November 22, 2009
Military
Resistance 7K16
[Thanks
to Mark Shapiro, Military Resistance, who sent this in.]
Regrets
Again:
For
the lateness of this Military Resistance. Computer problems are
now repaired, thanks to Jerry C, who does the brilliant technical
work for Military Resistance, and solved the most recent problem last
night.
T
Random
Thoughts
From:
Dennis Serdel
To:
Military Resistance
Sent:
November 16, 2009
Subject:
Random Thoughts
Written
by Dennis Serdel, Military Resistance 2009
Dennis
Serdel, Vietnam 1967-68 (one tour) Light Infantry, Americal Div. 11th
Brigade, purple heart, Veterans For Peace 50 Michigan, Vietnam
Veterans Against The War, United Auto Workers GM Retiree, in Perry,
Michigan
********************************************************
From:
Dennis Serdel
To:
Military Resistance
Sent:
November 16, 2009
Subject:
Random Thoughts by Dennis
Random
Thoughts
As
long as the training for War makes Orders
Uniforms
Lines Tests Fascism Clean Weapons
Numbers
buffed Buckles shiny Boots clean
Shaves
from randomness and chaos,
War
itself Battles Firefights IEDs will
reduce
order back to chaos and randomness
as
choppers load up and mechanically fly
the
wounded and dead back to Organization.
The
heart beats and don’t beats and lung inhale
chaos
exhale Orders Sameness Repeatedness
or
try to as War changes into complete
uncontrollable
madness making nonsense
exhales
randomness and chaos with every
beat
of the heart with every exhale and inhale
of
the lungs like Orders and Disorders Sanity
&
Insanity every Soldier will die some
every
Country will kill some.
For
Numbers like Millions Billions Trillions
Soldiers
heading into the night and day
when
nobody knows the difference then
the
Days are just Numbers like Months
like
Short Time like deadness before then
War
will reduce Order back to randomness
and
chaos.
Higher
Ups spin Keys Numbers on Hidden
Banks
to throw more money into their
Accounts
not thinking of the cost to the
Little
People or Non-People as they see it
just
another Day on Wall Street with No
God
but themselves and No God but to
make
Order for themselves from chaos
and
randomness as they play a Rich God
Bless
America Game and the money that they
make
by killing People Lower Beings
unlike
themselves as they randomly spend
their
money on themselves in a Military
manner
as they shout Orders just kill them
anyone
though they are Not the Enemy
just
do It Shut-up follow Orders, wear your
Uniforms,
throw your body into Firefights
drive
into IEDs.
Just
drive down the road and religiously
kill
them all randomly and chaotically
because
You are Gods too
if
you believe in Gods.
MORE:
MORE
OF DENNIS SERDEL’S WORK IN PEACE SPEAKS FROM THE MIRROR:
Get
Some While There Still Are Some To Get:
[You
know the power of the poems by Dennis Serdel from the front pages of
Military Resistance: now they’re in book form: Ordering
information below: T]
DENNIS
SERDEL:
Shipped
to Vietnam in November 1967.
Returned
home in October 1968 to Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Joined
Veterans For Peace in January 1990.
Joined
Vietnam Veterans Against the War when Iraq and Afghanistan War
started.
Books
are $15 Post Paid: Check or Money Order Payable to Dennis Serdel
Dennis
Serdel
339
Oakwood Lane
Perry,
Michigan 48872
Walt
Whitman
Carl
Sandburg
Allan
Ginsberg
Now:
Dennis Serdel
T
IRAQ
WAR REPORTS
ENOUGH
OF THIS STUPID SHIT;
ALL
HOME NOW
A
U.S. infantryman from digs at a suspected cache site as an Iraqi
soldier looks on during a sweep in northwestern
Baghdad November 1, 2009. REUTERS/U.S. Army/Sgt. Mark
Burrell/Handout
Resistance
Action
Nov.
15 (Xinhua) & Nov 18, 2009 Reuters & Nov 20 (Reuters)
Three
policemen were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their
patrol in the town of Jedidat al-Shatt, near the provincial capital
city of Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad, the source
added. The blast destroyed a police
vehicle and several nearby buildings and civilian cars, he said.
