REPORT- Afghanistan: US Defense Contractors Pay Insurgents Millions- Our Tax Dollars Hard At Work?!

[Orwellian_Ghost]

Afghanistan: US defense contractors pay insurgents millions, report says
By John Byrne

November 12, 2009

US defense contractors are funding insurgents in Afghanistan, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, according to a report in The Nation published Thursday.

The report, by veteran investigative correspondent Aram Roston, asserts that US military contractors charged with assisting US forces in Afghanistan are actually funding the groups killing American soldiers. Roston describes a protection racket similar to that of the mafia, in which contractors pay the Taliban "protection money" not to attack them.

"In this grotesque carnival, the US military's contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes," Roston writes. "It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting. And it is a deadly irony, because these funds add up to a huge amount of money for the Taliban.

"It's a big part of their income," a top Afghan government security official purportedly told told The Nation.

Added an American defense executive, "The Army is basically paying the Taliban not to shoot at them. It is Department of Defense money."

...

http://rawstory.com/2009/11/defense-contractors-funding-taliban-report-finds/

How the US Funds the Taliban

On October 29, 2001, while the Taliban's rule over Afghanistan was under assault, the regime's ambassador in Islamabad gave a chaotic press conference in front of several dozen reporters sitting on the grass. On the Taliban diplomat's right sat his interpreter, Ahmad Rateb Popal, a man with an imposing presence. Like the ambassador, Popal wore a black turban, and he had a huge bushy beard. He had a black patch over his right eye socket, a prosthetic left arm and a deformed right hand, the result of injuries from an explosives mishap during an old operation against the Soviets in Kabul.

...

Flash forward to 2009, and Afghanistan is ruled by Popal's cousin President Hamid Karzai. Popal has cut his huge beard down to a neatly trimmed one and has become an immensely wealthy businessman, along with his brother Rashid Popal, who in a separate case pleaded guilty to a heroin charge in 1996 in Brooklyn. The Popal brothers control the huge Watan Group in Afghanistan, a consortium engaged in telecommunications, logistics and, most important, security. Watan Risk Management, the Popals' private military arm, is one of the few dozen private security companies in Afghanistan. One of Watan's enterprises, key to the war effort, is protecting convoys of Afghan trucks heading from Kabul to Kandahar, carrying American supplies.

Welcome to the wartime contracting bazaar in Afghanistan. It is a virtual carnival of improbable characters and shady connections, with former CIA officials and ex-military officers joining hands with former Taliban and mujahedeen to collect US government funds in the name of the war effort.

In this grotesque carnival, the US military's contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes. It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting. And it is a deadly irony, because these funds add up to a huge amount of money for the Taliban. "It's a big part of their income," one of the top Afghan government security officials told The Nation in an interview. In fact, US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon's logistics contracts--hundreds of millions of dollars--consists of payments to insurgents.

...

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091130/roston

[Sinti]

1. Wow - in business that's called demand generation n/t

[Orwellian_Ghost]

3. The enemy of my enemy is

my broker?

:shrug:

[Sinti]

5. That is how War, Inc. works

A seller doesn't really care WHO is buying, the question is only IF they are buying. Otherwise, they'd go out of business - regular men cannot abide war, they'd prefer to sit back with a good meal, good conversation, and maybe a long drink. :)

[HCE SuiGeneris]

2. Control the news and the sheep stay asleep. Just ask Faux.

We are imprisoned by the conglomerate stranglehold on what passes for news. The reality for most Americans is totally contrived. IOW, we are a mile down a terribly smelly shithole...

[SpiralHawk]

4. This is like Ollie North giving our US Hawk missiles to the Evil Empire of Iran

RepubliconThink. Ptoooey.

[bigtree]

6. the military does too

Gareth Porter, in his excellent report on NATO forces' payments to Afghan warlords writes:

The revelation by the New York Times Wednesday that Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, has long been on the payroll of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is only the tip of a much bigger iceberg of heavy dependence by U.S. and NATO counterinsurgency forces on Afghan warlords for security, according to a recently published report and investigations by Australian and Canadian journalists.

U.S. and other NATO military contingents operating in the provinces of Afghanistan's predominantly Pashtun south and east have been hiring private militias controlled by Afghan warlords, according to these sources, to provide security for their forward operating bases and other bases and to guard convoys.

A report published by the Center on International Cooperation at New York University in September notes that U.S. and NATO contingents have frequently hired security providers that are covertly owned by warlords who have "ready-made" private militias which compete with state institutions for power . . .

Two anonymous United Nations sources cited in the report estimate that 1,000 to 1,500 unregistered armed security groups have been "employed, trained, and armed by ISAF" and "Coalition Forces" for security services. As many as 120,000 armed individuals are estimated by the U.N. sources to belong to about 5,000 private militias in Afghanistan.

read more: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49056


and in Iraq:

Oct. 8, 2007: The United States military is paying tribal leaders in Iraq to secure their loyalty and ensure peace, but critics contend empowering regional strongmen is creating a warlord state with tribal and religious leaders operating increasingly independent and often unconstitutionally.

In Tikrit’s Salah Ad Din province, the United states Army has spent more than $5 million to buy the loyalty of 26 different sheikhs, it adds.

With Iraqi Prime Minister Noori al-Maliki government, weaker than ever before, unable to provide basic services even to Baghdad power brokers in the provinces are enjoying something of a renaissance.

Newsweek quoted an unidentified American diplomat as referring the project derisively as a "guns and whiskey" strategy . . .

http://www.asianage.com/presentation/leftnavigation/news/international/%E2%80%98us-army-pays-iraq-warlords-for-peace%E2%80%99.aspx

[Orwellian_Ghost]

7. Here's a report on the story in today's Guardian

How the US army protects its trucks – by paying the Taliban

Insurance, security or extortion? The US is spending millions of dollars in Afghanistan to ensure its supply convoys get through – and it's the Taliban who profit



Afghan soldiers at the scene of a Taliban attack on a US supply truck. Photograph: Ahmad Masood/REUTERS

On 29 October 2001, while the Taliban's rule over Afghanistan was under assault, the regime's ambassador in Islamabad in neighbouring Pakistan gave a chaotic press conference in front of several dozen reporters sitting on the grass. On the Taliban diplomat's right sat his interpreter, Ahmad Rateb Popal, a man with an imposing presence. Like the ambassador, Popal wore a black turban, and he had a huge bushy beard. He had a black patch over his right eye socket, a prosthetic left arm and a deformed right hand, the result of injuries from an explosives mishap during an old operation against the Soviets in Kabul.

But Popal was more than just a former mujahideen. In 1988, a year before the Soviets fled Afghanistan, Popal had been charged in the United States with conspiring to import more than a kilo of heroin. Court records show he was released from prison in 1998.

...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/13/us-trucks-security-taliban

[Toots]

8. And boy howdy were we upset with Saddam because he gave money to the widows

of suicide bombers from Palestine..That was how we justified that Saddam supported terrorism. Saddam gave widows money that had no other means of support after their husbands were killed..What a crime that was, but giving money to actual groups of people killing American soldiers, :shrug: no big deal..

[Mari333]

9. knr for the rotten truth