The U.S. military's bases in Afghanistan are frequently guarded by Afghans who pay kickbacks to warlords – and even aid the Taliban.

That's what the Senate Armed Services Committee found after a year-long investigation into 125 contracts held by private security firms in Afghanistan. In a report released today (.pdf), the committee discovered that the firms rely on "warlords and strongmen" to supply them with security guards for protecting U.S. military bases, some of whom kill one another and moonlight as insurgents attacking U.S. troops. And the Defense Department barely vets the security companies it hires. At least one of those companies just won another contract with the State Department – to protect the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

"There is significant evidence that some security contractors even work against our coalition forces, creating the very threat that they are hired to combat," Senator Carl Levin, the committee chairman, told reporters Thursday. "These contractors threaten the security of our troops and risk the success of our mission."

No one – including Levin – really believes that it's practical to end the U.S. military's reliance on security guards in warzones. At least not if U.S. troops are going to actually fight their wars, not just guard their bases. But the Senate committee, like a House oversight panel before it, concludes that such reliance, matched with the realities of doing business in a corruption-plagued country like Afghanistan, is a "systemic" liability for U.S. troops. And as of May, there were 26,000 private security contractors at work in Afghanistan, the equivalent of more than a U.S. Army division.

A case in point: in the western province of Herat, EOD Technology received a nearly-$7 million contract with the Army to protect an Afghan-police training center in the village of Adraskan. To fill the 350 guard posts it needed, it turned to what the committee calls "local strongmen," including a man named Said Abdul Wahab Qattili, who used to run something called the "Jihadi Order Regiment of Herat." A company employee termed the so-called General Wahab "the go-to guy."

He also had no problem demanding kickbacks. An employee for a different contractor said that Wahab's men "tried to bulldoze me, to intimidate me into paying money to people who did not work here." While it doesn't appear from the committee's report that EODT paid Wahab or other warlords – with the exception of a still-employed "Commander Blue" – some of them briefly kidnapped EODT personnel.

Yet EODT maintained ties with the warlords, apparently to ensure safe passage for its employees a contract that has yet to expire [UPDATE: See EODT's statement to the press below.] In June, EODT won another $99.9 million to protect military installations in northeastern Afghanistan. And despite its history of working with warlords, last week, the State Department announced EODT won a $274 million contract to guard the U.S. embassy in Kabul, part of its $10 billion Worldwide Protective Services contract.

But perhaps the most troubling case the bipartisan inquiry uncovered occurred elsewhere in Herat, where the Air Force and a company called ECC awarded a $5.1 million sub-contract to ArmorGroup in 2007 to protect the Shindand Airbase. Yes, that ArmorGroup – the ones who did shots out of each others' butts while ostensibly protecting the U.S. embassy in Kabul. Since ArmorGroup didn't have any existing staff near Shindand, it turned to Timor Shah and Nadir Khan for their recommendations.

Shah and Khan were odd choices for character references. Internal ArmorGroup documents discovered by the committee found references to them as "two feuding warlords" operating around the airbase. Even knowing their questionable character, ArmorGroup used the men it would dub "Mr. White" and "Mr. Pink" – it's a Reservoir Dogs reference – to supply 30 men to guard Shindad, even though it claims to have never paid them directly. Within months, the guards were beefing amongst themselves and with Afghan security forces in the area, shooting off guns and threatening to kill one another.

But all hell broke loose in December 2007, when Mr. Pink murdered Mr. White in a gun battle at a local bazaar, shooting him in the head, the side and the hip.

"It was kind of like a mafia thing," an employee for ECC told committee staff. "If you rub somebody out, you'll get a bigger piece of the pie." But even though ArmorGroup wrote memos expressing concern about the safety of the base in the wake of the killing, it struck a deal with Shah's brothers, called "Mr. White II" and "Mr. White III" to provide more guards; a sister company holding a United Nations contract, ArmorGroup Mine Action, hired White II directly. Pink disappeared after the slaying. And within months, the military received reports that the White brothers supported the Taliban and that Pink was a "mid-level Taliban manager." Yet none of the guards were ever fired.