A
roadside bomb struck a police patrol, wounding two policemen, in
Garma, 30 km (20 miles) northwest of Baghdad, police said.
Guerrillas
stormed a house and killed a local Arab pro-government militia leader
and his cousin in a village near Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) northeast
of Baghdad, police said.
A
bomb planted on a bicycle wounded a policeman in Falluja, 50 km (32
miles) west of Baghdad, on Tuesday evening, police said.
A
roadside bomb struck a police patrol, wounding a policeman in western
Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
IF
YOU DON’T LIKE THE RESISTANCE
END
THE OCCUPATIONS
OCCUPATION
ISN’T LIBERATION
ALL
TROOPS HOME NOW!
AFGHANISTAN
WAR REPORTS
Soldier
Was 'Real G.I. Joe’
Oct
27, 2009 By R. STICKNEY and PAUL KRUEGER, NBC Universal, Inc.
Memories
and tears filled an Imperial Beach home Tuesday as family and friends
gathered to mourn a local soldier killed Monday in Afghanistan.
Fourteen
Americans, including three DEA agents, died in two separate
helicopter crashes on the same day in southern Afghanistan.
At
a home on Tremaine Way, Dolores Wallen was remembering the grandson
she had raised, U.S. Special Forces Sgt. David Metzger. Wallen
learned of Metzger’s death when she was visited by a
representative of the U.S. Army Monday night.
Metzger’s
childhood friend Rigo Rodriguez of Otay Mesa arrived to the Wallace
home after hearing the news.
When
he walked in, he immediately went to hug Dolores. The two of them
embraced for more than a few minutes and wept.
"Be
here for me," Wallen asked him.
Rodriguez
shook his head in disbelief. He had just talked with Metzger on the
phone Sunday. "He made me feel like everything was okay,"
he said. "That he was out of harm’s way."
For
the next several minutes, Wallen and Rodriguez reminisced about the
little boy who played rough but grew up to be one of the best of the
best – a member of the Green Berets.
Born
in San Diego on April 7, 1977, Metzger was raised in Imperial Beach
where he played Little League with Rodriguez. He attended Mar
Vista High school where he met his future wife.
After
high school, Metzger decided to join the military to help support his
new wife and their baby. Wallen remembers that she didn’t
want him to go but he told her he needed to support his family.
Metzger
was recruited in Chula Vista and eventually trained to be a member of
Green Berets in North Carolina.
He
served in Afghanistan, returning four times according to Wallen.
"He
was just a driven character. He always over achieved,"
said his friend Rodriguez. "Everything he did, he did to the
top of his capabilities."
"He
had a lot of bars on the side of his arm and he was very proud of
that," according to Rodriguez who then quietly added, "He’s
my real G.I. Joe."
Metzger’s
wife will be returning to California to help with burial
arrangements.
"In
anything he did, he wanted to achieve and be top at it. He was a
champion," Rodriguez said repeating the word again for Wallen,
holding his hand and sitting next to him on the couch. "A
champion," he whispered again.
What
You’re Dying For:
Afghanistan
And Iraq Near The Top Of The List Of The Most Corrupt Nations On
Earth
Nov
17 By KIRSTEN GRIESHABER, Associated Press Writer [Excerpts]
Afghanistan
has slipped three places to become the world’s second
most-corrupt country despite billions in aid meant to bolster the
government against a rising insurgency, according to an annual survey
of perceived levels of corruption.
Only
lawless Somalia, whose weak U.N.-backed government controls just a
few blocks of the capital, was perceived as more corrupt than
Afghanistan in Transparency International’s Corruption
Perceptions Index.
Iraq
saw some improvement, rising to 176 of 180 countries, up two places
up from last year.
In
Iraq, corruption has become widespread since the U.S.-led invasion
that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003 with scarcity of serious
government measures against corrupted officials.
That
has undermined the largest nation-building efforts with siphoning
billions of dollars away from the country’s struggling economy,
increasing frustrations among Iraqis mainly over corruption,
lingering violence and poor public services.
