Sat 31 Oct 2009
Freedom and Concentration of Power
Posted by USA / Doc siders under Balkers
[20] Comments
Individual Liberty is threatened by concentrations of power (power = ability to make people do things). Unbridled Government is ever the biggest source of threats to liberty. Companies that are “too big to fail” and the “mainstream press” with their incessant pro-big-government propaganda, and the super-rich are other centers of illegitimate power. If “the people” do not harness all sources of illegitimate power, individual liberty may die.
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Welcome to Balkingpoints Doc siders! He of the short Balk… ;^)
But you folded a lot of social theory into that lone paragraph. I would totally agree with your first and last sentences. From there I separate out the items you list;
— Unbridled government as in spying, police-state, breaking laws on the books with no impeachment, stopping medical science & access to new pharmaceuticals on the basis of religious belief, funding particular religions, fixing elections and electoral districts, firing U.S. attorneys for declining to prosecute political opponents whom no good case against exists.
We just saw, all of that and more from the last administration. It was unbridled government and concentration of power, ala a dictatorship. In numerous ways, that administration was able to effectively act as a dictator with no checks and balances.
There should be no question to anyone whom embraces the principles of personal liberty, that these actions by government were far excessive and out of line.
— Too big to fail (banks and auto makers). Indeed, that reality burned U.S. and First World taxpayers badly. While some reject the notion in the case of any bailed out firm (i.e., let them fail), nearly all economists and the persons of Ben Bernanke and Treasury Sec Paulson (’08), say that we were in fact on the verge of financial-system collapse after the panic waves that began in 9/08 with the decision to not bail out Lehman Brothers. When laissez-faire Republicans give up 750 billion tax dollars to bail out the banks, you know they were petrified of the alternative…
So indeed banks and perhaps giant employers such as GM, should not be so large as to be able to topple a national or world economy due to their own managerial errors. It’s too risky and too costly to the rest of us. Laissez-faire is not an answer here, it was the problem. Failure to regulate properly. Banks which we are all interconnected to and dependent upon, either cannot be allowed to make such reckless investments, and/or they cannot be allowed to get that big.
I believe it is both. You need a measure of government for that. It has an essential role to properly regulate (not too much, not too little) the economy we survive upon. Neglecting to do it, has resulted in collapse numerous times in the history of capitalism.
— The mainstream media is a few corporate behemoths that have been rubberstamping Trickle Down / Deregulation economic policy since 1981. They failed to critique the Iraq invasion with holes in the case for war, known at the time. They have underplayed the critical and ever-rising need for universal health insurance, touting the failed “market-based” system espoused by the GOP for decades. They made “Whitewater” into a phantom scandal for years, before Kenneth Starr finally cleared the Clintons in 1997.
So while major media is indeed large, propaganda is of course in the perspective of the viewer or listener. I support no regulation for it, beyond already-written libel and slander laws (which are civil in their basis – sued, not jailed). A free press is an essential component to a free society of course. It cannot be run or cornered by government, and must be able to speak whether it is right or wrong in that speech.
The citizen sorts it out from there, as it should be. Media got powerful because of broadcast technology of the 20th Century. Now it gets discredited and diffused because of computer technology in this century.
A similar dynamic is occurring across the entertainment industries. Technology giveth, and it taketh away… ;^)
Yes, Individual Liberty is threatened, when governments become too weak and do not enforce the
“Anti-trust laws”, and the big corporations begin to move like hungry tigers to gubble up all other
smaller companies, or simply merge among themselves to buy up their competitors. Creating much,
and much unemployment due to these mergers, that in most cases are illegal in origin, because it
literarly eliminates those in the small business sector of any given society to survive, and being
uncompetitive towards these big giants, which can operate with less overhead and minimum costs.
And I believe this is what has happened in many countries that have “Anti-trust laws” that have not been
enforced by those governments that are, or have been at the service of the wealthy corporations, or
wealthy individuals that control them, as well as trust funds which control a great sector of national, and
international finance, and this elete closed group of billionares, at the present are a threat to our individual
liberty.
