Relatively unknown before U.S. forces arrived in Afghanistan in fall 2001, Ruhullah is “prototypical of a new class of warlord in Afghanistan,” the report said. Unlike more traditional warlords, he has no political aspirations or tribal standing but “commands a small army of over 600 guards.”
The “single largest security provider for the U.S. supply chain in Afghanistan,” Ruhullah “readily admits to bribing governors, police chiefs and army generals,” the report said. In a meeting with congressional investigators in Dubai, he complained about “the high cost of ammunition in Afghanistan — he says he spends $1.5 million per month on rounds for an arsenal that includes AK-47s, heavy machine guns and RPGs,” or rocket-propelled grenades. It added: “Villagers along the road refer to him as ‘the Butcher.’ “
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$1.5 million a month for ammunition? Wow, that’s impressive. Or maybe that is just another over inflated number to add to the stack of corruption accounts in this report.
I guess all I have to say about something like this is what you get when you don’t care about how companies operate. You must have adult supervision and you must have enough of that oversight manpower to effectively watch over these folks.
One of the things I thought was interesting about this report was the idea of ‘going outside the wire’ to get a feel on what is going on with these contracts. That is fine and all, but you still will have no way to really get a feel for what is going on with them. I like the surprise inspection thing or the ride along thing, but in my opinion, you need ride-a-longs every time. In other words, have an expat company that is required as that source of supervision and make those guys responsible for how the operation is conducted. That is how it was done in Iraq, and that is how it should go down in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That kind of arrangement would ensure some adult supervision is on scene, and at all times.
That brings up the other issue I have with the way contracting is done these days. Why are we not requiring companies to be bonded? This was common practice with privateers back in the day, and it something we should consider now. If you want a company to play straight, then having them put their money where their mouth is, is just one way to keep them in line. Fines are another means. But really, you need someone riding with these convoys at all times to check on the whole process. These guys will get away with whatever they can if we don’t.
We could call them liaison officers or whatever, and they could be contractors, military, or federal employees. I say make them contractors, and ensure they are expats with secret clearances at the least. Then these DoD inspectors can go outside the wire and actually talk with a guy that has been watching the whole process. That inspector can use that liaison officer to great effect, and that would be a far better arrangement than just trying to surprise that company every once in awhile.
Plus, assigning expat liaison officers to these convoys could allow supervision all the way into Pakistan or whatever country they are in. US military would not have the same ability to cross into Pakistan. Federal employees would be too high of a target in Pakistan as well. But having expat contractors doing this kind of thing is feasible, and it has already been happening on numerous contracts over the years. Just make it mandatory, and pay the extra amount for this supervision and contract stipulation. I would also allow these liaison officers to be managed, armed, equiped and paid by their expat companies, and not by the Afghan company they are riding along with. That will make things a lot more simple for that contractor assigned to such a duty. I also think that liaison officer should be paid a top salary, because such a job would be extremely dangerous.
Finally, I think these convoys should be looked at as bait to lure out the enemy with. The more assets that can be assigned to overwatch and QRF, the better. Communications between that force and the liaison officer on these convoys could help in that process as well. Especially if drones in the area see any enemy movement or if the enemy attacked a convoy or military patrol earlier in the day on that road the convoy is on. There are a number of things we could do to help out these convoys with survival and with killing the enemy. Hell, our armed drones should be tracking every square inch of these convoy routes, and use these weapons as tools to really go to town on the enemy up in the mountain passes. Those are my thoughts on the matter. –Matt
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Recommendations of the report Warlord Inc.
There are numerous constructive changes that could be made to the U.S. military trucking effort in Afghanistan that would improve contracting integrity while mitigating corrupting influences. As the Department of Defense absorbs the findings in this report and considers its course of action, the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs Majority staff makes the following recommendations:
1. Assume Direct Contractual Responsibility for Supply Chain Security Providers. If the United States is going to use small armies of private security contractors to defend its massive supply chain in a war zone, the Department of Defense must take direct responsibility for those contractors to ensure robust oversight. Trucking companies are wholly incapable of overseeing this scale of security operations. The U.S. government needs to have a direct line of authority and accountability over the private security companies that guard the supply chain.
