing at the Zaytun "occupation force".  Plus soldiers that have served in the Zaytun unit have voiced their frustrations with the deployment, which has been echoed by the Korean media as well. 

The Korean government should outsource the Zaytun mission to all the Korean Christian missionaries.  It would keep them out of Afghanistan, be a lot cheaper, and I bet they will be willing to go to the local marketplace to buy their own cloth.