U.S. Contractors In Afghanistan Face Allegations Of Paying Off The Taliban

[tekisui]

Source: Huffington Post

House committee investigates allegations that U.S. contractors are paying off the Taliban. The Washington Post reports that U.S. government money may be ending up in the hands of the Taliban.

Congress is looking to the Defense Department's $2.16 billion contract with Host Nation Trucking (HNT), and is investigating "serious allegations . . . that private security providers for U.S. transportation contractors in Afghanistan are regularly paying local warlords and the Taliban for security."

The national security subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform found that HNT and its subcontractors were paying protection payments. It plans to release a report and to hold hearings on the matter.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/29/at-war-us-contractors-in_n_517008.html

From Washington Post:

Wardak sits atop a murky pyramid of Afghan subcontractors who provide the vehicles and safeguard their passage. U.S. military officials say they are satisfied with the results, but they concede that they have little knowledge or control over where the money ends up.

According to senior Obama administration officials, some of it may be going to the Taliban, as part of a protection racket in which insurgents and local warlords are paid to allow the trucks unimpeded passage, often sending their own vehicles to accompany the convoys through their areas of control.

The essential question, said an American executive whose company does significant work in Afghanistan, is "whether you'd rather pay $1,000" for Afghans to safely deliver a truck, even if part of the money goes to the insurgents, or pay 10 times that much for security provided by the U.S. military or contractors.

(snip)

The problem extends beyond military supply transport to Afghan-provided security for reconstruction and other U.S.-funded projects, according to John Brummet, audit chief for the congressionally mandated special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, known as SIGAR.

"If you go to the U.S. Embassy, to USAID, to the Army Corps and ask if they can assure that their money is not going to the Taliban, they'd be hard-pressed to say," he said.

(snip)

The subcommittee plans a publicly released report and possibly hearings. Its tentative conclusions, the investigator said, do not definitively point to the Defense Department and HNT prime contractors as direct participants in the scheme. But whistleblowers who have met with investigators, he said, spoke up only after failing to get the attention of both.

more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/28/AR2010032802971.html

[Webster Green]

1. Hey, it worked in Iraq.

Just pay the insurgents to chill, provide health care & welfare payments for the entire population.

Problem solved. :shrug:

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

A different kind of mandate.

:think:

[tekisui]

2. Aren't we, in essence, paying for the IEDs that blow up

our soldiers? In Iraq, we at least withdrew from the cities. We are charging into Kandahar in June.

[Echo In Light]

3. .

[tekisui]

4. kick

[Canuckistanian]

5. That's it. Get them out of there.

Contractors have NO BUSINESS dealing with the enemy in ANY capacity.

[bigtree]

8. only NATO forces can do that?

[bigtree]

6. so they act surprised?

. . . this has been widely reported most of the past year; most of the bribe money coming from the military's slush fund. I'll be impressed when they start questioning them. I wonder how they expect for these contractors to operate there. Afghans, themselves are subject to the same network of bribery and corruption. Now it's supposed to be some evil spawned by contractors? I say it goes with the landscape.

I saw several statements from our government and military which asserted that over 80% of the Taliban in Afghanistan isn't 'insurgent' or a threat. Recently, though, they've started conflating all Taliban with whatever resistant violence occurs or whoever NATO forces target and kill and maim.

[tekisui]

7. Your last sentence tells a lot.

They are never consistent on who they consider the Taliban. Some times it is broad, others very narrow. It shifts depending on what frame they need to use.