"The
single largest failure of the anti-war movement at this point is the
lack of outreach to the troops." Tim Goodrich, Iraq
Veterans Against The War
Welcome
To Obama’s Sewer:
"The
Police Are Corrupt. The Prosecutors Are Corrupt. The
Judges Are Corrupt"
"Afghans
Have A Name For The Huge, Gaudy Mansions That Have Sprung Up In
Kabul’s Wealthy Sherpur Neighborhood"
They
Call Them "Poppy Palaces"
An
chewing gum vendor waits for customers in front of the new houses at
Sherpur, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Kabul. (Rodrigo Abd /
Associated Press)
November
18, 2009 By Alexandra Zavis, The Los Angeles Times [Excerpts]
Reporting
from Kabul, Afghanistan –
Afghans
have a name for the huge, gaudy mansions that have sprung up in
Kabul’s wealthy Sherpur neighborhood since 2001.
They
call them "poppy palaces."
The
cost of building one of these homes, which are adorned with sweeping
terraces and ornate columns, can run into the hundreds of thousands
of dollars.
Many
are owned by government officials whose formal salaries are a few
hundred dollars a month.
To
the capital’s jaded residents, there are few more potent
symbols of the corruption that permeates every level of Afghan
society, from the traffic policemen who shake down motorists to top
government officials and their relatives who are implicated in the
opium trade.
On
Monday, the interior minister, national security director, attorney
general and chief justice of the Supreme Court joined forces to
announce a new crime-fighting unit to take on the problem.
But
in the streets, bazaars and government offices, where almost every
brush with authority is said to result in a bribe, few take the
promises to tamp down corruption seriously.
"It’s
like a sickness," merchant Hakimullah Zada said. "Everyone
is doing it."
In
these tough economic times, Zada said, there’s one person he
can count on to visit his tannery: a city inspector.
The
lanky municipal agent frowns disapprovingly when he finds Zada and
five other leather workers soaking and pounding hides in the grimy
Kabul River and demands his cut -- the equivalent of about $40.
"He
says we are polluting the river," Zada says. "So we have
to pay every day. Otherwise, he will report us to the municipality,
and they will close down our shops."
A
2008 survey by Integrity Watch Afghanistan found that a typical
household pays about $100 a year in bribes in a country where more
than half the population survives on less than $1 a day.
Government
salaries start at less than $100 a month, and almost everything has
its price: a business permit, police protection, even release from
prison. When Zada was afraid of failing his high school exams,
he handed his teacher an envelope stuffed with more than 1,500
Afghanis -- about $30. He passed with flying colors.
Abdul
Jabar Sabit, a former attorney general who between 2006 and 2008
declared a jihad, or holy war, against corruption, said he quickly
learned that a class of high-ranking officials is above the law. They
include members of parliament, provincial governors and Cabinet
ministers.
Sabit
estimates that he filed corruption charges against more than 300
provincial officials before he was dismissed in 2008. Few were
convicted, and "none of them are in jail now," he said.
An
investigation by the High Office of Oversight and Anti-Corruption,
set up more than a year ago to oversee the government’s efforts
to fight graft, found that on average it took 51 signatures to
register a vehicle.
Each
signature had its price, for a total cost of about $400.
"It
is hardly surprising if Afghans prefer to bribe policemen on a daily
basis to turn a blind eye to their unregistered vehicles," said
Ershad Ahmadi, the bureau’s British-educated deputy director.
"The
police are corrupt. The prosecutors are corrupt. The
judges are corrupt," Ahmadi said.
U.S.
Government Paying Insurgents Killing U.S. Troops:
"It
Is An Accepted Fact Of The Military Logistics Operation In
Afghanistan That The US Government Funds The Very Forces American
Troops Are Fighting"
"US
Military Officials In Kabul Estimate That A Minimum Of 10% Of The
Pentagon’s Logistics Contracts--Hundreds Of Millions Of
Dollars--Consists Of Payments To Insurgents"
"Now
The Government Is So Weak," He Added, "Everyone Is Paying
The Taliban"
[Thanks
to Mark Shapiro, Military Resistance, and Phil G, who sent this in.]
The
real secret to trucking in Afghanistan is ensuring security on the
perilous roads, controlled by warlords, tribal militias, insurgents
and Taliban commanders.