2. Consider the Role of Afghan National Security Forces in Highway Security. To be sure, the ANP and ANA will ultimately have a role in ensuring safe passage on Afghanistan’s roads. However, that would likely require a medium-term, if not long-term, transition. Numerous witnesses in this investigation have expressed extreme skepticism at any plan to rapidly transfer convoy security to the Afghan security forces due to concerns about capacity, competence, and corruption. Proposals to reform the convoy security scheme ought to take into account the Ministry of Interior’s vision of a future role of Afghan security forces in highway security. If there is to be no immediate role for the ANA in convoy security, a plan must be developed to reach that goal with credible security alternatives that address immediate U.S. military logistics needs.
3. Inventory Actual Trucking Capacity Available to the Department of Defense. The Department should conduct a survey of the available trucking capacity in Afghanistan under the HNT contract to ensure that its needs will be met with the additional forces under orders to deploy to Afghanistan. Where there is information to suggest that there is a finite pool of trucks some owner operated, some as tribal assets, some owned by second or third-tier subcontractors adding prime contractors does not necessarily add to the pool of available trucks.
4. Draft Contracts to Ensure Transparency of Subcontractors. Contracts between the Department of Defense and its trucking and/or security prime contractors need to include provisions that ensure a line of sight, and accountability, between the Department of Defense and the relevant subcontractors. Such provisions should make clear the subcontractors’ obligations, including full Department of Defense inspection and audit rights. Such provisions should also mandate the Department of Defense’s obligation to have visibility into subcontractors critical to its wartime supply chain. There should also be robust and verifiable incident reporting requirements. Where Department of Defense regulations already require such provisions, the Department needs to enforce them.
5. Oversee Contracts to Ensure Contract Transparency and Performance. Similarly, the Department of Defense needs to provide the personnel and resources required to manage and oversee its trucking and security contracts in Afghanistan. These are not contracts that can be managed responsibly from a desk in Bagram or Kandahar alone. Contracts of this magnitude and of this consequence require travel ‘outside the wire.’ For convoys, that means having the force protection resources necessary for mobility of Department of Defense personnel to conduct periodic unannounced inspections and ride-alongs.
6. Analyze Effect of Coalition Contracting on Afghan Corruption. The national security components of the U.S. government, including the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Department of Justice, and the Intelligence Community, need to begin to systematically track and analyze the effects of U.S., NATO, and other international donor funds on corruption in Afghanistan. Corruption is smothering the nascent efforts at Afghan governance that are fundamental to our strategy in Afghanistan. The effects of billions of dollars in development projects and security aid for Afghanistan, combined with billions of dollars spent in support of the U.S. and NATO military footprint in Afghanistan, need to be at the center of any analysis of metrics of our performance in the Afghan effort. Public reports in early June 2010 suggest that U.S. intelligence assets have been assigned to analyze Afghan corruption and governance. The U.S. government needs to devote sufficient assets to the endeavor, and the mandate should include an analysis of the effects of coalition contracts.
Download report here.
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U.S. indirectly paying Afghan warlords as part of security contract
By Karen DeYoung
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
The U.S. military is funding a massive protection racket in Afghanistan, indirectly paying tens of millions of dollars to warlords, corrupt public officials and the Taliban to ensure safe passage of its supply convoys throughout the country, according to congressional investigators.
The security arrangements, part of a $2.16 billion transport contract, violate laws on the use of private contractors, as well as Defense Department regulations, and “dramatically undermine” larger U.S. objectives of curtailing corruption and strengthening effective governance in Afghanistan, a report released late Monday said.
The report describes a Defense Department that is well aware that some of the money paid to contractors winds up in the hands of warlords and insurgents. Military logisticians on the ground are focused on getting supplies where they are needed and have “virtually no understanding of how security is actually provided” for the local truck convoys that transport more than 70 percent of all goods and materials used by U.S. troops. Alarms raised by prime trucking contractors were met by the military “with indifference and inaction,” the report said.
“The findings of this report range from sobering to shocking,” Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.) wrote in an introduction to the 79-page report, titled “Warlord, Inc., Extortion and Corruption Along the U.S. Supply Chain in Afghanistan.”
The report comes as the number of U.S. casualties is rising in the Afghan war, and public and congressional support is declining. The administration has been on the defensive in recent weeks, insisting that the slow progress of anti-Taliban offensives in Helmand province and the city of Kandahar does not mean that more time is needed to assess whether President Obama’s strategy is working.
“I think it’s much too early to draw a negative conclusion,” said a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “I think there’s more positive than negative. We’re heading toward a year-end assessment, which will be a big one for us.” The review was set when Obama announced in December that he would send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan and begin to withdraw them in July 2011.
