Feral Jundi

The latest news these days is the draw down in troops. It has been expected and talked about, but now it is becoming reality. I have yet to read any analysis on how the security contracting industry itself will be impacted by this draw down, so this is my attempt at such things. I believe given all of the investment into Afghanistan’s reconstruction and security, that our industry will be in high demand as the troops pull out. It will also be a dangerous time period because of security vacuums created by a lack of troops, or a lack of Afghan police/military.

Below I have posted three stories that discuss all of the foreign investment or organizations interested in reconstruction in Afghanistan. The troops might be pulling out, but these investment projects will still be there, and they will be ongoing for awhile. With that reduction in troop related security, someone is going to have to fill that security vacuum. I believe that ‘someone’ will be a combination of local security contractors, and expats.

Not to mention that the State Department mission in Afghanistan will be ongoing for awhile. So WPS is going to be a viable source of employment for security contractors in Afghanistan and elsewhere. DoS and USAID both have reconstruction projects, government mentor-ship programs and diplomatic missions to maintain as the troops draw down.  Security contractors are going to be vital to the continuation of those missions.

The other source of work that will be ongoing in Afghanistan is training police and military.  The troop draw down strategy is highly dependent upon Afghanistan’s ability to provide it’s own security and stand on it’s own.  As US troops pull out, these training missions will probably require even more contractor trainers. And let’s not forget about NATO, and their inability to provide training assets. Contractors will be an essential part of maintaining this aspect of the strategy.

Then of course there are the foreign investments in mining in Afghanistan.  The mines and the railroads required to ship that stuff out of the country, are necessary for the reconstruction and stability of Afghanistan. It will also help to pay for this massive army we have helped Afghanistan build, and hopefully sustain. (although foreign donors will continue to be the main source of maintaining this army)  So local security contractors will be essential for those projects, and expat security contractors will be required to handle the PSD of engineers and upper management.

Probably the most important things to remember about the draw down is that troops must be approved by congress, but there is no limit as to the number of security contractors that can be hired. Matter of fact, the only limit to security contractors is financial. So if the investments and interest in Afghanistan is still there, contractors will continue to be very important. Probably more important than ever, just because the enemy will want to exploit the draw down of troops is an excellent time to attack and turn up the pressure. We will see….-Matt

The US Isn’t the Only Donor in Afghanistan

As U.S. Pulls Back, Fears Abound Over Toll on Afghan Economy

In Afghanistan, who will pick up where the U.S. leaves off?

The US Isn’t the Only Donor in Afghanistan
06/22/11
Jordan Dey
Fmr. US Director, UN World Food Program
As the Obama Administration announces its Afghanistan drawdown tonight, much has been said about what will change — the number of troops — but there has been virtually no discussion of what will remain largely the same — the continued assistance of more than four dozen countries, 20 UN agencies, and hundreds of NGOs in providing everything from road-building contracts to health care investments in Afghanistan.?As President Obama has shifted US foreign policy from the unilateralism of the Bush Administration to a more collaborative approach with our allies there is no country on earth where that multi-country approach is more apparent than Afghanistan. And, no country on earth where the US is better prepared to reduce its footprint, and leave some work to others.

