From: "How the US Funds the Taliban" by Aram Roston
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.
(...)
The real secret to trucking in Afghanistan is ensuring security on the perilous roads, controlled by warlords, tribal militias, insurgents and Taliban commanders. The American executive I talked to was fairly specific about it: "The Army is basically paying the Taliban not to shoot at them. It is Department of Defense money." That is something everyone seems to agree on.Mike Hanna is the project manager for a trucking company called Afghan American Army Services. The company, which still operates in Afghanistan, had been trucking for the United States for years but lost out in the Host Nation Trucking contract that NCL won. Hanna explained the security realities quite simply: "You are paying the people in the local areas--some are warlords, some are politicians in the police force--to move your trucks through."
Hanna explained that the prices charged are different, depending on the route: "We're basically being extorted. Where you don't pay, you're going to get attacked. We just have our field guys go down there, and they pay off who they need to." Sometimes, he says, the extortion fee is high, and sometimes it is low. "Moving ten trucks, it is probably $800 per truck to move through an area. It's based on the number of trucks and what you're carrying. If you have fuel trucks, they are going to charge you more. If you have dry trucks, they're not going to charge you as much. If you are carrying MRAPs or Humvees, they are going to charge you more."
Hanna says it is just a necessary evil. "If you tell me not to pay these insurgents in this area, the chances of my trucks getting attacked increase exponentially."
Read the rest at The Nation.
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Comments
Of course I KNOW why - because defense contractors and their government enablers LOVE taking taxpayer money.
Personally I think we should withdraw all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. If the last 8 years has shown us anything it's that our military is really good at destroying things, and really bad at building them back up.
And to prove I'm not just another liberal, peacemonger I'll assert that I think a better course of action is for us to just "keep an eye on the situations" in both Iraq and Afghanistan. And if groups with anti-american leanings take power again and at some point we perceive they are harboring terrorists - we go in again and knock the whole thing down - and then leave.
If we have to keep going back every 10 years, so what? It'll be cheaper AND result in fewer deaths than what we're doing now - and we won't be deluding ourselves into thinking we can build democracies among cultures so disinclined to embrace it.
if you give a damn about ordinary americans, you weep for the nature of their government. but then, you think: "hold on, they have the means to establish democracy, and don't."
presumably they are either satisfied, or cowed. either way, "you get the government you deserve."