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Afghan security firms allegedly extorting as much as $4 million weekly

By RICHARD LARDNER

updated 4:21 p.m. MT, Mon., June 21, 2010//

WASHINGTON – Criminal investigators are examining allegations that Afghan security firms have been extorting as much as $4 million a week from contractors paid with U.S. tax dollars and then funneling the spoils to warlords and the Taliban.

If the allegations are true, the U.S. would be unintentionally financing the enemy and undermining international efforts to stabilize the country.

The payments reportedly end up in insurgent hands through a $2.1 billion Pentagon contract to transport food, water, fuel and ammunition to American troops stationed at bases across Afghanistan. To ensure safe passage through dangerous areas, the trucking companies make payments to local security firms with ties to the Taliban or warlords who control the roads. If the payments aren’t made, the convoys will be attacked, according to a U.S. military document detailing the allegations being examined by investigators.

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Up to $4 million weekly

The document says the companies hired under the Afghan Host Nation Trucking contract may be paying between $2 million and $4 million a week to insurgent groups.

Chris Grey, a spokesman for the Army Criminal Investigation Command at Fort Belvoir, Va., confirmed Monday that the inquiry is under way. But he said he would not provide details in order “to protect the integrity of the ongoing case.”

One of the security firms under scrutiny is Watan Risk Management, one of the largest security providers in Afghanistan. Watan representatives allegedly negotiate or dictate the price for security in a given area, according to the document, and also issue warnings to trucking companies that are late in paying or refuse to do so.

A woman who answered the telephone at Watan’s office in Kabul said the company would have no comment and hung up.

A congressional subcommittee chaired by Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., conducted its own investigation into the trucking contract. Its report, released Monday, says the trucking contractors pay tens of millions of dollars annually to local warlords across Afghanistan in exchange for guarding their supply convoys.

“Although the warlords do provide guards and coordinate security, the contractors have little choice but to use them in what amounts to a vast protection racket,” the report says. “The consequences are clear: Trucking companies that pay the highway warlords for security are provided protection; trucking companies that do not pay believe they are more likely to find themselves under attack. As a result, almost everyone pays.”

Thousands in bribes
The report also said the insurgents aren’t the only beneficiaries. One security company told the subcommittee that it had to pay $1,000 to $10,000 in monthly bribes to nearly every Afghan governor, police chief and local military unit whose territory the company passed through.

The subcommittee is holding a hearing Tuesday on its findings.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said Monday that Tierney’s investigation may have jeopardized the military’s inquiry. Issa, the top Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said several witnesses who spoke to congressional investigators are now not cooperating with the Pentagon’s criminal probe. He did not explain why.

The Host Nation Trucking contract is a critical component of the effort to keep more than 200 U.S. military combat outposts throughout the country stocked. Supplies are typically shipped through Pakistan to Bagram Airfield, the U.S. military’s main hub in Afghanistan, and then on to the outlying bases.

Bribes and kickbacks are often part of the business environment in Afghanistan.

At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in December, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton acknowledged the long, rugged supply lines to landlocked Afghanistan through Pakistan’s port city of Karachi offer numerous opportunities for fraud and corruption that pad the Taliban’s accounts.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

She frikkin quit to go be a celebrity!!  That’s Public service I tell you!

Vagrant

Well it’s official, down come the Christmas Trees (if yours isn’t down already, off come the Christmas lights, no more Christmas music, even wordpress has stopped the snow flakes a falling.  Last night was the end of a Christmas light extravaganza that I took some pictures of.

Jack

What a shit year hungh?

If those words are not going to be going through your head tonight when that ball drops and you cling clang your plastic glass of free champagne at whatever house party, nightclub, or bar your at…. then please stop reading right now!

But for all of you out there that are left scratching your head wondering what the hell happened this year, I’m with ya!  This was the year that many of the people I knew were either fired, went out of business, got sick, or went back to war for an average of their fifth or more tour.  Yes this was a shitty year indeed.
This year could basically be summed up in three categories:  The Economy, Health Care, and The War.  So here’s my year’s roll-up according to V

The Economy:

This was the year where unemployment rose to 10% even with the optimism that the stimulus package was supposed to bring.  This was also the year of the almighty bailout.  Merrill Lynch, Goldman and Sachs, Chrysler, the list goes on and on.  Wasn’t this supposed to be a capitalist society we live in?  The economy was so bad this year that even illegal immigration dropped 11%.  OK, OK, I know enforcement is most likely the main reason for that one.  It seemed like everybody I knew was getting laid off.  A female friend of mine is now collecting unemployment because the company she was a secretary for was sold off for spare parts and closed down by a bank that is now also out of business.  My sister had to return to a job she had 10 years ago after all the teacher layoffs and furloughs given to the public schools and universities of California.  After 11 years of military service and enough college to start as a junior, even I couldn’t enroll into a University due to overcrowding and under funding of those same schools.  One of my friend’s , who is one semester away from finishing her BA, couldn’t even get into school because the class she needed was filled.  While her college loans continue to build with interest, she’s barely getting by on minimum wage.  I guess the people I mentioned though shouldn’t be complaining because they had jobs to start the year with.

