Feral Jundi

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Al Qaeda: Jihadist Privateers and The New Holy War Business Model

Filed under: Al Qaeda,Maritime Security,Somalia — Tags: , , , , , — Matt @ 8:30 AM

A senior Saudi Arabian al Qaeda operative has called on Somali jihadists to step up their attacks on “crusader” forces at sea in the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden, and on land in neighboring Djibouti, which hosts France’s largest military base in Africa. 

“To our steadfast brethren in Somalia, take caution and prepare yourselves,” Sa’id Ali Jabir Al Khathim Al Shihri (aka Abu Sufian al-Azdi) says in a new audiotape acquired by CBS News. “Increase your strikes against the crusaders at sea and in Djibouti.”  

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    That’s right, make money and fight holy war!  Now that is the kind of Jihad that sells itself. lol

    You know, it doesn’t take a counter-terror expert or an economist to realize that eventually the enemy will figure out that piracy is an excellent business model.  Think of it.  They could disrupt world economies, control large multi-ton vessels that can easily be used as weapons of mass destruction (oil and chemical tankers, etc.), terrorize western ‘non-believer’ crews and even kill them, and on top of that, they can make money in the process off of selling the loot or ransom. Not to mention that Al Qaeda and company have no laws to follow, and no borders to respect. The only rules they abide by, are the ones that will increase their odds of winning their war against the Infidels.

     Matter of fact, I can see an entire Jihadist industry developing out of this piracy deal. It happened in the early beginnings of U.S. history, why wouldn’t these guys do it?  So here come the Jihadist Privateers I guess, because if this activity is sanctioned by the enemy, then in their eyes it is not piracy, but privateering.

     These donors that keep giving money to Islamic extremists to wage holy war will eventually realize that they could turn into investors of the Jihadist Privateers, and make some money.  Much like our early privateers in the US, or the pirates off the coast of Somalia, these guys could actually start making money off the Jihad.  The business model is there, and it is a proven method that has made the Somalis millions.  Why wouldn’t the booger eaters take advantage of that?

     Same thing with the drug trade?  I could easily see Al Qaeda looking at the drug business as acceptable for their jihad against the west.  They could say they are only selling drugs to westerners, and only a truly devout muslim would not use those drugs. So that would make it ok, in the crude logic of the jihadist.

   Counterfeiting?  Why not.  How else would they be able to finance the boats or weapons for their privateers, or purchase the aircraft for transporting the drugs? I am telling you, the next level of Jihad, is killing infidels and making money in the process.  They could still martyr themselves by crashing a boat into some country’s port city, but hey, if they could make some money off of Jihad to send back home before being martyred, now that is something.

   And what is really scary, is the concept of open source piracy.  That means other supporters of Jihad, will look at this act as not piracy, but as a business venture in the name of Allah, and terrorize western shipping throughout the world’s oceans. If you have a boat and an AK 47, you are in business. You don’t have to go to Afghanistan to train to be a pirate.  All a fellow has to do, is read and watch what the Somalis are doing, and copy it. Think Ft. Hood, but on the high seas. Something to think about and watch over the coming months and years.  The war is evolving. –Matt

*Be sure to read all of the stories posted below.  There is stuff on AQ involved piracy, drug trade, and counterfeit operations. The final story is about Somali pirates luring in investors for future operations.

Also check out Dr. Walid Phares article on Jihad Corsairs or Qursaans (arabic for corsair) here.

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Al Qaeda Urges Somalis To Attack Ships

April 16, 2009

Posted by Khaled Wassef

A senior Saudi Arabian al Qaeda operative has called on Somali jihadists to step up their attacks on “crusader” forces at sea in the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden, and on land in neighboring Djibouti, which hosts France’s largest military base in Africa.

“To our steadfast brethren in Somalia, take caution and prepare yourselves,” Sa’id Ali Jabir Al Khathim Al Shihri (aka Abu Sufian al-Azdi) says in a new audiotape acquired by CBS News. “Increase your strikes against the crusaders at sea and in Djibouti.”

Shihri warns Somali militants against a conspiracy led by “the crusaders, the Jews and traitor Arab rulers,” to put an end to the Muslim extremists’ progress in Somalia.