Tierney is chairman of the national security subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, whose majority staff spent six months preparing the report. A proponent of a smaller U.S. military footprint in Afghanistan and targeted attacks on insurgents, Tierney said in an interview Monday that he hopes the report will help members of Congress “analyze whether they think this is the most effective way to go about dealing with terrorism. Or the most cost-effective way.”
The report’s conclusions will be introduced at a hearing Tuesday at which senior military and defense officials are scheduled to testify. The report says that all evidence and findings were made available to Republicans on the subcommittee. A spokesman for Rep. Jeff Flake (Ariz.), the ranking Republican, said the lawmaker will not comment until he has seen the entire report.
In testimony shortly after Obama’s strategy announcement, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that “much of the corruption” in Afghanistan has been fueled by billions of dollars’ worth of foreign money spent there, “and one of the major sources of funding for the Taliban is the protection money.”
Military officials said that they have begun several corruption investigations in Afghanistan and that a task force has been named, headed by Navy Rear Adm. Kathleen Dussault, director of logistics and supply operations for the chief of naval operations and former head of the Baghdad-based joint contracting command for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, communications chief for U.S. and NATO forces in Kabul, said that the entire Tierney report has not been examined but that Dussault will be “reviewing every aspect of our contracting process and recommending changes to avoid our contribution to what is arguably a major source of revenue that feeds the cycle of corruption.”
The U.S. military imports virtually everything it uses in Afghanistan — including food, water, fuel and ammunition — by road through Pakistan or Central Asia to distribution hubs at Bagram air base north of Kabul and a similar base outside Kandahar. From there, containers are loaded onto trucks provided by Afghan contractors under the $2.16 billion Host Nation Trucking contract. Unlike in the Iraq war, the security and vast majority of the trucks are provided by Afghans, a difference that Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has praised as promoting local entrepreneurship.
The trucks distribute the material to more than 200 U.S. military outposts across Afghanistan, most of them in the southern and eastern parts of the country where roads are largely controlled by warlords and insurgent groups.
The report found no direct evidence of payoffs to the Taliban, but one trucking program manager estimated that $1.6 million to $2 million per week goes to the insurgents.
Most of the eight companies approved for the contract are Afghan-owned, but they serve largely as brokers for subcontractors that provide the trucks and security for the convoys, which often contain hundreds of vehicles. According to the congressional report, the U.S. officers charged with supervising the deliveries never travel off bases to determine how the system works or to ensure that U.S. laws and regulations are followed.
The report describes a system in which subcontractors — most of them well-known warlords who maintain their own militias — charge $1,500 to $15,000 per truck to supply guards and help secure safe passage through territory they control. The most powerful of them, known as Commander Ruhullah, controls passage along Highway One, the principal route between Kabul and Kandahar, under the auspices of Watan Risk Management, a company owned by two of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s cousins.
Overall management of who wins the security subcontracts, it said, is often controlled by local political powerbrokers such as Karzai’s half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, head of the Kandahar provincial council.
Relatively unknown before U.S. forces arrived in Afghanistan in fall 2001, Ruhullah is “prototypical of a new class of warlord in Afghanistan,” the report said. Unlike more traditional warlords, he has no political aspirations or tribal standing but “commands a small army of over 600 guards.”
The “single largest security provider for the U.S. supply chain in Afghanistan,” Ruhullah “readily admits to bribing governors, police chiefs and army generals,” the report said. In a meeting with congressional investigators in Dubai, he complained about “the high cost of ammunition in Afghanistan — he says he spends $1.5 million per month on rounds for an arsenal that includes AK-47s, heavy machine guns and RPGs,” or rocket-propelled grenades. It added: “Villagers along the road refer to him as ‘the Butcher.’ “
Despite his “critical role,” the report said, “nobody from the Department of Defense or the U.S. intelligence community has ever met with him,” other than special operations forces who have twice arrested and released him, and he “is largely a mystery to both the U.S. government and the contractors that employ his services.”
Defense regulations and laws promulgated following difficulties with private security contractors in Iraq limit the weaponry that contractors can use and require detailed incident reports every time shots are fired. But such reports are rarely, if ever, filed, investigators said.
Another trucking contractor described a “symbiotic” relationship between security providers such as Ruhullah and the Taliban, whose fighters operate in the same space, and said that the Taliban is paid not to cause trouble for the convoys. “Many firefights are really negotiations over the fee,” the report said.
Among its recommendations, the report calls on the military to establish “a direct line of authority and accountability over the private security companies that guard the supply chain” and to provide “the personnel and resources required to manage and oversee its trucking and security contracts in Afghanistan.”
Story here.