OVERSEAS INTEL

Obama slows military withdrawal from Afghanistan

March 24, 2015 | The Danger Zone

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama said Tuesday the U.S. will slow its planned military withdrawal from Afghanistan this year to assist the fledgling pro-American government against a tenacious insurgency.

The president and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani announced jointly at the White House that the current 9,800 troops will remain through the end of 2015 to advise and train national army and police forces against the Taliban, despite an early plan to reduce U.S. forces to 5,500. Obama said a plan to withdraw to an embassy presence by the time he leaves office has not changed.

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The Afghanistan war officially ended in January, and Obama had promised to wrap up military operations there. But the administration reassessed the withdrawal after requests from Ghani’s government – and the dramatic and bloody rise of the Islamic State in Iraq following a military withdrawal in 2010.

“As long as our men and women are in Afghanistan there are risks involved. It is a dangerous place,” Obama said. “It means some folks are going to be rotating in for a few months more than what they would have been.”

Military personnel are advising and training about 330,000 members of the Afghan security forces, which are growing stronger “month by month,” he said.

The additional forces this year will allow more time to prepare those soldiers and police as well as shore up logistical support, ensuring the Afghans not only have needed equipment but are using it properly, Obama said.

On Monday, the administration announced it will also request new funding from Congress to pump up Afghan end strength to 352,000, yet the president has not provided a dollar figure for the initiative.

The administration’s goal is to create a security force that can defeat the Taliban and maintain the new unity government. But Taliban attacks continue – now mostly on Afghan forces – and attempts at a negotiated peace settlement have not panned out.

Over the past year, the administration has also faced the bloody rise of the Islamic State in Iraq, which occured after the full withdrawal of U.S. military forces in 2011. Republicans in Congress hammered Obama for what they deemed a premature withdrawal that could lead to a similar collapse.

Obama said the revised withdrawal timeline and renewed support is part of new chapter in Afghanistan relations after the country’s contentious but successful democratic election last year. After results were disputed, Ghani agreed to a power-sharing arrangement with his opponent Abdullah Abdullah, who accompanied the new Afghan president to Washington this week for the announcement.

The administration sees Ghani as a more reliable partner than his predecessor Hamid Karzai, who had an often antagonistic relationship with Washington and the military.

During Ghani’s visit this week, he made a series of comments – including thanking American troops and taxpayers -- seemingly meant to cement his reputation as a leader capable of working closely with the U.S.

“You stood shoulder to shoulder with us and I want to say, ‘Thank you,’” Ghani said during the White House announcement with Obama.

He gave a nod to U.S. concerns about endemic government corruption and women’s rights, saying Afghanistan looks forward to a day when it will have a female president.

“This partnership with the United States has a foundation,” Ghani said.

By Travis J. Tritten of Stars and Stripes | @Travis_Tritten

Is America’s Second Contractors’ War Drawing Near?

March 24, 2015 | OVERSEAS INTEL, The Danger Zone

Four years ago, President Barack Obama declared the end of the Iraq war. So much of that fight and our current involvement in the Middle East is carried out by a privatized military.

Back in 2003 Iraq invasion, there was the predictable commentary about why we went to war and what the consequences were. And there was some attention given to the fact that this had been the most privatized military engagement in U.S. history, with private contractors actually outnumbering traditional troops — the “First Contractors’ War,” as Middlebury College scholar Allison Stanger called it in 2009. No one, however, talked about the possibility of a second contractors’ war, a topic that may surface sooner than we anticipated and one that yields a multitude of questions.

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This time, for example, will we be told about the extent of the role of military and security contractors? Will we know which companies are making millions, even billions, from providing armed and unarmed services in the name of American defense? Will we know how many layers of subcontractors there are, from what countries they were hired, and who trained them? When the U.S. government announces casualty totals, will the stats include the contractors who were wounded and killed? And what about the soldiers missing in action? In Iraq by the spring of 2011 there were eight MIAs, seven of which were private contractors.

