Taliban Say They Killed 4 Afghan Interpreters
The spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, reached by cellphone, confirmed accounts by villagers in Khost Province that the Taliban had kidnapped six members of a wedding party when they went to the Afghan-Pakistani border to escort the bride to the ceremony; she had been living in Pakistan. Mr. Mujahid said the Taliban found the four interpreters guilty of working as informers for “foreign forces” and executed them on Friday; the Taliban released the other two, he said.
General Nawab, an Afghan Army commander and the director of the Joint Coordination Center in Khost and who like many Afghan uses only one name, said the Taliban had killed the four men after abducting them from the wedding procession on Thursday night and taking them to Pakistan. Their bodies were found the next morning in the Spina Palla region, back on the Afghan side of the border.
Local villagers in the Alisher District of Khost Province identified the bodies and said that one of the dead, Lal Badshah, who worked as an interpreter at the coalition’s Forward Operating Base Salerno, was the groom. Two others, including Mr. Badshah’s brother, Yaqoot Shah, worked for the United States military, while the fourth victim worked for a construction company in Kabul.
Elsewhere in Afghanistan, five Afghan security guards escorting a fuel truck convoy on the main highway in eastern Ghazni Province were killed on Friday in an ambush by insurgents, according to a statement from the Interior Ministry.
In southern Afghanistan, two coalition helicopters that had been disabled were recovered Friday. One had a hard landing in Kandahar Province on Friday, causing injuries to several coalition and Afghan military personnel, according to a statement from NATO’s International Security Assistance Force. It was destroyed on the site by ISAF members, the military said, apparently to prevent it from falling into insurgents’ hands. The second helicopter was damaged on landing but no one was injured; members of ISAF tried to repair it despite harassing gunfire from insurgents but were unable to do so, the military said. Instead, it was lashed to the underside of another helicopter and lifted out of the area, ISAF said.
The military said both helicopters were damaged accidentally and not from enemy fire, disputing Taliban claims that they shot down helicopters in the area.
The Defense Department announced Saturday that an American soldier — Specialist Denis D. Kisseloff, 45, of St. Charles, Mo. — died at a coalition military base, Forward Operating Base Shank, in Logar Province just south of Kabul. He had been wounded when insurgents attacked his unit the day before using rocket-propelled grenades and small-caliber weapons.
On Friday, two ISAF soldiers were killed, one by a bomb in southern Afghanistan, and the other as the result of an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan, the military said. It did not release the nationalities of the victims except to indicate that they were not Americans.
An Afghan employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Khost Province.
6 Jaffna Halo Trust deminers injured in accident
[TamilNet, Friday, 14 May 2010, 16:25 GMT]
A vehicle transporting deminers of Halo Trust, a humanitarian organization, on its way to Halo Trust office in Jaffna from Ki’linochchi met with an accident Friday injuring six women deminers, sources in Jaffna said. Meanwhile, a male deminer engaged in demining in Mirusuvil in Thenmaraadchchi was seriously injured when a landmine went off unexpectedly, the sources added.
The six injured women, ranging between 18 to 30 years of age, were returning to Jaffna after completing an assignment at Skanthapuram in Ki’linochchi.
They were first admitted to Ki’linochchi government hospital and later transferred to Jaffna Teaching Hospital for further treatment.
The seriously injured deminer is T. Aingaran, 20, a resident of Thirunelveali in Jaffna. He too is admitted in Jaffna Teaching Hospital.
At the Department of Labor, Solis has Gone Wild
Solis Hill Staffers Strike It Rich At DOL
Research from Americans for Limited Government has uncovered that Capitol Hill staffers that transitioned to the Department of Labor with Hilda Solis have struck it rich.
Salary bumps for the individuals that moved from the Hill to Labor increased anywhere from 15% to 96%! In the middle of a recession, has your salary increased that much?
We know she does not give a damn about Contractor Casualties, but had no idea she was this obscene.
Check out this data provided by DOL via an ALG FOIA request
See chart here
Inside the No Bid Deal for Iraqi Interpreters
MEP says they are working with their insurance company to make sure all wounded employees are treated quickly, and properly
This we’d like to hear more about…………
Unlimited Talk, Only $679 Million
By Noah Shactman Danger Room Wired
Three years ago, Mission Essential Personnel, LLC was a miniscule military contractor, banking less than $6 million annually to find a handful of linguists for the American government. Earlier this week, the U.S. Army handed the Columbus, Ohio company a one-year, no-bid $679 million extension of its current contract to field a small city’s worth of translators to help out American forces in Afghanistan. Not bad for a company that’s been accused of everything from abandoning wounded employees to sending out-of-shape interpreters to the front lines. MEP vigorously rejects the charges.
