madjack
02-09-2010, 11:51 PM
Yet another article by a reporter who needs to get out of the hotel more often.
This is an excerpt. Link is below.
Afghanistan’s outsourced war
Le Monde Diplomatique
02/09/2010
By Marie-Dominique Charlier
A worrying two-thirds of the Pentagon’s personnel in Afghanistan are private military contractors, unaccountable to military law or ethics, swaggeringly overbearing, and not in any hurry to help improve the poor security situation that assures their firms’ current and future profits
The Central Intelligence Agency hired staff from a private military company called Blackwater in 2004 as part of a secret programme to track down and assassinate al-Qaida leaders, according to the New York Times of 19 August 2009. The paper’s sources among current and former US government officials said that Blackwater had helped the CIA with planning, training and surveillance, for which it had charged several million dollars, but the programme had failed to capture or assassinate a single al-Qaida figure.
Blackwater changed its name to Xe Services following the controversy over its role in Iraq. Five of its guards escorting a US State Department convoy through Baghdad on 16 September 2007 were accused of shooting civilians in al-Nousour Square, killing 14 (the US count) or 17 (the Iraqi count). In spite of this blunder, and many others, the contractors headed for Afghanistan, where they have continued in the same manner. (The case against them was dismissed on 31 December 2009 owing to procedural errors; the US Department of Justice has decided to appeal against the decision.) On 5 May 2009 four employees of Blackwater/Xe (operating under the name Paravant) reportedly shot at a car in Kabul, killing at least one person and wounding four. On 7 January federal prosecutors in the US announced that two of the Xe employees had been charged with killing two Afghan men and wounding another. The opacity of their employment contracts has not allowed them to escape prosecution.
Private military companies (PMCs) (1) have evolved rapidly since they first appeared in the 1990s and now play a key military and economic role in armed conflicts. The global market for private military services is worth more than $100bn a year. This growth has been encouraged by drastic cuts in US army manpower at the end of the cold war and the decision under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (2001-06) to “rationalise” defence spending by outsourcing many of the not specifically military functions to the private sector. The aim was to circumvent Congress control and US public opinion, and also to allow greater flexibility in hiring contractors for clandestine operations.
High numbers
Estimates of the numbers of PMC personnel in Afghanistan vary from 130,000 to 160,000 (2), the second-largest deployment after Iraq (3), which it is set to overtake in the near future. The 30,000 extra US troops bound for Afghanistan could be accompanied by up to 56,000 additional contractor personnel. PMC contractors will then account for nearly two-thirds of all the Pentagon’s personnel in Afghanistan, the highest ratio in any conflict in the history of the US.
The best known PMCs, Xe (Blackwater), DynCorp, MPRI (Military Professional Resources Inc) and Kellog Brown and Root (4), are all part of a grouping known as Private Security Companies of Afghanistan. Their involvement takes a big bite out of the funds intended for the reconstruction of the Afghan National Army (ANA).
http://www.e-ariana.com/ariana/eariana.nsf/allDocs/22DDA29D4BA662F7872576C5006FA59A?OpenDocument
KBR employees as mercenaries? With their 5 foot long t-shirts, gold chains, capped teeth, and size 53 waists? Some of those folks do well to walk.
PMCs will have a sizeable piece of the action as long as many of the countries who are so concerned about the war are content to limit their involvement to an occasional lamentation in parliament and a handful of troopers.
This is an excerpt. Link is below.
Afghanistan’s outsourced war
Le Monde Diplomatique
02/09/2010
By Marie-Dominique Charlier
A worrying two-thirds of the Pentagon’s personnel in Afghanistan are private military contractors, unaccountable to military law or ethics, swaggeringly overbearing, and not in any hurry to help improve the poor security situation that assures their firms’ current and future profits
The Central Intelligence Agency hired staff from a private military company called Blackwater in 2004 as part of a secret programme to track down and assassinate al-Qaida leaders, according to the New York Times of 19 August 2009. The paper’s sources among current and former US government officials said that Blackwater had helped the CIA with planning, training and surveillance, for which it had charged several million dollars, but the programme had failed to capture or assassinate a single al-Qaida figure.
Blackwater changed its name to Xe Services following the controversy over its role in Iraq. Five of its guards escorting a US State Department convoy through Baghdad on 16 September 2007 were accused of shooting civilians in al-Nousour Square, killing 14 (the US count) or 17 (the Iraqi count). In spite of this blunder, and many others, the contractors headed for Afghanistan, where they have continued in the same manner. (The case against them was dismissed on 31 December 2009 owing to procedural errors; the US Department of Justice has decided to appeal against the decision.) On 5 May 2009 four employees of Blackwater/Xe (operating under the name Paravant) reportedly shot at a car in Kabul, killing at least one person and wounding four. On 7 January federal prosecutors in the US announced that two of the Xe employees had been charged with killing two Afghan men and wounding another. The opacity of their employment contracts has not allowed them to escape prosecution.
Private military companies (PMCs) (1) have evolved rapidly since they first appeared in the 1990s and now play a key military and economic role in armed conflicts. The global market for private military services is worth more than $100bn a year. This growth has been encouraged by drastic cuts in US army manpower at the end of the cold war and the decision under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (2001-06) to “rationalise” defence spending by outsourcing many of the not specifically military functions to the private sector. The aim was to circumvent Congress control and US public opinion, and also to allow greater flexibility in hiring contractors for clandestine operations.
High numbers
Estimates of the numbers of PMC personnel in Afghanistan vary from 130,000 to 160,000 (2), the second-largest deployment after Iraq (3), which it is set to overtake in the near future. The 30,000 extra US troops bound for Afghanistan could be accompanied by up to 56,000 additional contractor personnel. PMC contractors will then account for nearly two-thirds of all the Pentagon’s personnel in Afghanistan, the highest ratio in any conflict in the history of the US.
The best known PMCs, Xe (Blackwater), DynCorp, MPRI (Military Professional Resources Inc) and Kellog Brown and Root (4), are all part of a grouping known as Private Security Companies of Afghanistan. Their involvement takes a big bite out of the funds intended for the reconstruction of the Afghan National Army (ANA).
http://www.e-ariana.com/ariana/eariana.nsf/allDocs/22DDA29D4BA662F7872576C5006FA59A?OpenDocument
KBR employees as mercenaries? With their 5 foot long t-shirts, gold chains, capped teeth, and size 53 waists? Some of those folks do well to walk.
PMCs will have a sizeable piece of the action as long as many of the countries who are so concerned about the war are content to limit their involvement to an occasional lamentation in parliament and a handful of troopers.