

NATO allies still haven't provided all of the troops they promised to train Afghanistan's nascent police force. When in doubt, contract it out.

Before the New Year, the Army will finally award a much-delayed $1.6 billion-with-a-b contract for a private security firm to supplement that NATO training command's efforts to professionalize Afghan cops. That bid touched off a bureaucratic tempest between Blackwater/Xe Services and DynCorp, which held an old contract for the same job, as well as the State Department and the Army.

But not for much longer. The Army's Contracting Command is in "the very final stages" of selecting the firm for the bid, Col. John Ferrari of the NATO training command tells Danger Room. "We're expecting an announcement before the end of December, sometime in the next week or two."

The contract is for "mentoring, training, and logistics services" to backstop Ferrari's efforts, placing security contractors in embedded positions with the Afghan interior ministry and police units themselves, according to the terms of the bid. More than 80 firms have registered as "interested vendors" on the federal website announcing the contract. NATO is trying to build a 134,000-strong Afghan police force by October, and it's short 900 trainers promised by U.S. allies.

The deal has been a bureaucratic and corporate tangle. In 2009, hoping to expedite the training of Afghan cops, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, then the commander of the Afghan war effort, managed to move the contracting deal from its home at the State Department's Bureau of Narcotics and Law Enforcement – an agency criticized for weak oversight – into the Army. Only the Army element in control was the obscure Counter-Narcoterrorism Technology Program Office, an organization with unclear competency in police training, and it announced that only five corporations could bid on the contract, including Blackwater.

Enter DynCorp – which wasn't one of the firms invited to bid. In December, DynCorp filed an objection to the bureaucratic switchover with the Government Accountability Office, a move that had the added benefit for the company of stopping the re-award and boxing out the competition. It also allowed Senator Carl Levin, a Blackwater critic, to register his incredulity that the Army would consider Blackwater for a contract to train Afghan cops shortly after Levin's staff found Blackwater guards on a different contract illicitly taking weapons from the U.S. military intended for Afghan police.

Long story short: GAO sided with DynCorp, but kept the contract within Army control; DynCorp received an extension of its State contract through August. In May, the Army Contracting Command put it out for an open bid. Officials from the command did not respond to attempts for comment.

DynCorp isn't shy about what it wants here. "We are bidding on this work and are uniquely qualified to assist the U.S. and Afghan governments in their efforts to stand up a law enforcement capability because of our extensive civilian police training experience in Afghanistan and elsewhere," says company spokeswoman Ashley Burke.

Don't go looking for Afghan President Hamid Karzai's scaled-back ban on private security firms to stop the award. But it might be awkward if DynCorp wins. A WikiLeaked report from Afghanistan said that its guards had brought a "dancing boy" – usually slang for a young boy prostitute – to a party in Afghanistan in April 2009, though the company vigorously denies any such wrongdoing and says the whole thing is a misunderstanding.

And there may not be a Blackwater/DynCorp rematch over the award, but there might be something close. Although none of Blackwater's known aliases appears to be on the bid, Kaseman – which has ajoint venture with Blackwater called International Development Solutions – is one of the interested vendors. Apparently, we finally don't have long to wait to learn who gets the giant bid.

Photo: DoD

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