The U.S. -led counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan relies on gaining the trust of the local population. But those relationships can’t be established without people who can speak Afghanistan’s array of languages. So the American military turns to Mission Essential Personnel (MEP) to recruit, screen, and bring more than 5,000 of those interpreters to the battlefield. Today, no other company comes close to supplying as many translators in Afghanistan. And with this new “indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity with cost-plus-award fee contract,” MEP is guaranteed another year as the dominant player in the translation market there.
To MEP spokesman Sean Rushton, the $679 million contract extension is a validation of “our very positive performance” — and a stop-gap measure to ensure that U.S. forces can keep talking with the locals while a more competitive contract is prepared to be put up for bid. Tens of thousands of fresh troops are streaming into Afghanistan for a new offensive there; they need people who can speak the language. “Obviously, this coincides with the surge,” Rushton tells Danger Room.
A small handful of MEP’s translators are American citizens of Afghan descent. If they have the right language skills, and can pass a security clearance, they can make up to $235,000 per year, plus health benefits and a 401-K, “analyz[ing] communications” and “perform[ing] document exploitation” on one of Afghanistan’s big, comfortable military bases. But the vast majority of MEP’s recruits are local Afghans, earning about $900 a month to accompany frontline troops into action. These interpreters are given a week’s worth of training before they’re shipped out to combat. Once there, they’re required to spend a year working 12-hour days, seven days a week, and be on-call during the remaining time.
It can be a grueling schedule. The work is dangerous — “some 24 MEP linguists have been killed and 56 injured” in less than two years, CorpWatch’s Pratap Chatterjee reported. Not all of MEP’s hires are up for it.
“In just the bare minimal outlines of how they could run their contract effectively, they are a resounding failure, and have a knack for hiring septuagenarians for combat units while misassigning their language skills,” Registan.net’s Josh Foust complained last summer.
“I’ve met guys off the planes and have immediately sent them back because they weren’t in the proper physical shape,” linguist supervisor Gunnery Sgt. James Spangler told the AP around this same time. “They were too old. They couldn’t breathe. They complained about heart problems,” he said.
But the Army, not MEP, assigns where interpreters go. And the military’s contract doesn’t specify how many pull-ups an MEP translator has to do. Besides, senior citizens can be invaluable in a senior commander’s headquarters, Rushton responds. “All of our linguists meet and exceed the requirements that we were given,” he says.
MEP instantly became Afghanistan’s biggest linguist shop in 2007, after the defense contractor Titan only managed to muster about half of the translators it promised to the military. The U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command put the translation contract up for competitive bid, and awarded the job to MEP, a start-up founded by special forces veterans. Today, the company, lead by former marine and Blackwater vice president Chris Taylor, says it fills 97 percent of the translators’ billets, up from Titan’s 41 percent fulfillment rate.
While MEP hasn’t faced the kind of scrutiny paid to contractors like Blackwater, the firm has come under fire for the treatment of its linguists. Chatterjee reported last year that MEP rehired many of Titan’s old interpreters — and then promptly cut their salaries by as much as 50%. Some were canned, for seemingly flimsy reasons. One linguist, wounded in action, felt he was fired, essentially, for getting hurt.
MEP insists the accusations are way off-base. ”We’re very committed to making our company a different kind of company. To giving these guys better treatment,” Rushton says. “We bend over backwards to provide benefits and medical care.” But, according to Chatterjee, MEP’s record of caring for injured translators is far from perfect. When interpreter Abdul Hameed was wounded by an improvised bomb last August, MEP made sure he received disability pay. But it was only “$110.01 a week — barely enough to pay for his medical expenses.” MEP says they are working with their insurance company to make sure all wounded employees are treated quickly, and properly. Meanwhile, the company is gearing up for the Army’s next translation contract. A formal request for proposals is expected to be released by the end of the summer.
Keep the Peacekeepers, but Outsource the Support Functions
Ever since the days when South African-based Executive Outcomes defeated UNITA rebel forces in Angola, thus helping to do what UN forces had long been unable to do, i.e., bring an end to the long running civil war there, people periodically bring up the idea of having private military and security firms supplement or even replace UN peacekeeping operations.
Others, such as the trade association IPOA, say its goals “are better supervision of private companies operating under the umbrella of UN or government-led operations and better coordination between private organizations, government, NGOs and international organizations.”
It is no secret that while UN peace operations may be necessary, even desirable, nobody goes around saying they are models of efficiency and cost-effectiveness. This is for a variety of reasons, not all of them the fault of the UN. Still, given the stakes in terms of lives saved anything that can be done to improve them is worth consideration.
One of the more recent studies on the subject examined the use of private security organizations in a peacekeeping role as a cost-effective and efficient alternative to United Nations peacekeepers, and developed an outsourcing scorecard for the UN.
The article which appeared last November in the South African Journal of Industrial Engineering surveyed forty national and international organizations through questionnaires, a review of relevant literature, and records. It found that outsourcing of support functions would lead to major cost savings in UN peacekeeping operations.