(more…)

Friday, October 30, 2009

Industry Talk: Senator Claire McCaskill–‘Contracting is a Necessity’

Filed under: Industry Talk — Tags: , , , — Matt @ 2:29 PM

 “Contracting is a necessity,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be an evil necessity.”-Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, former Missouri state auditor and contractor watchdog

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     Ok, here is number three folks. A veritable trifecta of shockingly pro contractor statements!! (lightning will soon strike my laptop and burn my fingers–ahhhhhhh)

    To hear Senator Claire McCaskill say that little gem up top, is like hearing that Code Pink was sub-contracted by Triple Canopy for convoy operations in Afghanistan. lol It is refreshing to hear that folks are starting to finally figure out why this industry matters.

   Now to be somewhat critical of the article.  The historical context of contractors needs to go back further, if in fact the author is going to even bring up history in this article.  Contractors have had way more of an impact on this Nation’s history, than just today’s wars or our contributions in the Balkans conflict.  I have continued to bring up that history time and time again, all with the point of providing that context in today’s discussion about this industry. It is wrong not to include that context, and it shows a certain degree of either naivety, laziness or worse yet, journalistic bias.

    That’s ok, because us New Media warriors will certainly fill that void. –Matt

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New rules due on defense outsources

By: Jen DiMascioOctober 26, 2009 04:54 AM EST

In an Oct. 3, 2007, speech in Iowa City, Iowa, several weeks after Blackwater security guards allegedly shot 17 civilians in an incident in Baghdad, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama made it clear what he thought of the use of contractors to perform essential jobs in Iraq: “We cannot win a fight for hearts and minds when we outsource critical missions to unaccountable contractors.”This week the White House Office of Management and Budget is expected to release a new round of guidelines for contracting that may shed light on when the Pentagon thinks it’s appropriate to go outside the government for contractors and what sort of work the government considers “inherently governmental.”But none of the new OMB guidelines are likely to change the fact that contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan are as much of a fact of life for the Obama administration as they were under President George W. Bush.During the campaign, Obama pledged to reduce the number of battlefield contractors in Iraq — which two years ago numbered 160,000 — and he’s on the way toward meeting that goal. In Iraq, the number of contractors is down to nearly 120,000, but that’s been offset by an increase in the number of contractors in Afghanistan as the war effort grows there. As of June, the last time figures were released, 243,735 contractors were serving across the U.S. military zone known as Central Command.  (more…)

Friday, July 17, 2009

Industry Talk: Wall Street Goes to War

Filed under: Afghanistan,Industry Talk,Iraq — Tags: , , , , , , — Matt @ 5:05 AM

     Well if you want to know the DynCorp story, read this sucker.  As a contractor, we are so removed from the world of the CEO’s, investors and upper level management, and reading this article made that reality very clear.  I wonder if these guys have any ‘shared reality’ with their company?  Do they visit with the guard force in Qatar, or hang out at the mechanics shop at some airbase in Afghanistan or Iraq?  Or how about hang with the police advisors that are all over the world, or drive along during a poppy eradication mission in Afghanistan? Who knows, and for those that have worked for DynCorp, this story is for you. (some reverse shared reality I guess)

   And if any of you bigwigs with DynCorp are reading FJ, all I would like you to know is that your contractors/employees are your best asset out there–take care of them.  You are making a lot of money off of their hard work and sacrifice, and the least you can do is show them some respect and take care of your people.  I understand the concept of free market capitalism, and completely support it.  But that is not everything in life, and please take note, the most respected companies in the world do an excellent job of taking care of their people while still remaining profitable and providing an excellent service/product.

    The goal of any company in the defense industry should be to achieve what Google or Toyota has accomplished, and that is acceptance and respect.  To have your company’s name stand for something good, and not bad, should be your goal.  Be the company that contractors want to work for and customers want to do business with. And because most of DynCorp’s work is US government related, be the company that taxpayers feel is a good value. Be the company that a reporter could write about, and be in awe of it’s operations and total dedication to Kaizen and customer service/satisfaction.  And if you are profitable, there is no reason in the world to not take a little of that and invest the time and money into the little details that could make you the best.