The Japanese, for example, have committed $1 billion per year in development assistance for Afghanistan until 2013. Germany will contribute another $600 million to development projects this year. The Canadians will donate $100 million annually. The Australians have set aside $20 million for Uruzgan province alone this year. Finland will contribute $20 million in 2011, with about 25% going specifically to Balkh province in the north.
Nearly every donor country in Afghanistan has a similar set of priorities: improve agricultural development, train the police, develop the energy sector, improve health care — and, quite frankly, many are tripping over each other as they attempt to help Afghans. ?I was in Afghanistan earlier this year interviewing dozens of donor embassies in Kabul and one European Embassy official told me that they had simply stopped showing up to agricultural development coordination meetings — when the US was present — because American aid experts dominated the discussion and overwhelmed the smaller European donors. ?Over the next three years, some international donors will reduce their development assistance and certainly US assistance cannot maintain its current pace, but it will not go away — and the benefits of this trimmed-down presence are significant.?With a smaller American footprint, not only will other countries — such as Germany, Japan, and Canada — have more room to contribute substantively, but the Afghans themselves will have a greater opportunity to lead their country’s development efforts. (The situation across the border in Pakistan, of course, is significantly different as there are fewer donor governments, greater control by the Pakistan government of aid agencies and — at $1.5 billion — far less development funding than Afghanistan receives annually from the US). ?President Karzai, who has long complained about the bewildering number of donor governments, UN agencies, and NGOs — will have less of an argument to make with fewer “foreigners” on the ground. Prominent Afghans who have long worked for the US military, NATO, or foreign embassies at high salaries should consider joining their local and national governments, or the Afghan private sector, and giving back to their country.?The drawdown of US troops in Afghanistan will help Afghans reassert their sovereignty and rebuild their country, while dozens of donor governments, UN agencies, and NGOs will continue their long-term development assistance, in the broadest multilateral funding environment in the world — Afghanistan.
Story here.
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As U.S. Pulls Back, Fears Abound Over Toll on Afghan Economy
By ALISSA J. RUBIN

