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<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/scahill12182009.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/scahill12182009.html<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">December 18-20,
2009<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>The US Currently
Has 189,000 Personnel in Afghanistan <br><br>
<br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">
Stunning Statistics About the War That Everyone Should Know
</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>By JEREMY
SCAHILL <br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">A</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2> hearing in Sen. Claire McCaskill’s Contract
Oversightsubcommittee on contracting in Afghanistan has highlighted some
important statistics that provide a window into the extent to which the
Obama administration has picked up the Bush-era war privatization baton
and sprinted with it. Overall, contractors now comprise a whopping 69% of
the Department of Defense’s total workforce, “the highest ratio of
contractors to military personnel in US history.” That’s not in one war
zonethat’s the Pentagon in its entirety.<br><br>
In Afghanistan, the Obama administration blows the Bush administration
out of the privatized water. According to a memo[PDF] released by
McCaskill’s staff, <br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd>“From June 2009 to September 2009, there was a 40% increase in
Defense Department contractors in Afghanistan. During the same period,
the number of armed private security contractors working for the Defense
Department in Afghanistan doubled, increasing from approximately 5,000 to
more than 10,000.”<br><br>
</dl>At present, there are 104,000 Department of Defense contractors in
Afghanistan. According to a report this week from the Congressional
Research Service, as a result of the coming surge of 30,000 troops in
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/156858394X/counterpunchmaga">
<img src="http://www.counterpunch.org/blackwater.jpeg" width=120 height=180 alt="[]">
</a>Afghanistan, there may be up to 56,000 additional contractors
deployed. But here is another group of contractors that often goes
unmentioned: 3,600 State Department contractors and 14,000 USAID
contractors. That means that the current total US force in Afghanistan is
approximately 189,000 personnel (68,000 US troops and 121,000
contractors). And remember, that’s right now. And that, according to
McCaskill, is a conservative estimate. A year from now, we will likely
see more than 220,000 US-funded personnel on the ground in
Afghanistan.<br><br>
The US has spent more than $23 billion on contracts in Afghanistan since
2002. By next year, the number of contractors will have doubled since
2008 when taxpayers funded over $8 billion in Afghanistan-related
contracts.<br><br>
Despite the massive number of contracts and contractors in Afghanistan,
oversight is utterly lacking. “The increase in Afghanistan contracts has
not seen a corresponding increase in contract management and oversight,”
according to McCaskill’s briefing paper. “In May 2009, DCMA [Defense
Contract Management Agency] Director Charlie Williams told the Commission
on Wartime Contracting that as many as 362 positions for Contracting
Officer’s Representatives (CORs) in Afghanistan were currently
vacant.”<br><br>
A former USAID official, Michael Walsh, the former director of USAID’s
Office of Acquisition and Assistance and Chief Acquisition Officer, told
the Commission that many USAID staff are “administering huge awards with
limited knowledge of or experience with the rules and regulations.”
According to one USAID official, the agency is “sending too much money,
too fast with too few people looking over how it is spent.” As a result,
the agency does not “know … where the money is going.”<br><br>
The Obama administration is continuing the Bush-era policy of hiring
contractors to oversee contractors. According to the McCaskill
memo:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>In Afghanistan, USAID is relying on contractors to provide oversight
of its large reconstruction and development projects. According to
information provided to the Subcommittee, International Relief and
Development (IRD) was awarded a five-year contract in 2006 to oversee the
$1.4 billion infrastructure contract awarded to a joint venture of the
Louis Berger Group and Black and Veatch Special Projects. USAID has also
awarded a contract Checci and Company to provide support for contracts in
Afghanistan.<br><br>
</dl>The private security industry and the US government have pointed to
the Synchronized Predeployment and Operational Tracker(SPOT) as evidence
of greater government oversight of contractor activities. But McCaskill’s
subcommittee found that system utterly lacking, stating: “The
Subcommittee obtained current SPOT data showing that there are currently
1,123 State Department contractors and no USAID contractors working in
Afghanistan.” Remember, there are officially 14,000 USAID contractors and
the official monitoring and tracking system found none of these people
and less than half of the State Department contractors.<br><br>
As for waste and abuse, the subcommittee says that the Defense Contract
Audit Agency identified more than $950 million in questioned and
unsupported costs submitted by Defense Department contracts for work in
Afghanistan. That’s 16% of the total contract dollars reviewed.<br><br>
Jeremy Scahill</b>, an independent journalist who reports frequently for
the national radio and TV program Democracy Now, has spent extensive time
reporting from Iraq and Yugoslavia. He is currently a Puffin Writing
Fellow at The Nation Institute. Scahill is the author of
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/156858394X/counterpunchmaga">
Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army</a>.His
new website is
<a href="mailto:RebelReports.com">RebelReports.com</a><br><br>
<br><br>
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