The First Contractors’ War was “a remarkably unprecedented experiment” in the privatization of America’s defense forces, as California’s U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman (D) told Congress in 2007– one that clearly succeeded. And out of such success arose a bold new industry of private military and security companies, some of which had already existed and grew substantially during the bonanza of contracts that defined the Iraq war, and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of new ones worldwide. Their broad range of services may include police training, intelligence analysis, logistics support, air transport, border patrol, weapons procurement, and drone operations. They assist U.S. forces in contingency operations and remain long after the military withdraws from combat zones; they guard our diplomats; and they play key roles in U.S. counterterrorism strategies. They work for the United Nations, for AFRICOM ( the U.S. unified command in Africa) and for multinational corporations working in hostile environments; they provide armed security to the shipping industry. Their markets exist wherever instability threatens development; wherever military commitments exceed the capabilities of nations; wherever governments are viewed as incapable of supplying defense and security fast enough.Amy Schumer: Class Clown of 2015

They are the latest incarnation of the solutions that President Eisenhower referred to in the often-overlooked part of his famed 1961 “military-industrial complex” address: “Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties.” Now, wherever our geopolitical missions take us, these companies will be part of the plan. As former U.S. Rep. Chris Shays, who served as co-chair for Congress’s Commission on Wartime Contracting, said recently, “The one thing that’s a given now: We can’t go to war without contractors and we can’t go to peace without contractors.”

But what does it matter? Why should we care who defends and secures us, how and where they are trained, and whether or not they are employees of private military and security companies? Why should we worry at all about the Second Contractors’ War? If dismal and dangerous jobs are outsourced and we can tend to our own concerns, what’s the problem? The simple fact that we have to ask such a question exposes the reality that we know too little about who these contractors are and that we care too little about what it means for our nation to be dependent on them. The simplest answer to why it matters thus becomes one word: democracy.

Private military and security firms promote themselves as on-call businesses, which effectively provide a fast solution that averts the often slow democratic process. To be sure, democracy demands restraint to allow for discourse, which in turn requires transparency. “Reliance on contractors allows the government to work under the radar of public scrutiny,” the New York Times noted in 2010. But what about the citizens’ right to know and need to know for the sake of their own security? The more the citizens of a nation are removed from the job of its defense and do not see the full impact of war, including all casualties, the easier it is for policy makers to engage the nation in conflicts and for citizens to lose a personal connection, a passionate allegiance, to nation — the passion that throughout history has motivated insurgents (including the American rebels in our revolution) to win wars. In other words, such indifference is a threat to our security. If a nation is not aware of the impact of war, then it will not fear going to war; if not affected then its citizens will not discuss and debate.

In August of 2011, the final report of the three- year study by Congress’s Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan exposed some unnerving details about our dependence on private contractors and fervently urged reforms to prevent any repeat performances. It warned: “Delay and denial are not good options. There will be a next contingency, whether the crisis takes the form of overseas hostilities or domestic response to a national emergency like a mass-casualty terror attack or natural disaster.”

By: Ann Hagedorn of TIME

Ann Hagedorn is the award-winning author of the new book The Invisible Soldiers: How America Outsourced Our Security. She’s written four previous books: Wild Ride, Ransom, Beyond the River, and Savage Peace, and has been a staff writer for The Wall Street Journal. She has taught writing at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, Xavier University, and Miami University. She holds an M.S. in journalism from Columbia University and an honorary doctorate in humane letters from Denison University. She divides her time between New York City and a small Ohio River town, which she discovered during her research for Beyond the River.

What You Need to Know to Succeed in the Overseas Contracting Industry

March 22, 2015 | OVERSEAS INTEL

So you’re getting out of the military soon, or separated recently and you thought you would jump into the world of private contracting. The pay is lucrative, the brotherhood you miss from military life is there, and you like to travel – so why not? Whether it’s the glamorous world of high threat mobile security or just the logistics job on a FOB overseas, there are a few things you should know before going into the game.