Conceptually, outsourcing UN peace operations is less of a leap than most people think. Every UN peace operation is in and of itself outsourced, as it depends on other nations providing troops for peacekeeping operations, since the UN does not have a standing military army or police force. And currently the specialized activities such as facilities maintenance, catering, and IT are services that are currently outsourced by all UN peacekeeping operations.
The article “Outsourced United Nations Peacekeeping Roles and Support Functions,” by K.A. Charles and C.E. Cloete found that outsourcing support functions would ensure more effective, efficient, and expeditiously managed peacekeeping operations.
There are some caveats. The authors note that not all outsourcing is equal. They write that it is essential that top management possess a variety of negotiation and relationship management skills, as well as strategic planning expertise – which are lacking in the UN. Thus, the recruitment of the right personnel is essential, and the objective must be to ensure that outsourcing adds value to the organization
What exactly can be outsourced? The authors write:
The UN has vast assets, from thousands of vehicles to aircraft managed by the integrated support section, with a staff strength of 758 (Chart 2). However, when all support and logistics functions are outsourced, the number of support personnel in the section should be reduced from the original 758 people to just 14 (Chart 3). Thereafter, logistical support to peacekeepers should be undertaken by troop contributing nations and/or the service providers, while all operational functions would be handled by the office of the Force Commander. The most important cost-saving aspect of outsourcing peacekeeping would be the closure of the logistical base at Brindisi, Italy. The expected cost saving would be around $1.29 billion – i.e. $4.47 billion less $3.18 billion, as per the approved budget for peacekeeping operations for the period from 1 July 2004 to 30 June 2005 (which includes the logistics base at Brindisi) (Table 2). When equipment maintenance and the rental of facilities are also removed, the cost reduction would be considerable.
It is important to note that outsourcing would also re-engineer staff in the political offices from 200 to 30, because most functions would be outsourced to NGOs, UN agencies, and the local authorities as outlined earlier. Therefore, 30 personnel would run the political office: six persons per office from each of the four remaining political offices under the Deputy SRSG [Special Representative of the Secretary-General]; and an additional six from the office of the SRSG. The reduced administrative and support services sections would act as QA evaluator for the facilities management office. Therefore, a grand total of 58 staff members -22 QAs [Quality Assurance] and 36 political officers – would be required to run a peacekeeping operation when all non-core functions were outsourced. When this is compared to an average of 1,200 who are usually required to run a peacekeeping operation at full strength, there would be a major saving in reduced overhead and administrative costs.
In sum, “outsourcing the activities and functions of the integrated support section and the administrative services section would lead to a 98% reduction in staff strength, or 1,142 personnel including local nationals. This represents a saving in fixed costs – i.e., salaries, allowance, medical pension subsidies, and gratuities. The reduction of staff strength on peacekeeping operations would mean that the size of the DPKO would be reduced, since there would be fewer logistics services to provide. In all, considerable savings in staff remuneration would be recouped.”
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Middletown grad killed in Afghanistan
Ryan Lozier died ‘doing what he loved’
MIDDLETOWN — Two days before Mother’s Day, Viki Lozier was notified that her oldest son, Ryan Lozier, 30, a 1998 Middletown High School graduate, was killed by an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan while working for Global Security Solutions, a private security company.
Viki Lozier said her son served eight years in the Army Ranger Battalion in Afghanistan and Iraq. He worked for a year in the private sector, then joined the security company.
“He told me, ‘Mom, this is what I’m meant to do. I want to save people and this is what I love,’ ” she said Monday, May 10.
“As a mother, I have to honor that. I can’t be mad. There is nobody to blame. That’s how he lived. He died doing what he loved.”
She described her son as “big, bold and bright,” and he didn’t do anything “half-measured, even when he was getting in trouble.”
Lozier, a standout athlete, played football at Madison High School, then transferred to Middletown High School for his junior and senior years.
Chip Otten, then coach of the Middies, said Lozier was an outstanding running back for the Mohawks, but, because the Middie backfield was crowded, he was moved to defensive end.
Lozier earned the nickname “razor” because he was always on the edge, Otten said from Coldwater, where he’s head football coach.
“He was a fun guy to be around, but you were always asking yourself, ‘What’s Ryan up to?’” he said.
Otten said enlisting in the military was the “best thing to happen” to Lozier.
Brother Benjamin Lozier, 29, a 1999 Middletown High School graduate, described Ryan on Monday as “my best friend, my mentor.”
Then he got quiet.
“He was everything to me,” he said. “Nothing ever will be the same now.”
Ryan Lozier, who was divorced, was set to marry Gwen Clymo, 23, in June, his mother said. He has a daughter, Izabella, who is 8 months old.
His father, Phillip, lives in Indiana.