The
American executive I talked to was fairly specific about it: "The
Army is basically paying the Taliban not to shoot at them. It is
Department of Defense money." That is something everyone seems
to agree on.
November
11, 2009 By Aram Roston, The Nation
On
October 29, 2001, while the Taliban’s rule over Afghanistan was
under assault, the regime’s ambassador in Islamabad gave a
chaotic press conference in front of several dozen reporters sitting
on the grass. On the Taliban diplomat’s right sat his
interpreter, Ahmad Rateb Popal, a man with an imposing presence.
Like
the ambassador, Popal wore a black turban, and he had a huge bushy
beard. He had a black patch over his right eye socket, a prosthetic
left arm and a deformed right hand, the result of injuries from an
explosives mishap during an old operation against the Soviets in
Kabul.
But
Popal was more than just a former mujahedeen. In 1988, a year before
the Soviets fled Afghanistan, Popal had been charged in the United
States with conspiring to import more than a kilo of heroin.
Court
records show he was released from prison in 1997.
Flash
forward to 2009, and Afghanistan is ruled by Popal’s cousin
President Hamid Karzai.
Popal
has cut his huge beard down to a neatly trimmed one and has become an
immensely wealthy businessman, along with his brother Rashid Popal,
who in a separate case pleaded guilty to a heroin charge in 1996 in
Brooklyn.
The
Popal brothers control the huge Watan Group in Afghanistan, a
consortium engaged in telecommunications, logistics and, most
important, security.
Watan
Risk Management, the Popals’ private military arm, is one of
the few dozen private security companies in Afghanistan.
One
of Watan’s enterprises, key to the war effort, is protecting
convoys of Afghan trucks heading from Kabul to Kandahar, carrying
American supplies.
**************************************
Welcome
to the wartime contracting bazaar in Afghanistan.
It
is a virtual carnival of improbable characters and shady connections,
with former CIA officials and ex-military officers joining hands with
former Taliban and mujahedeen to collect US government funds in the
name of the war effort.
In
this grotesque carnival, the US military’s contractors are
forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes.
It
is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in
Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American
troops are fighting.
And
it is a deadly irony, because these funds add up to a huge amount of
money for the Taliban.
"It’s
a big part of their income," one of the top Afghan government
security officials told The Nation in an interview.
In
fact, US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10
percent of the Pentagon’s logistics contracts--hundreds of
millions of dollars--consists of payments to insurgents.
********************************************
Understanding
how this situation came to pass requires untangling two threads.
The
first is the insider dealing that determines who wins and who loses
in Afghan business, and the second is the troubling mechanism by
which "private security" ensures that the US supply
convoys traveling these ancient trade routes aren’t ambushed by
insurgents.
A
good place to pick up the first thread is with a small firm awarded a
US military logistics contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars:
NCL Holdings.
Like
the Popals’ Watan Risk, NCL is a licensed security company in
Afghanistan.
What
NCL Holdings is most notorious for in Kabul contracting circles,
though, is the identity of its chief principal, Hamed Wardak.
He
is the young American son of Afghanistan’s current defense
minister, Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak, who was a leader of the mujahedeen
against the Soviets.
Hamed
Wardak has plunged into business as well as policy.
He
was raised and schooled in the United States, graduating as
valedictorian from Georgetown University in 1997.
He
earned a Rhodes scholarship and interned at the neoconservative think
tank the American Enterprise Institute. That internship was to play
an important role in his life, for it was at AEI that he forged
alliances with some of the premier figures in American conservative
foreign policy circles, such as the late Ambassador Jeane
Kirkpatrick.
Wardak
incorporated NCL in the United States early in 2007, although the
firm may have operated in Afghanistan before then.
It
made sense to set up shop in Washington, because of Wardak’s
connections there. On NCL’s advisory board, for example, is
Milton Bearden, a well-known former CIA officer.
Bearden
is an important voice on Afghanistan issues; in October he was a
witness before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where Senator
John Kerry, the chair, introduced him as "a legendary former
CIA case officer and a clearheaded thinker and writer."
It
is not every defense contracting company that has such an influential
adviser.