A perfect example has been in the past American administrations, which have favored the big corporations
through special tax cuts and privileges, and even now with the bail-out scheme to save some failing corporations
from going bankrupt, that would create many hardships in the American economy, while they have been spendthrift
and irresponsible, with other people’s trusted money, and keeping with such high overhead costs, special bonus for
their administrators, literally eating all of the profits, and making many corporations going to bankruptcy.
But it seems, that all this happened because of the lack of government control upon these corporations, otherwise
all of this would not have happened, but I still believe this has been the bigest highjack of the taxpayers money
in history.
Certainly when a government intervenes in the private sector, it destroys the principle of free-enterprise
and this is a backroad to a socialized state.
Some foreign countries have had this practice for years, where corporations make great profits, but when due to
bad managment or profit hiding, they ask help from the government, by using the blackmail tactic of laying off many
workers creating an economic disaster for the country.
So the government gives in and bails the corporation with the taxpayers money, and everyone is
happy, people do not lose their jobs, and the corporation has made profits in the deal, and this tactic has, and it
is still being used by the large giant corporations that control many small countries.
But at the same time it destroys fair competition, because it is always the same elete group that dominates, and
never fails, and not leaving room for other more efficient corporations to move in and take their place if they do go
bankrupt.
Certainly, this is not fair play, or respecting the principle of free-enterprise. But then the countries that
practice this, are not democratic countries. They are countries controlled by dictators, or wealthy individuals, who have
obtained their wealth by robbing the people of their country, or religious groups that protect their financial interests to
maintain their expansion.
Sammy from Sicily
To R. G. and Sammy from Sicily,
I was trying to make a fundamental statement that I believe is overlooked by all sides (and there are way more than 2 sides) of political discussion regarding Illegitimate Power.
I believe the topic of illegitimate power should be a central element in the current discourse, but for the most part it is completely left out.
Power exercised without legitimacy and fairness is destructive to freedom.
What constitutes legitimacy and fairness should be central to most debate. I see illegitimate power and unfairness all around, but I don’t see it being explicitly discussed.
Everybody wants freedom except those who rule in its absence or benefit from its absence.
Doc siders
So you mean that issues would then be subject to those litmus tests, similar to discussing if something is legal or practical, etc.
That sounds like political evolution to me. A school of thought that spreads over time and becomes prevalent, like the concept of human rights did.
I would say up to present times, you find those elements implied in some
law and policy – the Bill of Rights (U.S.) for example is all about fairness. The Declaration of Independence uses the word “equal”. Universal health insurance is clearly intended to create fairness by reforming present abuses.
I’d say most people have a well-defined sense of fairness in matters of life, yet the idea of illegitimate power really only comes up explicitly at elections sometimes or when coups happen – maybe someone can add other examples. It may be an idea for a few writers and speakers to plant for future generations. Slavery for example was once considered OK, until the belief that it was not took hold.
Individual liberties are threatened when a person asks for his individual liberty, and obtains his
victory through a court of law. (Example: NOT to display a religious symbol in public schools,
in a traditional religious country) where there is a separation between state and religion, but there
had been underhanded accords by previous dictatorial governments, that authorized these abuses,
which were totally abolished with a democratic constitution of a later date, and being in effect at the present.
But if those individual liberties have been abused by traditions, which have been inplanted in the
minds of an indoctrinated society that is, and has been manipulated by traditions, to impose
abuses to individual liberties which are superior to its government which the majority of its members
practice that certain religion
Tell me how can an individual obtain, and retain his liberties, when the majority of the people are against them.
Considering traditions to be superior than an individual’s liberties.
And how can a weak government guarantee that individual his legally acknowledged liberties
obtained through a court decision?
Such liberties have been obscured, and never been given, because traditions that abuse these liberities
are superior than court decisions.
Sammy from Sicily
Sammy from Sicily,
I share your concerns about cultural traditions and indoctrination that thwart individual liberty (I have to be on the lookout for my own prejudices at times). It is ever a tricky balance between an overbearing government and one with insufficient power (via the Courts) to protect individuals against old traditions and systemic indoctrination.
I am currently more concerned with the transgressions to liberty caused by mega transfers of wealth to powerful interests via governments… effectively making working citizens slaves to those interests. My current heightened concern due of course to the recent bail outs in my country (USA). I’m OK with emergency bailouts to save the world economy (I’m not well enough informed to know if the bailouts were truly needed… but they likely were), but the terms of the bailouts should have provided for potentially greater returns to the taxpayers if the recipients eventually recover (i.e. commensurate with the risks involved). Further, the underlying problem of entities being too big to fail remains and is not being addressed because these entities have too much (illegitimate) power to influence governmental actions.