Lozier’s body was flown from Afghanistan to Dover, Del., his brother said. His body will return to Middletown this week, then be buried at Woodside Cemetery, the family said. Funeral arrangements are pending.
Licences of 172 NGOs in Afghanistan revoked
KABUL, 11 May 2010 (IRIN) – The Afghan authorities have cancelled the operating licences of 152 national and 20 international NGOs, accusing them of not being accountable.
“All NGOs have to report [their activities] to the Ministry of Economy [MoE] every six months but these NGOs have not reported for almost two years and therefore they [their operating licences] have been annulled,” Seddiq Amarkhil, MoE’s spokesman, told IRIN, adding that the NGOs had the right of appeal.
Among the 20 international NGOs are Save the Children Japan, Afghan Children’s Relief Organization, International Dispensary Association and Samaritan’s Purse International Relief.
Over 1,200 national and 301 international NGOs are currently registered in the country, the MoE said in a press release.
President Hamid Karzai has been under a lot of pressure to tackle corruption in his government but officials are also pointing the finger of blame at foreign companies and local and international NGOs.
Security Contractors killed in IED Blast, Afghanistan, May 6, 2010
A young American, a civilian contractor, working as a security guard was involved in an IED blast. He was the backseat passenger in a vehicle similar to a Toyota Land Cruiser – NOT the armored MRAP vehicle I mentioned in an earlier post on this blog. The driver and front-seat passenger were killed at the scene.
Another date that will be forever etched in my mind is Thursday, 6 May 2010. I had just returned from the gym. It was about 1330 when I walked into the FST building expecting to see what I normally see at that time of day, a few folks sitting in the ICU area reading, bullshitting or on the computers. There was no one there, which was odd, but I could hear some voices in the ATLS area (where our trauma patients enter our facility), so I realized we must have received a patient. What I didn’t realize was that I was about to be involved in the care of a patient with the most horrific and devastating injuries our team may ever see. A young American, a civilian contractor, working as a security guard was involved in an IED blast. He was the backseat passenger in a vehicle similar to a Toyota Land Cruiser – NOT the armored MRAP vehicle I mentioned in an earlier post on this blog. The driver and front-seat passenger were killed at the scene. Now, we typically are notified by telephone or radio when patients will be arriving, but in this case there was no “heads-up”. There was a medic on this patient’s team who performed some initial life-saving interventions at the scene and then had him driven directly to us since we were the closest medical facility. He had vital signs (blood pressure and heart beat) until he got to the front gate of the FOB, less than a minute’s drive to the FST.
I walked in just minutes after his arrival, amazed at what I saw. I watched as HM2 Gavin Rampertaap was performing CPR. I watched HM3 Kevin Hines assisting the patient’s breathing with a bag-valve mask through a breathing tube inserted by the medic (I don’t know how he placed the tube; you could barely see where the patient’s mouth was on his face). I watched HM2 Alonzo (I call him Zo) Shields running to the OR to get equipment. I watched HM3 Hasan Hafiz and HN John Hitchcock cutting off the patient’s pants from what was left of his legs – both were mangled. I watched HM2 Patrick Malveda applying a tourniquet to what was left of the patient’s right arm. I watched Doc Z, bald head and all, inserting a large bore IV into a big vein in the patient’s chest so I could start transfusing blood. I watched LCDR Sue Howell documenting everything that was being done to the patient while at the same time trying to get information about the incident from the medic who brought him to us. I watched CDR Charlie Godinez directing the entire team as he pondered his next intervention; which happened to be another emergency thoracotomy (see earlier post Birthday Cakes and Bombs). While CDR Godinez was “cracking” the patient’s chest, CDR Cheuk Hong was attempting to place another large bore IV in the patients groin so that we could get more blood into the patient faster. After all of the above interventions failed to get the patient’s heart to beat again, he was pronounced dead at 1413. This resuscitation was different for me. I had a different perspective. Maybe it was because I was only transfusing blood – I don’t know. I kind of stood back and watched the expressions on the other team member’s faces as they worked. It was surreal, like I wasn’t really there.
We decided early on in this mission that we would debrief as a group after every resuscitation – to talk about what we did well, or not-so-well, and to provide “lessons learned” in the event we have a similar patient in the future. Whoever led the trauma resuscitation leads the debrief then proceeds around the room asking for input from every member of the team who was involved. So, CDR Godinez started and when he was through he went around the trauma bay asking for comments; I was somewhere near the middle of the group, but I wasn’t really listening to what anyone was saying. I just kept thinking about the effort those young corpsmen just put into trying to save that man’s life. I’m almost certain none of them ever saw anything so shocking in their lives. Any one of them could have easily thought the situation was too overwhelming for them and just walked out, and everyone else there would have understood. But, they didn’t. They pressed on, without missing a beat. The next thing I know I hear CDR Godinez say my name, but I found myself unable to speak. I was so overcome I was crying – tears and snot running down my face. I simply shook my head side-to-side. I wasn’t crying because a great man just died in front of me with injuries that would make almost anyone else vomit. I was crying because I was overwhelmed with pride; I was proud to be a part of this outstanding team, doing incredible things, under austere conditions, in a fourth-world country. But mostly I was proud of the corpsmen. They are all between 22 and 29 years old. Many are married and most have children. They don’t get paid a lot and the most junior often get some of the worst taskings here, but when the shit hits the fan like it did on this day, you know they are going to be there, doing what they do, and it’s an unbelievable thing to witness. I am honored to know, and get to work with, every one of them!
