Senate Report: Mismanaged US Contractor Money Aids Enemy in Afghanistanby Karen DeYoung
Published on Friday, October 8, 2010 by the Washington Post
The U.S. military has only minimal knowledge of - and exercises virtually no control over - the thousands of Afghans it indirectly pays to guard its installations, including "warlords and strongmen linked to murder, kidnapping, bribery" and to the Taliban, Senate investigators said in a blistering report released Thursday.
The bipartisan report, compiled after a year-long investigation, notes that the military has recently launched its own investigations of the situation and has taken some steps to address it. In one of the most significant steps, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has issued new contractor guidelines.
Still, the Senate investigation documents a failure to properly vet, train and supervise Afghan security subcontractors, hired by U.S. and other international firms under multimillion-dollar military contracts.
That failure has cost American lives, undermined the U.S. mission and the Afghan government, and "helped play into the hands of the enemy," said Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Some of the Afghan security subcontractors, Levin told reporters Thursday, are "creating the very threat they are hired to combat."
unhappycamper comment: Oooooh, new contractor guidelines. Does this mean it will be expressly verboten to hire Taliban to guard US bases? Or that the United States (gasp) must actually vet Afghan security subcontractors before training and paying them?
In case you haven't figured it out yet, Afghanistan is a clusterfuck of stellar proportions.