First and foremost, you need to discuss this with your spouse/significant other/kids/cat/etc… before deciding on this. If you’re single and don’t like women, then you can skip this part. Working overseas is tough on family life, especially kids and marriages/relationships. If you thought yearlong deployments were tough while in the military, now add in coming home for a few weeks every 3-6 months and trying to fit back into a family life, knowing that you’re heading back out again shortly.

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I’ve seen, and experienced my share of relationships and marriage failures due to the stress of always being gone. Have your personal affairs in order before you fill out that first employment application.

Before talking to any recruiters, do your research. Check out all the company websites and see what other jobs are listed. There are almost always spots to be filled overseas. Start being the quiet professional. If you think that contracting is the same as the You Tube video you saw about Blackwater, then you need to spend more time researching and less on You Tube.

When dealing with the recruiters you need to meet their deadlines and don’t make excuses. It costs money and time to apply for these jobs. Printing, signing, & scanning in documents is nonstop. You will be constantly filling out SF-86s, employment applications, Bio forms, NDAs, etc. Get proficient at this and have good internet available. Keep all documents available electronically. Color scans of your Driver’s License, Passport, training certificates, DD-214, immunization records, power of attorney, etc. need to be ready to e-mail and should be immediately available when asked. If they need something done by the end of the day- GET IT DONE.

Be prepared to jump through hoops. Aside from the paperwork there are medical screenings, dental exams, PT tests, training courses, etc… be ready to do what is needed. If you won’t make the effort to get the job, there are thousands of other guys in line who will. There are over 100,000 troops coming back in the next two years, and hundreds of thousands more who came back in the last ten years with just as much experience, some more, looking for work. Make sure you’re patient, timely, and not having to be asked twice for something. “The nail that sticks out gets hammered.” If you’re a problem employee/applicant, they’ll just stop dealing with you.

Contracting jobs take time. None of this will happen overnight. I’ve seen some take six months to over a year to get someone mobilized. If you haven’t heard from your recruiter in a month, it’s no big deal. Don’t bother them with a phone call every day. If things change, they will let you know. An e-mail to them every month or so to notify them of any changes on your end or to ask of any changes in the program is about as frequent as it should get once you’re waiting to deploy.

Just like any other job, you may have to start at the bottom and work your way up into the job you really want. Static gigs aren’t as sexy as mobile security and not everyone gets to be the “cool” guys with all the latest gear moving high profile VIPs. Basic gigs do however get you experience, your foot in the door, help you network, and may pay better than most jobs here in the US. If you get a contracting job, be willing to do whatever. Washing SUVs all day may sound boring but you still get the same pay as someone standing in front of a kid with an AK. Everyone gets a shitty detail at times. Suck it up and smile on payday. For $xxx of money per day, I’ll wash the shit out of some SUVs or clean toilets so well that a hospital would be jealous. We did the same thing in the military and as a contractor you are not above it now.

There is always someone who has done more and is better than you. Don’t be the loudmouth or the “one upper” in your group/class/company. Be a quiet professional. Continue your training. Shooting, medical, physical fitness, immediate actions drills, vehicle recoveries, etc… Stay up on current events and trends. Networking will become a valuable skill. Don’t burn bridges unless absolutely necessary and back up every word you do say. Contracting is a small world and reputations, especially bad ones, travel quickly.

Finally, the most important thing to know about contracting: it is just a job, not a career. The secret is while everyone on the outside is trying to get into it, everyone on the inside is looking for their way out. Contracting overseas is not a profession and there are very few who can do 10+ years of it. Use it as a means to an end. Gain experience, make contacts, travel the world, and pay off your house, whatever. SAVE YOUR MONEY! Don’t be the cherry who buys a new special edition Mustang in Dubai after their 1st rotation. Plan for the future. Take online classes, get certifications, and make yourself more valuable. You should always be looking for more work and that unicorn career you’ve been dreaming of.

Source: Blackside Concepts

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