And we are honored to have you caring for our casualties…….
Can PMCs Find Their IHL Groove?
Fitting a Square PMC Into a Round IHL
As I have noted previously, trying to apply International Humanitarian law (IHL) to private contractors is often extremely difficult.
There is, of course, much precedent for the presence on the battlefield of individuals who are not formally members of the belligerents’ armed forces. The 1949 Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War (POW) granted POW treatment to civilians who “accompany the armed forces without being members thereof, such as civilian members of military aircraft crews, war correspondents, supply contractors, and members of labor units or of services responsible for the welfare of the armed forces.”
Civilians enjoyed protection against direct attack; however, it was well accepted by this time that if they took up arms they rendered themselves targetable. In a memorable event involving such individuals, over one-half of the American defenders at Wake Island were civilian contractors building a U.S. naval base when the Japanese attacked in December 1941.
Still, despite the fact that the latest wave of private contractors is now at least twenty years old, to give a conservative estimate, trying to decide their status is still enormously contentious.
To understand just how contention see this article by Michael Schmitt, professor of public international law at Durham University Law School.
Schmitt starts by noting that in 2003, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), in cooperation with the T.M.C. Asser Institute, launched a major research effort to explore the concept of “direct participation by civilians in hostilities” (DPH Project). The goal was to provide greater clarity regarding the international humanitarian law (IHL) governing the loss of protection from attack when civilians involve themselves in armed conflict.
Although the planned output of the project was a consensus document, the proceedings proved highly contentious. As a result, the final product contains the express caveat that it is “an expression solely of the ICRC’s views”.
Aspects of the draft circulated to the experts were so controversial that a significant number of them asked that their names be deleted as participants, lest inclusion be misinterpreted as support for the Interpretive Guidance’s propositions. Eventually, the ICRC took the unusual step of publishing the Interpretive Guidance without identifying participants. Schmitt participated throughout the project, including presentation of one of the foundational papers around which discussion centered. He was also one of those who withdrew his name upon reviewing the final draft.
Although his article is not primarily on private contractors Schmitt notes:
At the outset of these conflicts, the activities and status of contractors were relatively unregulated in either law or policy. As a result of the public attention drawn by the scale of their presence and repeated incidents of misconduct, some states have endeavored to define the legal status of contractors and to create systems whereby they can be held accountable for abuses they commit. Additionally, states sending and those receiving contractors and civilian employees have negotiated status of forces agreements, which establish jurisdictional prerogatives; the agreement signed between the United States and Iraq in November 2008 is especially notable. States have also begun to adopt common “best practices” regarding private military companies, as exemplified by the ICRC/Swiss government sponsored 2009 Montreux ocument.
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Navy Seal Found Not Guilty of Assaulting a Suspected Terrorist
A Virginia military jury found a Navy SEAL not guilty Thursday on all charges he punched an Iraqi suspected in the 2004 killings of four U.S. contractors in Fallujah.
“I’m really happy right now,” Matthew McCabe, the Navy SEAL, told Fox News shortly after hearing the outcome of the court martial. “It’s an amazing feeling. I’m on cloud nine right now.”
McCabe, a special operations petty officer second class, called the proceedings “troubling at times,” adding “having your career on the line is not an easy thing to handle.
McCabe was the third and final Navy SEAL to be prosecuted in the case. He had faced charges of assault, making a false official statement and dereliction of performance of duty for willfully failing to safeguard a detainee. McCabe was accused of punching last year is Ahmed Hashim Abed, the suspected mastermind of the grisly killings six years ago.
After the court martial, the 24-year-old from Perrysburg, Ohio, thanked the public for its continued support
“It’s been great everything they’ve done,” he told Fox News. “But, don’t worry about it anymore. We are putting this all behind us. It’s done and over with. I’m going to try not to think about this ever again.”
This follows four days of pre-trial motions, jury selection and testimony before a judge advocate general, Capt. Moira Modelewski, at naval station in Norfolk, Va.
Another one of the Navy SEALs charged, but acquitted in connection with the Abed case, Petty Officer First Class Julio Huertas, took the stand for the defense Thursday morning.
He said that he and the other two Navy SEALs, McCabe and Jonathan Keefe, did visit the detention facility where Abed was being held on the night of the alleged incident.