But
the biggest deal that NCL got--the contract that brought it into
Afghanistan’s major leagues--was Host Nation Trucking.
Earlier
this year the firm, with no apparent trucking experience, was named
one of the six companies that would handle the bulk of US trucking in
Afghanistan, bringing supplies to the web of bases and remote
outposts scattered across the country.
At
first the contract was large but not gargantuan.
And
then that suddenly changed, like an immense garden coming into bloom.
Over
the summer, citing the coming "surge" and a new doctrine,
"Money as a Weapons System," the US military expanded the
contract 600 percent for NCL and the five other companies.
The
contract documentation warns of dire consequences if more is not
spent: "service members will not get food, water, equipment,
and ammunition they require."
Each
of the military’s six trucking contracts was bumped up to $360
million, or a total of nearly $2.2 billion. Put it in this
perspective: this single two-year effort to hire Afghan trucks and
truckers was worth 10 percent of the annual Afghan gross domestic
product.
NCL,
the firm run by the defense minister’s well-connected son, had
struck pure contracting gold.
Host
Nation Trucking does indeed keep the US military efforts alive in
Afghanistan.
"We
supply everything the army needs to survive here," one American
trucking executive told me. "We bring them their toilet
paper, their water, their fuel, their guns, their vehicles."
The
epicenter is Bagram Air Base, just an hour north of Kabul, from which
virtually everything in Afghanistan is trucked to the outer reaches
of what the Army calls "the Battlespace"--that is, the
entire country.
Parked
near Entry Control Point 3, the trucks line up, shifting gears and
sending up clouds of dust as they prepare for their various missions
across the country.
The
real secret to trucking in Afghanistan is ensuring security on the
perilous roads, controlled by warlords, tribal militias, insurgents
and Taliban commanders.
The
American executive I talked to was fairly specific about it: "The
Army is basically paying the Taliban not to shoot at them. It
is Department of Defense money." That is something everyone
seems to agree on.
Mike
Hanna is the project manager for a trucking company called Afghan
American Army Services. The company, which still operates in
Afghanistan, had been trucking for the United States for years but
lost out in the Host Nation Trucking contract that NCL won.
Hanna
explained the security realities quite simply: "You are paying
the people in the local areas--some are warlords, some are
politicians in the police force--to move your trucks through."
Hanna
explained that the prices charged are different, depending on the
route: "We’re basically being extorted. Where you
don’t pay, you’re going to get attacked. We just have our
field guys go down there, and they pay off who they need to."
Sometimes,
he says, the extortion fee is high, and sometimes it is low. "Moving
ten trucks, it is probably $800 per truck to move through an area.
It’s based on the number of trucks and what you’re
carrying. If you have fuel trucks, they are going to charge you
more. If you have dry trucks, they’re not going to charge
you as much. If you are carrying MRAPs or Humvees, they are going to
charge you more."
Hanna
says it is just a necessary evil. "If you tell me not to pay
these insurgents in this area, the chances of my trucks getting
attacked increase exponentially."
Whereas
in Iraq the private security industry has been dominated by US and
global firms like Blackwater, operating as de facto arms of the US
government, in Afghanistan there are lots of local players as well.
As a result, the industry in Kabul is far more dog-eat-dog.
"Every
warlord has his security company," is the way one executive
explained it to me.
In
theory, private security companies in Kabul are heavily regulated,
although the reality is different. Thirty-nine companies had licenses
until September, when another dozen were granted licenses. Many
licensed companies are politically connected: just as NCL is owned by
the son of the defense minister and Watan Risk Management is run by
President Karzai’s cousins, the Asia Security Group is
controlled by Hashmat Karzai, another relative of the president.
The
company has blocked off an entire street in the expensive Sherpur
District. Another security firm is controlled by the
parliamentary speaker’s son, sources say. And so on.
But
the heart of the matter is that insurgents are getting paid for safe
passage because there are few other ways to bring goods to the combat
outposts and forward operating bases where soldiers need them.
By
definition, many outposts are situated in hostile terrain, in the
southern parts of Afghanistan.
The
security firms don’t really protect convoys of American
military goods here, because they simply can’t; they need the
Taliban’s cooperation.
