Feral Jundi

     There’s no doubt things are hotting up.  Our convoys are being hit every day by IED and ambushes – often, combined.  The bad guys seem to be moving in larger groups and, to us, it seems that they are operating with virtual impunity on certain sections of Hwy 1, in particular in the vicinity of Hawz-e Madad where we can guarantee running an ambush as the convoy passes through the gardens that border the road.  We’ve lost four KIA in that 10km stretch in the past week alone. I know this small section of highway is only a fly-spot on the map of Afghanistan, but I do wonder just what the hell ISAF is doing about it.  They know this is a hot-spot but they don’t appear to be doing anything – worse, if they are doing something it is utterly ineffective.- From the blog Kandahar Diary

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     In a 10-month period between June 2009 and April 2010, 260 private security contractors working for the Defense Department made the ultimate sacrifice, while over the same period, 324 U.S. troops were killed. In analyzing the numbers, the report found a private security contractor “working for DOD in Afghanistan is 4.5 times more likely to be killed than uniformed personnel.” 

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     These quotes up top will give you the best idea as to how intense operations are for contractors in Afghanistan right now.  And this includes all types of contractors, and not just LN’s (Expats and TCNs). The article below identifies the latest numbers that came out of the CRS and it is stunning to say the least.

     But what is worse is the lack of accountability for all of these deaths.  To depend upon some hobbyist running icasualties.org is not cool at all.  Matter of fact, the accounting of all contractor deaths (LN, TCN, Expat) should be a law that congress creates and funds.  It is the least we can do.

     Another point I would like to make, is that we should also honor these deaths by letting the families display something similar to the Gold Star flag in the windows of their homes.  Contractors from all over the world have been killed in this war, and each contractor killed had a family who mourned their loss.  How does that family memorialize their lost loved one, other than a grave marker/headstone? Do they fly a flag, do they plant a tree, or what?  I say one way to help in this area, is that some kind of globally recognized symbol should apply to the civilian contractors who have died in this war.  If a Fijian family had lost a son in Iraq, they should be able to fly a ‘Gold Star flag’ in their window. If an Iraqi family lost a family member who was a contractor, they should at least have the option to be able to fly a flag in their window.(if they choose to do so) I think any way we can honor those deaths, as well as officially count them, is the right thing to do.  Rest in peace to the fallen. –Matt

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Hundreds of Afghanistan contractor deaths go unreported

By Justin Elliott

Thursday, Jul 15, 2010

In one of the least examined aspects of President Obama’s escalation of the Afghan war, armed private security contractors are being killed in action by the hundreds — at a rate more than four times that of U.S. troops, according to a previously unreported congressional study.

At the same time, the Obama administration has drastically increased the military’s reliance on private security contractors, the vast majority of whom are Afghans who are given the dangerous job of guarding aid and military convoys, the new Congressional Research Service study found.

In a 10-month period between June 2009 and April 2010, 260 private security contractors working for the Defense Department made the ultimate sacrifice, while over the same period, 324 U.S. troops were killed. In analyzing the numbers, the report found a private security contractor “working for DOD in Afghanistan is 4.5 times more likely to be killed than uniformed personnel.”

Unlike when a soldier is killed in action and the military promptly issues a press release describing the circumstances of the death, contractor deaths go almost entirely unreported by the Pentagon, and, by extension, the media. As a result, both the level of violence and the number of people being killed as part of the U.S. effort in Afghanistan are being significantly underreported.

Details about how the private security contractors are dying are exceedingly hard to come by, beyond the fact that the majority were killed while guarding convoys.

The Defense Department told Salon it does not track the names or even the nationalities of the killed contractors, though a DOD official recently testified to Congress that the military’s private security contractor force is over 90 percent Afghan.

“We have a very, very rigiorous system of tracking the soldiers and civilians who are killed — it’s publicly released, every single name,” Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. Elizabeth Robbins told Salon. “But with contractors, it’s up to their contracted company.”

Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Salon that the Afghan private security contractors guarding convoys can be particularly vulnerable because they often lack the armored vehicles or helicopters that U.S. troops travel in. “The casualties can come from anything from the Taliban, to fights between contractors, to failure to pay local warlords off and an occasional reminder to do that,” he said.

Those casualty numbers are likely to continue to rise as the military retains more and more private security contractors. When Obama announced last November that he was sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, for a total of 100,000, the number of armed security contractors had already been surging.

In March 2009, about the time Obama entered office, there were 4,000 contractors working for the DOD in Afghanistan. One year later, in March 2010, there were more than 16,000, according to the congressional study.

Story here.