But, he insists, there was no assault. Huertas and Keefe were found not guilty last month in separate trials in Baghdad.
SRA Awarded $1.5 Billion Multi-Award Contract from Department of Defense
Providing Support to U.S. Special Operations Command and Worldwide Subcomponents
FAIRFAX, Va., May 06, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — SRA International, Inc. /quotes/comstock/13*!srx/quotes/nls/srx (SRX 22.05, -0.39, -1.74%) , a leading provider of technology and strategic consulting services and solutions to government organizations and commercial clients, today announced it has won an indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) Global Battlestaff and Program Support contract from the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla. The multi-award contract has an estimated value of $1.5 billion over five years, if all options are exercised.
USSOCOM’s mission is to provide fully capable Special Operations Forces that will defend the United States and its interests, and synchronize planning of global operations against terrorist networks. SRA will provide global special operations-unique services and expertise to support the USSOCOM in three functional areas: operations and intelligence, acquisition and logistics, and financial management and business operations. Press Release here
Security Contractors War Zone Blogging
Meet the New Frontline Bloggers: Security Contractors
By Noah Shachtman The Danger Room
The frontline soldier blogs have largely come and gone — victims of the military’s confusing, often contradictory, approach to social media. But you can still get unfiltered reports, straight from Afghanistan’s warzones. Private security contractors are now writing the new must-read online diaries from the battlefield. And they’re as raw and brutally honest as anything written by a blogger in uniform.
While support for the troops has been near-universal in our current words, contractors have been demonized as lawless, bloodthirsty guns-for-hire. (It’s a trap I’ve been accused, not without reason, of falling into myself.) These blogs show how shallow that stereotype can be.
“Today was a bad one – so many things happening all at once and I’m feeling the pressure. I feel a bit like a spinning top and am experiencing that classic loneliness of command in that I have no-one I can vent to or confide in. I have to stay cool and in control, keep a smile on my face and boost the rest of the lads when they are feeling the pressure. It’s bloody hard to do some days,” writes the pseudonymous “Centurion” on his blog, Kandahar Diary.
A BBIED (suicide bomber) walked into the middle of one of my convoys today, stuck in traffic on Route 1, and detonated. One guard KIA, 4 WIA (seriously). Not long after, a truck on another convoy tripped an IED – damaged vehicle, nil injuries – and my guard force travelling [sic] from here to Ghazni were contacted by fairly heavy small arms fire – thankfully, no injuries….
As this was all happening I was scratching my head on a budget reconciliation. The whole exercise seemed kind of pointless to me given what was happening on the ground, and I found myself contemplating the budget line item simply titled ‘Coffins’.
…I’m thinking a lot about home and L and the kids. I miss them terribly and worry how they are coping without me.
The best known of these contractor-bloggers is Tim Lynch (pictured). He owns the small security consultancy Free Range International, currently operating in Afghanistan. As an independent operator, he’s able to publicly critique the war effort in ways that most bloggers in uniform can’t. “Our fundamental problem in Afghanistan is that we are fighting on behalf of a central government which is not considered legitimate by a vast majority of the population,” Lynch wrote in a recent post.
And to make matters worse, he added, the majority of the American-led International Security Assistance Force are holed up in concrete-reinforced Forward Operating Bases, where picayune rules about dress code, chow hall passes, and speed limits seem to occupy more minds than the fighting outside.
Napoleon said that in war “the moral is to the physical as three is to one.” This is the consequence of fronting a government which abuses the population and international guests alike. If the ISAF soldiers were methodically clearing areas of Taliban and then assisting in the establishment of law and order, governance and services which serve the people, and that the people appreciate, we would be achieving moral ascendancy. But that is impossible because the vast majority of troops are based on FOB’s and never leave them, and there is no legitimate government with which to entrust areas we have cleared. So now that we are unable to do what is important, the unimportant has become important and the mark of military virtue is the enforcement of petty policies like the mandatory wearing of eye protection at all times while outdoors.
The blogging contractors represent only a small minority of the tens of thousands of hands-for-hire employed by western militaries in Afghanistan. Most of the security firms have strict prohibitions against discussing their business in public. But the ones that do talk can be just as harsh as Lynch. Take “Paladin Six,” who writes at Knights of Afghanistan.
“Basically, everyone here, from the lowliest shopkeeper to the highest government official is in a mad scramble to grab every Afghani, rupee, ruble and dollar that they can get their hands on before ISAF finally bails out and this place returns to the Dark Ages from whence it came,” he writes. “Yeah, I’m looking at you [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai. And your scumbag brother too.”