Doc siders
Doc Siders
I understand your point:
Many powerful groups have a scheme to systematically drain governments through their lobby
groups which they support. And these lobby groups have a way to influence people that are in
government who have obtained the trust of the people that they represent to safeguard their interests,
But if one studies human nature, no one is perfect in life, and we all have our weakness, our
greed, our faults, and generally these lobby groups with their financial influence, social status, or
simply cunning, they just get what they want from those people that fall victims to their premeditated
demands to suit the needs of the individuals or corporations that they represnt.
I believe this is what has happened in this transfer of public funds to bail out giant corporations
who have been incomptent, wasteful, and just plain uncompetitive in their field of operating. Because
many knew that they have a “Ace in a hole” just incase things really get rough. And the “Ace in the hole”
is to obtain financial help from the government. By using the old tactic, that if they go bankrupt, the
nation will suffer with a great financial loss that can trigger a recession, which no sensible government wants
and will try to stop at any cost. And this cost has been the financial bail out for these corporations, with the
use of taxpayers’ money, which is not fair for the rest of many small establishments that just fold and proudly
accept their bankruptcy, which is part of our free enterprise in a competitive market where “You win some and
you lose some”
But seriously, this temporary transfer of public money to failing incomptent corporations will resolve the
national problem that afflicts the country?. I believe not, because it will be a steping stone towards socializing
our free enterprise, and losing all the traditional values of fair play, when governments transfers public money
to individuals, and corporations, that are so big that control the American economy, politics, as well as
people’s way of life, which have squashed the little businessman entirely. Let us not forget that the small
business have been the backbone of the American economy, as well as a guarantee to our sistem of free-enterprise.
and gradually some of these big corporations, through government grants, and money funneling have become
too big for their britches, after they have gubbled the American economy, and now they ask for more and more
through this bail out.
On the other hand there are corporations that have been competitive in the national and international
market, with their efficientcy, and good business practices that have not applied for government bail out.
These corporations are to admire, and are proud to maintain their good name to be outstanding,
defending their own. One of these coprprations is among the first three American auto makers. Infact
their foreign branch has shown great profits to offset their domestic loss. by being most efficient, and
competitive to foreign car makers.
I am proud to own two of their cars, they give you, your money’s worth, no more and no less. Where
in many cases this is probably the case for the loss, and failure of most domestic corporations that have
not adopted to the needs, and demands of the market and most important they have not given people their
money’s worth. Where their primary goal has been to make profits at any cost, and not cutting on their operating expenses.
Sammy from Sicily
R.G.
Political and societal issues (not just legislative issues) are “passed through” many “filters” as you called them (e.g. societal needs, benefits, fairness, costs, moral hazards, unintended consequences, environmental consequences, constitutionality, — etc…. etc… several long chapters required on each of these “filters”).
On this list of “filters” I believe one should also place “legitimacy”… that is, whether or not the issue is driven and/or executed by legitimate authority.
An example: one would have to look pretty hard to find the Constitutional (USA) authority for the recent bailouts of troubled financial institutions and auto companies. It isn’t there… unless you want to stretch the commerce clause beyond recognition.
Another example: Super wealthy individuals financing their own elections. I have a problem with that. In the 1990’s, we all got to find out what Ross Perot thought about a lot of issues (and he got to run for President…) all because he had enough personal wealth to “buy the platform”.
And I worry when people like George Soros, who has no particular concern for my individual liberty so far as I can detect, have so much influence.
A conservative Supreme Court ruled some time ago (in the last decade I believe) that “Money” equates to “Speech”. I recall that the legal arguments made at the time were pretty convincing, but in my heart I know that is wrong.
I feel that the power that comes with “super wealth” is such a threat to individual liberty, that “the people” should consider confiscation/taxation/re-direction of wealth above a certain level… and I am certainly no lover of excessive taxation. Similarly, Corporations should be held to lower Anti-trust thresholds than is currently the case.
