In recent weeks, it has been hoped that the United States could leave contractors in the country to get the air force, according to a senior Afghan official who recently spoke to Foreign Policy on condition of anonymity. And Kabul also hoped to turn the young militias that had sprung up in the Afghan countryside into guard-like peacekeepers to prevent the spread of the movement. Keep in mind that there were still about 7,000 entrepreneurs in Afghanistan this spring who helped lead the military and keep the air force in order. Why, one wonders, would America build an army that it knew could not sustain itself when America`s intention was to return power to the Afghans? Could it be that war profiteers and their allies hoped to reap handsome profits from continued non-state relations, even after the official U.S. withdrawal from the country? After nearly two decades, the rapid U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan has turned the lives of thousands of private security contractors in some of the world`s poorest countries — not the leased weapons, but the praised hands that served the U.S. war effort. For years, they worked in the shadows as cleaners, cooks, construction workers, waiters, and technicians on sprawling American bases. U.S. officials after the 11 attacks.
In September 2001, private contractors adopted it as an essential part of the US military response. The Montreux document on private military and security companies – which reflects the intergovernmental consensus that international law applies to private security companies in war zones – requires private security companies to “respect and ensure the well-being of their personnel”. Unfortunately, this is not a binding agreement. And while global private security companies in Afghanistan have closed the store for now, the consequences and human costs associated with outsourcing the war remain. Contractors continued to advise Afghan troops via video, but former officials said it was no substitute for working with them. The Australian case reflects the British government`s political about-face involving 125 Afghan security forces at its embassy in Kabul. Afghanistan, known as “the graveyard of empires,” has been a sauce train for the global private security industry over the past two decades, as war has been increasingly privatized and outsourced. But while some Americans are leaving, others are also arriving in Bagram, which senior Afghan military officials have confirmed will be the remaining center for entrepreneurs. In April, 70 U.S.
security and defense companies began bidding for more than 100 new security and intelligence positions, some of which have annual contracts beyond September 11, 2021. “The use of contractors allowed America to fight a war that many Americans had forgotten we were fighting,” Vittori said. In addition to maintaining airports and bases, equipment and aircraft, the army and contractors rely on a force of Afghan contractors and premises for workers, such as cooks, laundry staff, drivers and translators – employees who will be most financially affected by the withdrawal. At the height of the war, it was estimated that more than 12,000 Afghans were working in Bagram. Today, there are still about 1,700. “After four years as a translator, I fear being fired. We are all worried. We`ve seen this before, and in what seemed like a day, hundreds of us left the bases for the last time,” says an Afghan entrepreneur who works in Bagram. “I was lucky, but I`m not betting on keeping my job this time.
Maybe I`ve already seen my last paycheck. We are all preparing for the worst. Dr. Anna Powles has advised the United Nations Development Programme on security sector reform and private security sector governance and is co-leader of a research project on private security companies in the Pacific. According to the lawyer and former army officer representing the security guards, his clients had not yet received the humanitarian visas, and the about-face was just an attempt by Australian officials to “make it look like they were doing their job when they sat on their hands for so long.” Experts told Foreign Policy that Afghan troops could still do ground combat bases without U.S. contractors, and they even added some level of capability in repairing military vehicles. It`s up to America to think about how and why so much of such a vital conflict was attributed to private entrepreneurs — and whether that kind of approach was even partly responsible for the debacle that followed. Maybe. It is not even a question of addressing the question of whether so much of the foreign policy of the most powerful country in the world should be in the hands of companies that do not respond to the people who pay the bill, namely taxpayers. I would have expected more Americans to be outraged. “This is a really sensitive area, and these people have to do a very delicate dance with their activities so as not to come into conflict with the law,” Kugelman said. “The government wants to step back and move on, with the remaining security presence largely kept out of the public.
The last thing he wants is another controversy about contractors and needs to be very careful when making decisions about how to deal with the remaining contractors after September. “It is possible that some contracts may be terminated prematurely, but this could result in heavy penalties or legal hurdles for the change or termination. The Professional Services Council, an organization that represents companies that contract with the government, cited a lower figure from the U.S. Department of Labor that nearly 4,000 federal contractors have been killed since 2001. Many American entrepreneurs who have spent years of their lives on the ground in a war that has cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars are willing to give up. “If they offered me early termination of my contract, I would accept it,” said one Bagram contractor. “Fuck this place, I mean, good luck to the Afghan guys who were left here with the talibs to be honest, they deserve more but all I can say is they`re fucked.” For those still in Bagram, the U.S. war is not yet ending with an exit from the U.S. military, and for newcomers who are about to enter Bagram, an important and perhaps more secretive new mission is imminent. ==References=====External links===The companies mandated by the Ministry of Defense have not only dealt with logistics in war zones such as operating fuel convoys and occupying the Chow lines, but have also performed critical tasks such as training and equipping the Afghan security forces – security forces that collapsed last month when the Taliban captured the country.
Thousands of these contractors – often military veterans working for private security companies – left Afghanistan weeks ago and were deployed elsewhere in the region or in the Persian Gulf. “We built the Afghan army in our image to be an army operating with air support and intelligence [and] whose backbone is entrepreneurs,” David Sedney, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan, said in a recent interview with Foreign Policy. Jack Detsch is a Pentagon reporter for Foreign Policy and a national security reporter. Twitter: @JackDetsch The skies over Kabul have been flooded with massive cargo planes stealing equipment amid the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Some fly from Bagram Air Base, a stronghold of American monsters that once housed 40,000 military and civilian contractors at the height of the war. Today, there are 3,300 U.S. troops across the country who, like their NATO counterparts, must all leave by the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Could it be that a culture of outsourcing and a culture of entrepreneurs are partly to blame? Much of the funding went to arms suppliers, according to the study, which showed how the U.S. reliance on war contractors prepared Afghanistan for mission failures. Relying less on private contractors and more on the U.S. military than in previous wars could have given the U.S.
a better chance of winning in Afghanistan, Vittori noted. She said this would have meant that US presidents had accepted the political risks of sending more US troops to Afghanistan and recovering more body bags of US troops. DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Some of the foreign entrepreneurs who pushed the logistics of America`s “eternal war” in Afghanistan are now on an endless stop in Dubai with no way home. In both cases, these Afghan entrepreneurs fell into the shady legal vacuum between the private security company that employed them on the ground and the governments that contracted their employers. .