These writers don’t just bitch about the military and their partners in Kabul. Lynch, in particular, is an equal-opportunity basher of the boneheaded. “There is a group of rogue contractors working the border from Spin Boldak to Kandahar who are apparently shooting small arms indiscriminately. They are an all Afghan crew, off duty ANP [Afghan National Police] soldiers are working with them, and they are on an ISAF contract. It is up to ISAF to put a stop to this and to do so immediately. But they can’t because nobody seems to know who these clowns work for,” he writes in one post.
In another, he takes aim at the local militants.
Yesterday morning started with an event so senseless and evil that it is hard to describe. An American army patrol was moving through downtown Jalalabad when the villains detonated a bicycle mounted IED. This IED had no chance of even denting the paint job on an MRAP [armored vehicle], but it did throw out a bunch of shrapnel, which killed one of the best diesel engine mechanics in town and wounded another 15 civilians – mostly children.
I drove up behind the convoy a few minutes after the attack. They had stopped, dismounted and were treating the injured… Once I saw where the bomb had gone off I was stunned – the traffic circle is full of children at that time of the day.
“The good people of Jalalabad were pissed off about the bike bomb, but not enough to stage a protest and shout “death to the Taliban,’” Lynch continued in another post. “That is the critical dynamic with which to judge how the people feel about us and the assorted groupings of bad guys who cause them much more grief and hardship, in their reaction to loss of life through stupidity. When people react with spontaneous outrage to Taliban killings, then we will know the tipping point is well behind us.”
There was a time when U.S. troops had the market all-but-cornered the market on these first-person anecdotes and war-hardened analyses. But like so much else, that effort has now been outsourced to contractors. Original Story Here
Vetted International Celebrates Their Fifth Anniversary
Vetted International celebrates their five year anniversary on May 5th, 2010.
Raleigh, NC (PRWEB) May 6, 2010 — Vetted International, Ltd. (http://www.vetted-intl.com) turns five years old today and celebrates their milestone with a reflection on their history and the journey ahead.
As a former US Marine and City of Raleigh Police Officer, Vetted CEO Brian Sjostedt has worked a lifetime of public service and never anticipated celebrating a five year anniversary as a private company’s chief executive. Sjostedt founded Vetted International in May 2005 after spending 14 months in Iraq temporarily assigned from his Police Department to assist with reconstruction efforts. Sjostedt lived “outside the wire” in Baghdad’s Al Mesbah District, and served with a contracted Defense & Logistics firm as the Security Manager and was later promoted to Deputy Director of Operations. Sjostedt ended his assignments in Iraq as the company Director of Operations. Brigadier General Henry Miller (US Army, Retired) described Sjostedt’s reliability in a letter as “being counted on for thoroughly researched advice and an honest appraisal whenever asked…I trust his leadership and decision making abilities in difficult situations.”
While in Iraq, Sjostedt was exposed to extraordinary courage by the local Iraqi personnel assigned to his protection details. “I was always amazed at the level of sacrifice they were willing to make for us at minimal wages,” stated Sjostedt. The employees he was referring to had diverse and useful backgrounds. “Their previous experiences included officers in Saddam Hussein’s former Republican Guard and former US Agency operatives that lost their jobs after the initial occupation was successful.”
Operations in Iraq resulted in catastrophic casualties and fatalities in Sjostedt’s company. Before departing Iraq, Sjostedt started Vetted International to provide additional income to the employees he regarded as his protectors during his stay. Sjostedt learned of a law called the Defense Base Act in which compensation benefits were statutorily due in cases that the contractors were injured or killed while supporting the United States mission. “I never saw those benefits paid when I was there, so Vetted’s employees were trained to investigate facts surrounding incidents.” Insurance companies and injured contractors that had an interest in those facts quickly became the beneficiaries of Vetted’s investigations.
Vetted further identified a lack of sufficient medical care for Iraqis working to support the US mission and quickly assembled a team of doctors and coordinators to provide services according to United States standards of care. Multiple lives were saved as a result. Vetted has specialized in catastrophic injury medical management, impairment assessment, prosthetics procurement, patient training, emergency evacuations and remains repatriation.
Vetted’s services were not only limited to local Iraqis. Other patients covered under the Defense Base Act came from numerous countries such as Fiji, Nepal, Australia, United Kingdom, South Africa, Peru and Chile. Vetted would continue to manage the medical care of those patients after they were evacuated home. In an open letter, a contractor in South Africa describes his care with Vetted; “Before (Vetted) attended to my file, I almost died of infections. This company came to South Africa and negotiated with all of my medical suppliers. Most of all they settled my debts…Vetted appointed a medical professional to take care of my day to day needs. They further looked at how they were going to get my life back to normal as possible….Vetted was the best thing that could have happened to the South African Contractors.”
While services initially started with decisive reactions to incidents, Vetted is now focusing on prevention. “We want to mitigate risk more so than respond to it, so we are encouraging our clients to participate in pre-deployment loss prevention programs that include baseline dental, medical, psychological screening, background checks, and cultural and regional training,” stated Sjostedt.