These are instances of power being wielded by businesses that are too big to fail (they used this position to take untenable risks) and by people with enough money to “by a platform”. That was one of the appeals of Obama… he was a man of certain ideals (most of which I do not share), but he rose to prominence to a great extent by way of his ideas (and charisma – another subject)… he did not buy his way onto the stage.
Doc siders
I can see having the legitimacy filter as a standard criteria, but some political evolution has to happen still – proponents of it pushing the concept, until it were to catch on.
The Constitution gave Congress the powers of budget and spending of course. Some say it has no authority for income tax laws it has passed.
But the founders did give citizens the ultimate power of the vote, and also courts through which to challenge laws passed. So by my book they can legally pass bailouts, citizens can object and lobby beforehand, file suit afterwards, or elect someone else.
I too think there is a flaw in an electoral system, where someone very wealthy can just buy their candidacy with paid ads and paid organization. But I also agree with court rulings that uphold the rights of individuals or groups to speak through paid ads, without restriction. To me restrictions would be infringing on their 1st Amendment rights – which guarantee speech for us all (but not equal megaphones) of course. The solution IMO is to organize elections with more equitable entry grounds that don’t involve monetary access – free time on public airwaves, candidacy websites with full video financed by taxpayers (not highly expensive), electronic billboards on government buildings perhaps that show everyone with X number of signatures to get on the ballot and a candidacy URL to go to.
There should be ways like that to level the field enough, for someone with
a resonant message. From there, you just let the Ross Perot’s and the Swift Boaters run their ads. It’s up to voters to be involved enough to sort out right from wrong, and up to a candidate with the above initial assists to catch fire. If their message is right they can overcome a spending disadvantage, as long as the vote itself is safeguarded from being rigged.
You might apply the idea of legitimate power within the context of an individual liberties or human rights sort of topic. i.e.; is NATO justified to use air power in combating the Taliban? Is that legitimate use of power since ordinance inevitably falls on civilians at times? Or is it legitimate to use upon an enemy known to use innocents as human shields? That sort of thing. The answer when questioning for legitimacy and fairness, will always be routed through one’s own subjectivity it seems.
I do not believe that the use of air power is legitimate in fighting terrorism, because of its many side effects, which is the loss of many innocent lives, where in many cases civilians are used as a human shield to safeguard terrorist operations.
As well as the use of Kamikazi to blow up innocent people, by terrorists.
I believe. that this terrorism could be defused to a great degree, if responsible nations, as well as religious organizations would stop financing these terrorist groups, and instead would try to open a dialogue to come to a peaceful settlement.
Because this war on terrorism is a war of culture, where each wants to impose its way of living upon the other through the use of brutal force.
The use of air power gives the impression of using an elephant to kill a group of red ants, which are well entranched in their natural habitat, and have been stirred up by an outside invader.
Sammy from Sicily
One may see it as quite a quandary from the point of view of success of military mission. Commanders will tell you not to send them to such a task with restrictions on how they may operate. It would take away an option that has had success in targeting some of the Taliban and Al-qaeda hierarchy. Yet you’d clearly gain popular support by stopping the collateral civilian deaths that seem inevitable with use of air power.
I don’t envy their task. And I suspect Western citizens would be similarly conflicted if polled in detail; against any civilian deaths — yet against putting their soldiers at greater risk by hemming in their military options — yet against simply permitting the region to get back to a terrorist stronghold. However as democratic nations, if bombing is predominantly held as an illegitimate use of military power, that should spell the end it’s usage.
The Taliban on top of their drug operations, also runs a protection racket which actually has Karazai and NATO paying them off to not attack certain things!
The U.S. press makes it sound like they are dug in everywhere in Afghanistan. It’s hard to believe though that they really have heavy popular support because they have shown to be very repressive and brutal as govenors.
If they really have heavy support from the locals then NATO should just leave. That was the mistake that Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon made in Vietnam.
