I would like to put this out there that this industry is ready to pounce on whatever the war effort requires. If you need more security for your civilian surge, then hot damn, the security contracting industry will jump on it and meet your needs. If you need to secure convoys and guard routes up in the north, then security contractors could totally do that. If you need to train up thousands of Afghan police and military, then security contractors can totally do that as well. Whatever the war effort needs, it could be solved by utilizing the free market power of the security contracting industry. With just one caveat though.
The government must take responsibility for contracting those services. You must manage these contracts by providing the necessary man power to watch the companies, and you must write smart contracts that give the companies everything they need to accomplish the mission yet still makes it easy to control them. This is not a difficult concept to understand, and each contract should be treated with the utmost respect and care. Give the contract what it needs to be successful, by applying quality control measures and some Kaizen. Be like the worried home owner, watching over the building of their house, and the government will do just fine with managing these contracts.
The deal is that we have been doing these jobs in the war for awhile, and the only reason they have faltered is because of the lack of oversight by the government. This lack of oversight allows the environment necessary for poor management to happen within the companies.
And what really kills me is that we have seen an increase of security contractors in Afghanistan this year, so this post is completely relevant to the discussion about what is possible. Once there is good leadership on the government’s part, the companies will fall in line. We have a chance to do this right, but it takes real effort and an application of lessons learned to get it done. The pay off will be mission accomplishment and victory, and that would be something we could all be proud of and celebrate. –Matt
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Taliban grab foothold in north
By Jonathan S. Landay
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
Monday, Aug. 31 2009
BAGHLAN-I-JADID, Afghanistan — Taliban insurgents have taken over parts of two
northern provinces from which they were driven in 2001, threatening to disrupt
NATO’s new supply route from Central Asia and expand a war that has largely