June 22, 2011

While President Obama’s announcement of troop reductions is not expected to change much here right away, American and Afghan officials are already worrying about the impact of the eventual withdrawal of international forces on Afghanistan’s struggling economy.
Very little will happen immediately. “What’s going to be different 24 hours after the president’s speech? Nothing,” said a senior American official in Kabul.
Over the next three years, however, as the American military and civilian presence — and spending — decrease, thousands of jobs will end for Afghans who work at or around bases and under grants and contracts financed by the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development.
Afghans and American civilian and military planners fear that the country will fall into an economic abyss, sending some Afghans back into the insurgency and deepening the poverty of people throughout the country.
“We’ve had remarkable achievements, but can they make up the gap with the hit from the withdrawal of the war economy? That would be a stretch,” said a senior United States official.
The number of American civilians working in the field and the amount of American spending are expected to plunge over the next three and a half years, with much of the shrinkage coming in 2013 and 2014, said American officials and diplomats in Kabul and the provinces.
The hope is that gradually the private sector will begin to create some jobs, but that possibility still seems to be years away.
The provincial reconstruction teams that set up projects and distribute grants in all 34 provinces will end their work by the end of 2014 and relocate to four urban centers: Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif, Kandahar and Jalalabad.
Civilian teams in the districts, which operate in many rural of Afghanistan’s rural areas, will leave as well, said a senior American official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to comment publicly on the delicate subject. At least two provincial reconstruction teams — in Panshir Province and Bamian Province — will end leave in the next six months.
Over the next three and a half years all programs and projects will be handled by teams based in the four urban areas, and their travel will be determined by the security situation, said United States officials in Kabul. While that is the expectation, the distances they would have to travel and the possibility that once NATO troops leave security will decline in some areas suggests that planners setting up development projects could be far more selective, officials said.
For instance, road building, which has been troubled by corruption and payoffs to security companies that often had links to insurgents, is winding down, but there will continue to be efforts to improve the supply of electricity.
Development spending, which was $4.2 billion in 2010 and was managed by the State Department and the Agency for International Development, has already declined to about $2.5 billion this year and is expected to stay at roughly that level in 2012, officials said this week in Kabul. But after that, spending is likely to decline further “as Afghanistan becomes a normal country,” a senior American official said.
Nearly 10 years after the NATO coalition entered the country, officials say that although there are hopeful signs among young Afghans who are working in areas like public health and education, only “a thin layer” of people have the potential to move the country forward.
Opium remains the most lucrative crop for Afghanistan’s farmers, meaning that despite enormous efforts and millions of dollars spent on alternative crop programs by both Britain and the United States to move farmers into other work, progress is “very slow,” said a senior United States official.
All future development plans are based on the assumption that Afghanistan will become more stable and that financing for U.S.A.I.D. projects and the State Department’s foreign aid programs will be “robust,” officials said. If that turns out to be wrong, all bets are off.
Story here.
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In Afghanistan, who will pick up where the U.S. leaves off?
By Pamela Falk
June 22, 2011
As President Obama prepares to draw down U.S. troops from Afghanistan and explain his blueprint for turning security over to the Afghan government by 2014, his administration is struggling to address what will come next in a country that has in the past been a threat to U.S. security. Al Qaeda is degraded and Osama bin Laden is dead, but insurgencies remain, as do drugs and poverty. Will the U.N. be able to pick up when Washington withdraws military forces?
On Tuesday, in his acceptance speech after reelection to a second term, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that, “as never before, the U.N. is on the front lines protecting people and also helping build the peace” in Afghanistan, among other places.
And Georgette Gagnon, the human rights director of the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said this week that “more civilians were killed in Afghanistan in May than in any other month since 2007, raising fears of a further escalation during the summer with serious humanitarian implications.”
In the wake of the death of Osama Bin Laden, there were revenge attacks around Afghanistan.
“We are very concerned about the escalation of fighting this summer,” Mohammad Hashem Mayar, deputy director of the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR), said, noting that the violence could affect their distribution of relief to civilians.
U.N. analysts believe that the more the U.N. stays involved in Afghanistan’s reconstruction, the easier it will be for the U.S. to get out.
In addition to aiding the hampered efforts to deliver humanitarian aid, the U.N. Security Council this week shored up the Afghan government’s program to reconcile with the Taliban by agreeing to lift sanctions on members of the Taliban’s militia if they renounce terror.
The unanimous vote by the Security Council, led by the U.S., adopted two resolutions that separate the Taliban and al Qaeda in the enforcement of sanctions – including the assets freeze, arms embargo and the travel ban – and which remove some names, including several members of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council, from the list.
The Obama administration’s U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice said that the U.N. action sends a “clear message to the Taliban that there is a future for those who separate from al Qaeda, renounce violence and abide by the Afghan constitution.”
But there is a long road to recovery in Afghanistan, where the drug trade still thrives.
The 2011 World Drug Report, to be released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) on Wednesday, does not paint a pretty picture of Afghanistan. Although global opium production declined during the last three years, that trend is unlikely to continue and preliminary findings are that Afghan opium production will probably bounce back in 2011.
Additionally, the price of the drug has increased, meaning that opium has become a lifeline to the Afghan economy. UNODC has focused on Herat, Farah, Nimroz, Ghor and Kandahar with the effort to contain opium cultivation and instability.
“We can definitely see a record profit in this harvest,” said the UNODC’s country office representative in Afghanistan, Jean-Luc Lemahieu.
The UNODC’s 2010 report noted that “Poverty and violence are usually portrayed as the biggest challenges confronting Afghanistan. But ask the Afghans themselves, and you get a different answer: corruption is their biggest worry.”
“For an overwhelming 59 percent of the population, the daily experience of public dishonesty is a bigger concern than insecurity (54 percent) and unemployment (52 percent),” said Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of the UNODC.
As far as the direction and oversight of all U.N. relief, recovery and reconstruction activities in Afghanistan, UNAMA is at the forefront, and their “Relief, Recovery and Reconstruction” program is aimed at coordinating the humanitarian development activities of U.N. agencies with an emphasis on five main sectors in Afghanistan: agriculture, energy, private sector development, capacity building, and higher education and vocational training.
Their human rights unit was mandated by the Security Council to assist Afghanistan’s institutions, hampered by violence in their efforts to deliver essential services, security and justice in Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz, Herat, Bamyan, Kandahar, Jalalabad and Gardez.
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) also launched a food voucher project in eastern Afghanistan, distributing monthly food vouchers to families in Jalalabad.
President Obama’s mandate – while announcing a drawdown of troops to the American public, which is divided on the war and concerned about the human and economic costs – will need to explain how Afghanistan will stabilize. The U.N. is certainly offering to bear some of the weight, but the challenge will be for the international community to shore up its efforts.
Story here.