     Maybe Forbes will write an article about a defense company like that some day? Some day….. –Matt

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Wall Street Goes to War

Nathan Vardi

Forbes

For 19 years Robert McKeon and Thomas Campbell were inseparable. They raised money and struck deals together, buying and selling dozens of companies, often in the defense sector–smallish outfits such as Athena Innovative Solutions, Integrated Defense Technologies and Vertex Aerospace. Working 12-hour days out of next-door offices in midtown Manhattan, they could hear each other’s phone conversations and knew the most personal details about each other. They golfed together, went skeet and trap shooting, traveled together for meetings and once shared a hotel room in Mexico. On Fridays they would dine, just the two of them, at Harry Cipriani, the ritzy Manhattan restaurant. “I believe we were pretty close to best friends,” says Campbell.

They also hatched the most lucrative deal of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their 2005 purchase of DynCorp International, the Falls Church, Va. provider of services to the U.S. military, landed McKeon and Campbell at the center of a booming and controversial business. The leveraged buyout also helped rip apart their relationship. McKeon ended up very rich, personally earning $350 million, or seven times his investment, and in control of a company that has emerged as the biggest winner in the war game. Campbell, forced out of DynCorp, came away with very little and has started over. Today the two former friends are locked in mortal combat–trading accusations of greed and betrayal in protracted litigation and competing for $25 billion a year in battleground services contracts for the U.S. government.

Battlefield contractors have been around for years. But their importance has grown in post-Cold War defense spending. Roughly 240,000 contractor employees, many of them foreign nationals, support U.S. missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, outnumbering the troops they serve. They provide security, military and police training, logistics and air support, reconstruction and every mundane service it takes to feed, clothe and clean fighting forces–collecting some $100 billion of the $830 billion U.S. taxpayers are on the hook for in the two wars. Though they don’t operate under the same rules of engagement as the U.S. military, contractors risk their lives; 1,360 of them have been killed and 20,000 injured in the two war zones.

(more…)

Friday, July 10, 2009

Publications: IG Says SBInet Has Too Many Contractors

Filed under: Publications,Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Matt @ 9:17 PM

     Now I read through the report, and there was no mention of EODT using armed guards to protect the building of these sites, so that was not the ‘inherently governmental’ portion they were talking about.  They were talking about the contractors doing the job of upper level management of CBP, which to me is a no-brainer–no duh that is inherently governmental.  It’s also inherently lazy on the part of the CBP to not draft their own reports for congress to read.

(more…)

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Industry Talk: GAO Finds Major Security Lapses at Federal Buildings

Filed under: Industry Talk — Tags: , , , , — Matt @ 4:42 AM

    I see a couple of failures here.  For one, you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. I would guarantee if the companies paid a decent salary for these positions, they would attract employees that would care.  But the one salary they certainly should not skimp on is the supervisor.  A well paid supervisor that knows what they are doing, could easily shore up these security issues brought up by the GAO.

  Be that as it may, most of these companies could care less about customer service or satisfaction, and most could care less about Kaizen.  Primarily because the feds have yet to put the pressure on them, and doing just ‘good enough’ is financially sound to them.  It costs money to train and costs money to get good people.  Might as well just run the show all shabby until someone blows the whistle–no one cares, until now.

   And then there is the lapse of federal oversight, which continues to be lightly mentioned in the MSM over and over.  I will not beat that dead horse.  Although I will go back to the main solution to these problems.  It’s leadership all the way.  It’s a good leader that monitors and tests the abilities of it’s security force and insures that the post orders are being followed.  It’s a good leader that recognizes deficiencies in the guard force and corrects them on the spot.  It’s a good leader that applies Kaizen, customer service and customer satisfaction to their security services. If the FPS and the companies recognized the value of focusing on these supervisors, and insuring that they are in fact getting the right man for the job, then these issues will be corrected.

   The leadership within the FPS and Companies need to be evaluated as well.  Did those leaders tasked with managing these supervisors and regions do the things necessary to insure things were going well out there?  Did they have a ‘shared reality’ with their men out in the field, or did they lead from a desk?  I think we know the answer, and the proof is in the pudding. –Matt

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GAO finds major security lapses at federal buildings

The Federal Protective Service comes under fire as government investigators tell Congress they were able to carry bomb-making materials through all 10 security checkpoints tested.

From the Los Angeles Times

By Kristina Sherry

July 9, 2009

Reporting from Washington — The Government Accountability Office told a congressional panel Wednesday that its investigators were able to carry bomb-making materials through 10 security checkpoints monitored by the Federal Protective Service, which guards nearly 9,000 facilities throughout the country.

(more…)

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