On a brighter note though, the DOW is slowing rising, the housing market has seemed to have hit bottom, and the Bureau of Labor has recorded that November and December showed record lows for mass lay-offs and unemployment.  To quote Harvey Dent from Batman, “the night is darkest right before the dawn!”  Things will get better!  Now onto my other two not so positive moments.

Health Care:

This was the year that I got some first hand experience into the health care system though not through being at town hall meetings or protesting in the streets screaming about death panels or Obama the Nazi Socialist (Nazi’s were fascists, Commies are socialist, OK?  You can’t have it both ways).  Being a Veteran of both OIF and OEF, I was afforded five years of “free health care” through the Veterans Affairs hospital upon my day of discharge from active duty.  With eleven years of rucking hundreds of pounds of equipment on my back and jumping out of perfectly good airplanes, its safe to say that my body could have some wear and tear.  With a bad back needing physical therapy and five months of waiting, I still have not received the much-needed MRI that would give me a diagnosis for the free physical therapy I need.  What do I do?  I just continue to make it worst by working my ass off with my current job in excruciating pain.  Pain that is the result of four deployments and a combined time of over two years in combat zones overseas.  And I’m considered a spring chicken compared to many of my peers.

While standing around in line at the VA staring at images of the President on TV preaching his health care reform bill, I couldn’t help but wonder was this VA system going to be the model for public health care?  For awhile I started siding with the conservative right on this issue.  But then I also saw first hand the LIMFACS (that’s limiting factors for all of you that no habla) of the private sector as both my parents went to the ER this year for treatment.  First it was my father that had to go in for a mild heart attack.  He received treatment from an AED and was given some heart medications to help thin his blood and prevent clotting.  Lucky for him he is over 65 so he can qualify for medicare but he was also covered by his private health care provider as well.  In the end he still had to pay hundreds of dollars out of his own pocket for the medications he received and some of the other bills that were attributed while he stayed there.  I happened to look at the entire cost of staying in the hospital for a couple of nights and the treatment he received.  Before the insurance payment were subtracted from the cost, the bill was around six figures.  WTF over!  How is that ever so gently fucking possible?!!!  How does one have TWO health care providers and still have to pay out of your own pocket the rest of a bill that is already grossly over inflated!!!  That leads up to my mom who is now enrolled in a hospital for Ovarian Cancer treatment.  Once again same deal.  Medicare and the health care provider are only going to cover about 75% of the procedure.  Mind you both of my parents have led an extremely healthy life and are now no longer working.  So how the hell are they supposed to afford these bills?  How would this effect a family that didn’t qualify for Medicare?  Had my parents not had the government funded health care, this year could have sunk everything they had worked their whole life for.  How is this efficient?  How is this fair?  So once again I had to think to myself that the private health care provider isn’t the answer in this whole health care debacle either.  It’s like Congressman Grayson said the plan is “don’t get sick, and if you do….die quickly!”

People seriously need to rest this holiday and then hit their congressman via E-mail on their first day back to work (if your lucky enough to still be working) and see what the hell is going on up there on Capital Hill.  The pompous right and the spineless left have compromised on a bill that won’t help anyone!  The bill went from the public option, single payer health care to a bogus bill that is 2,000 pages full of bureaucratic bullshit that won’t even cover every American nor cover all medical expenses for your average American.  I can tell you who it does cover though.  Insurance companies.  So I ask you why should we all be paying for a health care system that won’t cover every American while additionally only cover up to a certain dollar amount for yourself while once again you’ll need a private provider to cover the rest?  This isn’t socialized medicine!!  This is social idiocy and its the product of buckling Dems and asshole right wing Glenn Becks, and dipshit town hall picket fencing retards.  The bill is going to be passed so the left can say they conquered health care.  It will only create an inefficient system however that the right will put on a pedestal for incompetency for the next election.  2014 BTW is when this thing is supposed to go into action.  Consider new elections and more ratifications in the years to come.  By the time the people who really need free health care get it the year will probably be around 2020.  In the end we as a collective society loose.  So are you for public health care or against it?  If your for it this bill isn’t what you wanted it to be.  If your against it, your still going to lose.  With the momentum this thing has it’s going to pass.  But you can thank your constituents for instead of making a bill that would’ve helped all Americans your now going to pay double for a health care that won’t do much for anyone.  Thanks a lot you selfless sabotaging morons.  It’s like making another hole in a boat while your buddies are trying to scoop the leaking water over the side.  Wait a second you guys aren’t buddies!