In the past five years, Vetted International has completed assignments in 54 countries.
Vetted International is a corporate and government solution based company headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA. Vetted utilizes a global network of integrity driven local national professionals to minimize risk and implement responsive action plans in various permissive and non-permissive environments. Foreign and domestic insurance companies, financial institutions, government departments and ministries, government agencies and contractors and healthcare organizations have relied on Vetted’s unique capabilities. More on Vetted here
Contractor provided KBR employees with sports tickets and golf outings
U.S. Intervenes in Suit Against KBR and Panalpina Alleging Kickbacks Under the False Claims Act
Allegations of Kickbacks and Overbilling Related to Logistical Support in Iraq
WASHINGTON, May 5 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Justice Department has intervened in a whistleblower lawsuit against Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), Panalpina Inc. and others that alleges that employees of two freight forwarders doing business with the companies provided unlawful kickbacks to KBR transportation department employees. KBR is the prime contractor under the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP III) contract for logistical support of U.S. military operations in Iraq. The whistleblowers also allege overbilling by a KBR subcontractor in the Balkans, Wesco, under a military contract.
The United States is pursuing allegations that the two freight forwarders, Eagle Global Logistics (which has since merged with TNT Logistics and become CEVA) and Panalpina provided unlawful kickbacks in the form of meals, drinks, tickets to sports events and golf outings to KBR employees. The government will seek damages and penalties under the False Claims Act and common law, as well as penalties under the Anti-Kickback Act. The United States has declined to intervene in the remaining allegations of the relators’ suit.
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas under the qui tam or whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act by David Vavra and Jerry Hyatt who have been active in the air cargo business–the industry relevant to the case. Under the qui tam or whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act, a private citizen, known as a “relator,” can sue on behalf of the United States. If the suit is successful, the relator may share in the recovery.
“Defense contractors cannot take advantage of the ongoing war effort by accepting unlawful kickbacks,” said Tony West, Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Division of the Department of Justice. “We are committed to maintaining the integrity of the Department of Defense’s procurement process.”
The United States previously intervened in and settled the relators’ allegations that EGL included non-existent charges for war risk insurance in invoices to KBR for air shipments to Iraq, costs that KBR passed on to the Army. Two EGL employees pleaded guilty to related criminal charges. EGL paid the United States $4 million in the civil settlement.
The government also intervened in and settled the relators’ allegations that EGL’s local agent in Kuwait, a company known as Al-Rashed, overcharged it for the rental (or demurrage) of shipping containers. The United States resolved potential claims arising from that matter against EGL for $300,000. Finally, EGL paid the government $750,000 to settle the relators’ allegations that the company provided kickbacks to employees in KBR’s transportation department. Former EGL employee Kevin Smoot and former KBR employee Bob Bennett pleaded guilty to related criminal charges in federal court in Rock Island.
This case is being prosecuted as part of a National Procurement Fraud Initiative. In October 2006, the Deputy Attorney General announced the formation of a National Procurement Fraud Task Force designed to promote the early detection, identification, prevention and prosecution of procurement fraud associated with the increase in government contracting activity for national security and other government programs. The Procurement Fraud Task Force is chaired by the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division and includes the Civil Division, United States Attorneys’ Offices, the FBI, the U.S. Inspectors General community and a number of other federal law enforcement agencies. The Defense Criminal Investigative Service and Federal Bureau of Investigation participated in the investigation of this matter. This case, as well as others brought by members of the task force, demonstrates the Department of Justice’s commitment to ensure the integrity of the government procurement process.
Read the full Post at MSSPARKY
The case is United States of America ex rel. Vavra, et al. v. Kellogg Brown & Root, Inc., et al., C.A. No. 1:04-CV-00042 (E.D. Tex.). (click HERE for the original article)
Overseas Civilian Contractors
CIVILIAN CONTRACTOR CASUALTIES
THE BEST KEPT SECRET OF THE WARS
At Least 59 Civilian Contractor Deaths Filed on in Second Quarter of 2012
At Least 49 Civilian Contractor Deaths Filed on in First Quarter of 2012
At Least 418 Civilian Contractor Deaths in 2011
Our Fallen Contractors Memorial
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A United Nations Mine Action Employee has filed a lawsuit against
for negligence after stepping on a landmine resulting in an immediate below the knee amputation in an area previously cleared by and certified clear of landmines by Ronco Consulting.
The United Nations board of inquiry found that Ronco failed to find the mine that injured Mr Fartham as well as three other mines.
The complaint states that Ronco Consulting, acting through it’s agents and/or employee’s, breached it’s professional duty of care to Fantham and did not exercise the reasonable care and skill expected of professional mine clearance companies.
Ronco Settles Negligence Lawsuit with UN Mine Action Employee
Ex Pat 2011 Tax Information UPDATED
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