On August 21, 2008, U.S. forces learned that Mr. White II was going to host a meeting with a known Taliban commander called Mullah Sadeq. They launched what came to be known as the Azizabad Raid, a firefight against White's forces that lasted hours and required AC-130 gunships and a 500-pound bomb. The death toll in what became a point of friction between the U.S. and the Karzai government included seven men employed by ArmorGroup who had on them anti-tank mines, machines guns, $4,000 in cash – and what a military official described as "rudimentary sketches of what appeared to be Shindand Airfield."

That was what it ultimately took to fire the White brothers' guards. But ArmorGroup was allowed to keep its multi-million dollar contract for Shindand security until the base transitioned to Afghan control that December. ArmorGroup Mine Action's company director, David McDonnell told the committee directly that he was "forever grateful to Mr. White's family... because they kept our people safe."

These aren't isolated incidents. The committee found widespread "deficiencies in contractor oversight" owing from what its report calls the "failure" of the Department of Defense and U.S. Central Command "to regularly evaluate contractor performance." According to the committee, "many" overseer files on contractors in Afghanistan "contain little to no information about security providers, their personnel, or their past performance."

Some of the consequences of that minimal oversight include Afghan guards for U.S. bases that aren't trained properly in how to use their weapons; that aren't issued ammunition; guards who are issued "unserviceable" weapons; and other problems – meaning that if a security threat to a base did arise, the guards would be poorly prepared to address it.

Levin heaped praise on Defense Secretary Robert Gates and General David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, for candidly recognizing the contracting problem and embracing the committee's report. On Tuesday, Gates wrote to Levin pledging that the Pentagon had "expanded its oversight of those contracts," referring to Petraeus's recent guidance to his troops on treating relationships with contractors as part of their war-fighting responsibilities." And Levin also praised Petraeus for standing up Task Force 2010, a military unit dedicated to voiding contracts with companies working with warlords or insurgents.

But it's not clear those recent moves will be sufficient, given the billions flowing into Afghanistan and the exigencies of paying off local bigshots to ensure that a fuel shipment doesn't get hijacked or a base doesn't get rocketed. Levin said he wasn't calling for all contractors, even all private security contractors, to lose their U.S. contracts. But, he said, "We must shut off the spigot of U.S. dollars flowing into the pockets of warlords and power brokers who act contrary to our interests."

UPDATE, 5:50 p.m.: EOD Technology released a lengthy statement to reporters in response to the Senate report, which the company says it's only "preliminarily review[ed]." The relevant paragraphs:

In response to these statements EODT would first make clear that its contract required EODT to utilize Afghan personnel and specifically those from the area surrounding the contract location. The local leaders which EODT sought out to assist in hiring personnel were persons made known to EODT by the U.S. military or were commonly known leaders within that area. In any event all leaders which EODT utilized were made known to the U.S. military at every stage of mobilization. As for Afghan citizens hired by EODT, all names were provided to the appropriate person or persons designated by our contract in order to gain approval for the hire. However, above and beyond its contract requirements, EODT sought out representatives from the Defense

Intelligence Agency (DIA) operating in that area in order to provide names for screening and resulting feedback. While the SASC Report may present certain criticisms of EODT’s hiring practices, EODT has never been advised by the U.S military that problems of this nature exist. However, just as EODT has cooperated fully with the SASC investigation, EODT stands ready to engage the U.S.

military or other stakeholders about these issues in order to improve our internal processes and contract performance. EODT was asked to perform the Adraskan contract after the prior contractor failed to mobilize. The dangerous region and work presented significant challenges which EODT believes it successfully overcame. EODT underwent a successful Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) audit for this contract in 2008 as well as earning subsequent positive past performance on this contract.

EOD Technology and the Senate committee certainly agree on one thing: an unnamed U.S. military official recommended Mr. Pink to the company. (The report doesn't say if the White brothers received the same recommendation.)

Photo: DoD

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