The War:

And of course the last stop on my soapbox the War!  Yes this is the year where America decided it was going back to Afghanistan.  Back to Afghanistan you might say?  But I thought America was already there?  Yes, our country’s servicemen and women are there but the American public is in the malls, Facebook, Twitter, Michael Jackson’s funeral, Tiger Wood’s estate, and writing ridiculous nothings about shows like Jersey Shore on the Internet.  Nope, America and any kind of strategy to win left Afghanistan in March 2003.  Why March of 2003?  Yep that’s right in 2003 we mentally left Afghanistan and went into Iraq.  I say we because I was there when it happened.  Hell I remember pulling an ambush on a dead Taliban corpse the day Donald Rumsfeld declared that all major combat actions had ceased in Afghanistan.  Yes, this year was the deadliest and most violent year yet for our soldiers over there.  How could this of happened?  The same way 9-11 happened.  Neglect.  We were too busy in Iraq to balance both sides of the war.  I believe some other additions to this neglect towards Afghanistan, us!  A public that cares is a public that checks.  Nobody cared about Afghanistan once Iraq was going on.  Hell many Americans didn’t even care about what was going on in Iraq!!

From a tactical point of view another problem in this equation is the coalition.  In 2005 the Helmand province (heart of the Taliban Insurgency) was given to British, Canadian, French, Romanian, and Italian forces.  Now I’m not saying that those countries do not produce fine soldiers, in fact I’d fight side by side with the Brits any day.  They are however no where even comparable to our nation’s military.  So when we scale down or leave a province, it is a big fracking  hole to fill.  Hey it’s not your fault Europe (yes I know the UK does not claim Europe), it’s because of that huge budget we put into our military.  You know the one your always ragging on us about.  Another LIMFAC (there’s that word again) is in many of the coalition’s tactics.  Oddly enough when many of those nations I mentioned are on patrol and when shots are fired, they tend to integrate air power into the solution similar to what we did to Munich in 1945.

Also Interview with the Taliban

Newsweek put out an article this year called Interview With the Taliban.  I’d put a picture of that article up but when I googled for it all I got was the cover for the issue with Sarah Palin on the cover.  They should have put the article in that issue.  More people would have read it.  In that article you can chronologically follow where the Taliban were mentally beat and about ready to throw in the towel in this war and where they got their second wind.  It all happened when we left for Iraq.  One of the Mullah Commanders is quoted as saying “Iraq was great for our cause.  It not only left the Americans preoccupied with another war but the skills learned in Iraq on the roadside bombs were invaluable.  We are even better at making bombs now than the Arabs.”  One Taliban commander said the two distinctive factors to shifting the populace support towards his cause was the corrupt Karzai government and the mounting civilian casualties (IE see coalition airstrikes).  The year when the Taliban started mounting (not the good kind either) major offenses into the Helmand were between 2006-2008.  Guess what was happening during those years?  Well 2006 was the most dangerous year in Iraq and 07-08 was the Petraeus recommended and Bush approved surge.  And how is Iraq these days?  Just lovely!  It’s one mosque bombing away from being back to ohhh I’d say around the beginning of 2005.  But hey we’re talking about Afghanistan here so back to that problem.

Should we stay or should we go?  Well that question has kind of been answered by our Commander-in-Chief so the real question is do we have a chance in winning this thing?  Well that really depends on what your definition of winning is.  Is it a ticker tape V-day parade in Times Square with a Navy swabbie kissing a white-clad nurse?  Well no, cause that sure as shit isn’t going to happen.  So what is our definition of win?  Problem is I don’t know if we have one just yet.  I can tell you one thing, we are not winning now.  The thing about Afghanistan is it’s a guerrillas war and to win that you need the support of the populace.  The populace right now hate our frackin guts but they hate the Taliban too.  The Afghans really hate us because we haven’t been able to do anything productive for their way of life (yeah a little of that Muslim vs. Crusader thing too).  The truth is the Afghan tradition is to side with who they think is going to win.  Maybe if we get some troops into these provincial hubs and can set up some sort of stability where a tangible result can be felt in each and every one of those peoples hands, we might have a chance of gaining some trust.  This mutual trust could build on a dedication that could win this thing.  This tangible result would be in the form of a medical facility where  child mortality isn’t as likely to increase, or a school where they can see their boys and girls read more than just a Koran, or a power plant that can actually give a family power past six o’clock PM.  The list goes on and on but in the end this defined win will have to include a government and president free of corruption so that the young men of that country may start to develop a self pride that is stronger for their nation, than of their tribe.  I defined win where a group of young men will one day be more willing to lay down their lives for a unified Afghanistan than a religiously ideological organization.  A defined win where those young men at some point have to stop being American!

Good bye 2009…….. I shall never speak of you again for 2010 can only get better or eclipse you entirely

Vagrant

Very Respectfully!

Jack

Jack

Vagrant

THAT'S RIGHT.....I'M TALKING TO YOU!!!!!

The link is on the blogroll

It's a bunch of trippy brain teasers

See how far you can get....some are pretty tricky

Beautifully Illustrated

Enjoy!!

Jack