Feral Jundi

     Rest in peace to the fallen, and my heart goes out to the family and friends. I don’t know much about the company New Century, but it sounds like it is one of the many companies out there involved with training Afghans. Tim Collins is the CEO and he has definitely been busy with TV shows and books after his career in the military.

     If anyone else has something to add about this incident, please feel free to post in the comments section. –Matt

————————————————————–

Ex-Northern Ireland policeman shot dead in Afghanistan by prisoner

10 August 2010

A former Northern Ireland police officer working as a security contractor for Nato in Afghanistan has been shot dead by an escaped insurgent prisoner.

Ken McGonigle, 51, from Co Derry, died on Saturday night when the prisoner in Musa Qala, northern Helmand province, overpowered his guards when being taken to pray. He seized his captors’ weapons and shot McGonigle before killing two US marines as they followed him into nearby buildings. The prisoner was eventually shot and killed.

McGonigle was working for the Nato training mission as part of a group supplied by a private security firm to mentor and train the Afghan police force.

“Our hearts are broken,” said McGonigle’s father, Joe, speaking from Trillick, Co Tyrone. “It is an awful thing to happen but there’s nothing we could do about it … Kenneth was the first man [the insurgent] saw – he opened [fire] and Kenneth hit the ground.”

Ken McGonigle was working for New Century. The firm is based in Guernsey and is led by the former British colonel Tim Collins.

The company yesterday offered its condolences to his family after the “tragic but isolated incident”.

In a statement, it said: “His presence and contribution will be sorely missed by everyone in the company and at the Nato training mission. Ken was a highly professional, deeply competent, well-admired and thoroughly committed colleague who made a material difference through his work.”

Relatives and friends were comforting McGonigle’s wife, Gail, and the couple’s children Ruth, Dale, Alex and Jimmy.

“Everybody is devastated,” said the Rev David Hillen, their local Presbyterian minister. “It’s a terrible tragedy.”

The incident is being investigated by New Century, which declined to comment further until it has more information.

The death has cast fresh light on the growing role of private security contractors in Afghanistan. Several hundred with former police knowledge and experience supplement the efforts of Italian carabinieri, French gendarmes and serving UK and US police officers who have been seconded to the Nato training mission to improve the standard of the Afghan national police.

Jack Kem, a senior official at the mission, said that building a strong force was a top priority for the coalition.

However, the ability of the Afghan police to work effectively has been widely questioned: a report from the US Congress in March claimed that drug abuse was endemic with four out of 10 recruits testing positive for illegal drugs in some areas of Afghanistan.

Lieutenant General William Caldwell, the US officer who runs the Nato training programme, said on taking over in January that police officers were deemed to have qualified from their entrance courses “if they had been present on the first day and last day of their course. It had not mattered whether they had passed the tests in the course.”

The private security sector in Afghanistan is thought to be worth more than £100m a year. In 2008 and 2009 the British government spent more than £42m on private security contracts in the country. The US government is a far bigger customer according to the charity War on Want, which has researched the role of the private sector in military work in Iraq and Afghanistan.

According to New Century’s website, the services offered by the firm are counter-insurgency intelligence, the “creation of a cohesive operational intelligence picture of local tribal, ethnic and social power”, and “pre-emptive policing” to reduce violence.

McGonigle had worked as a community police officer in Derry before taking a job with New Century, first in Iraq then, for the last three months, in Afghanistan. He was due to return to Northern Ireland at the start of next month.

“He was very well known in this city and the entire community is tinged with sadness over his death,” said James Kee, a community worker in Derry.

Hundreds of former police officers from Northern Ireland have taken up posts in Iraq and Afghanistan for private security firms. When he was chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, Sir Hugh Orde started an internal inquiry into allegations that some officers officially on sick leave were actually working for private security companies in Iraq.

A Northern Ireland-based army officer who is due back in Afghanistan next month said it was no surprise that New Century and others were recruiting police officers with experience serving in Northern Ireland. Captain Dougie Beattie said he had worked in parallel with UK security company Armour Group while serving in Helmand four years ago.

“It makes sense to use ex-police officers who have experience in human intelligence gathering and also police officers who have worked as community policemen and women,” he said. “The latter is very useful in terms of helping the Afghan police win hearts and minds and confidence in their own communities.”

The £50m ‘privatisation of war’

On the eve of battle in Iraq in March 2003, Colonel Tim Collins entered British military history with a rousing speech. “We go to liberate not to conquer,” he told troops. “If you are ferocious in battle, remember to be magnanimous in victory.” Seven years on, the death of Ken McGonigle has sharpened the focus on Collins’s new role as head of New Century.

The firm of private security contractors has joined a flood of mercenaries and security advisers to Afghanistan as part of a “privatisation of war” which is viewed with concern by human rights groups, but seen as essential for the cost-effective resourcing of long-running conflicts by military analysts.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office alone spends about £50m a year on private protection services. War on Want claims that the UK government spent £148m on private military contracts in Afghanistan and Iraq from 2006-2009. It says there are 10 other UK private military and security firms operating in Afghanistan. Ruth Tanner, campaigns and policy director at War on Want, said: “The issue for us is their accountability. There are accounts from contractors coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan of human rights abuses against citizens.”

Private companies already provide transport and communications systems for the MoD and a new contract is being released for tanker aircraft to carry fuel into battle zones for fighter jets.

Military expert Michael Codner at the Royal United Services Institute said these PFI contracts allow the government to spread payments over several years and keep the costs off the balance sheet. “Firms can provide the services at a lower cost.

Story here.