One
of the big problems for the companies that ship American military
supplies across the country is that they are banned from arming
themselves with any weapon heavier than a rifle. That makes
them ineffective for battling Taliban attacks on a convoy.
"They
are shooting the drivers from 3,000 feet away with PKMs," a
trucking company executive in Kabul told me. "They are using
RPGs] that will blow up an up-armed vehicle. So the security
companies are tied up. Because of the rules, security companies can
only carry AK-47s, and that’s just a joke. I carry an
AK--and that’s just to shoot myself if I have to!"
The
rules are there for a good reason: to guard against devastating
collateral damage by private security forces.
Still,
as Hanna of Afghan American Army Services points out, "An AK-47
versus a rocket-propelled grenade--you are going to lose!"
That
said, at least one of the Host Nation Trucking companies has tried to
do battle instead of paying off insurgents and warlords. It is a
US-owned firm called Four Horsemen International. Instead of
providing payments, it has tried to fight off attackers. And it has
paid the price in lives, with horrendous casualties.
FHI,
like many other firms, refused to talk publicly; but I’ve been
told by insiders in the security industry that FHI’s convoys
are attacked on virtually every mission.
For
the most part, the security firms do as they must to survive.
A
veteran American manager in Afghanistan who has worked there as both
a soldier and a private security contractor in the field told me,
"What we are doing is paying warlords associated with the
Taliban, because none of our security elements is able to deal with
the threat."
He’s
an Army veteran with years of Special Forces experience, and he’s
not happy about what’s being done. He says that at a
minimum American military forces should try to learn more about who
is getting paid off.
"Most
escorting is done by the Taliban," an Afghan private security
official told me.
He’s
a Pashto and former mujahedeen commander who has his finger on the
pulse of the military situation and the security industry. And he
works with one of the trucking companies carrying US supplies.
"Now
the government is so weak," he added, "everyone is paying
the Taliban."
To
Afghan trucking officials, this is barely even something to worry
about.
One
woman I met was an extraordinary entrepreneur who had built up a
trucking business in this male-dominated field.
She
told me the security company she had hired dealt directly with
Taliban leaders in the south.
Paying
the Taliban leaders meant they would send along an escort to ensure
that no other insurgents would attack. In fact, she said, they
just needed two armed Taliban vehicles.
"Two
Taliban is enough," she told me. "One in the front and
one in the back." She shrugged. "You cannot work
otherwise. Otherwise it is not possible."
Which
leads us back to the case of Watan Risk, the firm run by Ahmad Rateb
Popal and Rashid Popal, the Karzai family relatives and former drug
dealers.
Watan
is known to control one key stretch of road that all the truckers
use: the strategic route to Kandahar called Highway 1.
Think
of it as the road to the war--to the south and to the west. If the
Army wants to get supplies down to Helmand, for example, the trucks
must make their way through Kandahar.
Watan
Risk, according to seven different security and trucking company
officials, is the sole provider of security along this route. The
reason is simple: Watan is allied with the local warlord who controls
the road.
Watan’s
company website is quite impressive, and claims its personnel "are
diligently screened to weed out all ex-militia members, supporters of
the Taliban, or individuals with loyalty to warlords, drug barons, or
any other group opposed to international support of the democratic
process."
Whatever
screening methods it uses, Watan’s secret weapon to protect
American supplies heading through Kandahar is a man named Commander
Ruhullah. Said to be a handsome man in his 40s, Ruhullah has an oddly
high-pitched voice. He wears traditional salwar kameez and a Rolex
watch. He rarely, if ever, associates with Westerners. He commands a
large group of irregular fighters with no known government
affiliation, and his name, security officials tell me, inspires
obedience or fear in villages along the road.
It
is a dangerous business, of course: until last spring Ruhullah had
competition--a one-legged warlord named Commander Abdul Khaliq.
He was killed in an ambush.
So
Ruhullah is the surviving road warrior for that stretch of highway.
According
to witnesses, he works like this: he waits until there are hundreds
of trucks ready to convoy south down the highway. Then he gets
his men together, setting them up in 4x4s and pickups.
Witnesses say he does not limit his arsenal to AK-47s but uses any
weapons he can get.
His
chief weapon is his reputation. And for that, Watan is paid
royally, collecting a fee for each truck that passes through his
corridor. The American trucking official told me that Ruhullah
"charges $1,500 per truck to go to Kandahar. Just 300
kilometers."
It’s
hard to pinpoint what this is, exactly--security, extortion or a form
of "insurance."
Then
there is the question, Does Ruhullah have ties to the Taliban?
That’s
impossible to know. As an American private security veteran familiar
with the route said, "He works both sides... whatever is most
profitable. He’s the main commander. He’s got to be
involved with the Taliban. How much, no one knows."
Even
NCL, the company owned by Hamed Wardak, pays. Two sources with direct
knowledge tell me that NCL sends its portion of US logistics goods in
Watan’s and Ruhullah’s convoys.
Sources
say NCL is billed $500,000 per month for Watan’s services. To
underline the point: NCL, operating on a $360 million contract from
the US military, and owned by the Afghan defense minister’s
son, is paying millions per year from those funds to a company owned
by President Karzai’s cousins, for protection.
Hamed
Wardak wouldn’t return my phone calls. Milt Bearden, the former
CIA officer affiliated with the company, wouldn’t speak with me
either.
There’s
nothing wrong with Bearden engaging in business in Afghanistan, but
disclosure of his business interests might have been expected when
testifying on US policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. After all, NCL
stands to make or lose hundreds of millions based on the whims of US
policy-makers.
It
is certainly worth asking why NCL, a company with no known trucking
experience, and little security experience to speak of, would win a
contract worth $360 million.
Plenty
of Afghan insiders are asking questions. "Why would the US
government give him a contract if he is the son of the minister of
defense?"
That’s
what Mahmoud Karzai asked me.
He
is the brother of President Karzai, and he himself has been treated
in the press as a poster boy for access to government officials. The
New York Times even profiled him in a highly critical piece.
In
his defense, Karzai emphasized that he, at least, has refrained from
US government or Afghan government contracting. He pointed out, as
others have, that Hamed Wardak had little security or trucking
background before his company received security and trucking
contracts from the Defense Department.
"That’s
a questionable business practice," he said. "They
shouldn’t give it to him. How come that’s not
questioned?"
But
cleaning up what look like insider deals may be easier than the next
step: shutting down the money pipeline going from DoD contracts to
potential insurgents.
Two
years ago, a top Afghan security official told me, Afghanistan’s
intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security, had
alerted the American military to the problem. The NDS delivered what
I’m told are "very detailed" reports to the
Americans explaining how the Taliban are profiting from protecting
convoys of US supplies.
The
Afghan intelligence service even offered a solution: what if the
United States were to take the tens of millions paid to security
contractors and instead set up a dedicated and professional convoy
support unit to guard its logistics lines?
The
suggestion went nowhere.
The
bizarre fact is that the practice of buying the Taliban’s
protection is not a secret.
I
asked Col. David Haight, who commands the Third Brigade of the Tenth
Mountain Division, about it. After all, part of Highway 1 runs
through his area of operations.
What
did he think about security companies paying off insurgents?
"The
American soldier in me is repulsed by it," he said in an
interview in his office at FOB Shank in Logar Province.
"But
I know that it is what it is: essentially paying the enemy, saying,
'Hey, don’t hassle me.’ I don’t like it, but
it is what it is."
As
a military official in Kabul explained contracting in Afghanistan
overall, "We understand that across the board 10 percent to 20
percent goes to the insurgents. My intel guy would say it is closer
to 10 percent. Generally it is happening in logistics."
In
a statement to The Nation about Host Nation Trucking, Col. Wayne
Shanks, the chief public affairs officer for the international forces
in Afghanistan, said that military officials are "aware of
allegations that procurement funds may find their way into the hands
of insurgent groups, but we do not directly support or condone this
activity, if it is occurring." He added that, despite
oversight, "the relationships between contractors and their
subcontractors, as well as between subcontractors and others in their
operational communities, are not entirely transparent."
In
any case, the main issue is not that the US military is turning a
blind eye to the problem.
Many
officials acknowledge what is going on while also expressing a deep
disquiet about the situation.
|