If it is shaky support, it could be best to just give up on Karzai and let them move back in to Kabul, and then go supply the insurgency against them as was done in 2001. With Karzai under so much of a cloud of his own corruption I bet Obama is not going to send the troops his generals are asking for.
yesterday in The Nation;
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
How the US Funds the Taliban
By Aram Roston
November 11, 2009
On October 29, 2001, while the Taliban’s rule over Afghanistan was under assault, the regime’s ambassador in Islamabad gave a chaotic press conference in front of several dozen reporters sitting on the grass. On the Taliban diplomat’s right sat his interpreter, Ahmad Rateb Popal, a man with an imposing presence. Like the ambassador, Popal wore a black turban, and he had a huge bushy beard. He had a black patch over his right eye socket, a prosthetic left arm and a deformed right hand, the result of injuries from an explosives mishap during an old operation against the Soviets in Kabul.
But Popal was more than just a former mujahedeen. In 1988, a year before the Soviets fled Afghanistan, Popal had been charged in the United States with conspiring to import more than a kilo of heroin. Court records show he was released from prison in 1997.
Flash forward to 2009, and Afghanistan is ruled by Popal’s cousin President Hamid Karzai. Popal has cut his huge beard down to a neatly trimmed one and has become an immensely wealthy businessman, along with his brother Rashid Popal, who in a separate case pleaded guilty to a heroin charge in 1996 in Brooklyn. The Popal brothers control the huge Watan Group in Afghanistan, a consortium engaged in telecommunications, logistics and, most important, security. Watan Risk Management, the Popals’ private military arm, is one of the few dozen private security companies in Afghanistan. One of Watan’s enterprises, key to the war effort, is protecting convoys of Afghan trucks heading from Kabul to Kandahar, carrying American supplies.
Welcome to the wartime contracting bazaar in Afghanistan. It is a virtual carnival of improbable characters and shady connections, with former CIA officials and ex-military officers joining hands with former Taliban and mujahedeen to collect US government funds in the name of the war effort.
In this grotesque carnival, the US military’s contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes. It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting. And it is a deadly irony, because these funds add up to a huge amount of money for the Taliban. “It’s a big part of their income,” one of the top Afghan government security officials told The Nation in an interview. In fact, US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon’s logistics contracts–hundreds of millions of dollars–consists of payments to insurgents.
Understanding how this situation came to pass requires untangling two threads. The first is the insider dealing that determines who wins and who loses in Afghan business, and the second is the troubling mechanism by which “private security” ensures that the US supply convoys traveling these ancient trade routes aren’t ambushed by insurgents.
A good place to pick up the first thread is with a small firm awarded a US military logistics contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars: NCL Holdings. Like the Popals’ Watan Risk, NCL is a licensed security company in Afghanistan.
What NCL Holdings is most notorious for in Kabul contracting circles, though, is the identity of its chief principal, Hamed Wardak. He is the young American son of Afghanistan’s current defense minister, Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak, who was a leader of the mujahedeen against the Soviets. Hamed Wardak has plunged into business as well as policy. He was raised and schooled in the United States, graduating as valedictorian from Georgetown University in 1997. He earned a Rhodes scholarship and interned at the neoconservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute. That internship was to play an important role in his life, for it was at AEI that he forged alliances with some of the premier figures in American conservative foreign policy circles, such as the late Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick.
Wardak incorporated NCL in the United States early in 2007, although the firm may have operated in Afghanistan before then. It made sense to set up shop in Washington, because of Wardak’s connections there. On NCL’s advisory board, for example, is Milton Bearden, a well-known former CIA officer. Bearden is an important voice on Afghanistan issues; in October he was a witness before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where Senator John Kerry, the chair, introduced him as “a legendary former CIA case officer and a clearheaded thinker and writer.” It is not every defense contracting company that has such an influential adviser.
But the biggest deal that NCL got–the contract that brought it into Afghanistan’s major leagues–was Host Nation Trucking. Earlier this year the firm, with no apparent trucking experience, was named one of the six companies that would handle the bulk of US trucking in Afghanistan, bringing supplies to the web of bases and remote outposts scattered across the country.
At first the contract was large but not gargantuan. And then that suddenly changed, like an immense garden coming into bloom. Over the summer, citing the coming “surge” and a new doctrine, “Money as a Weapons System,” the US military expanded the contract 600 percent for NCL and the five other companies. The contract documentation warns of dire consequences if more is not spent: “service members will not get food, water, equipment, and ammunition they require.” Each of the military’s six trucking contracts was bumped up to $360 million, or a total of nearly $2.2 billion. Put it in this perspective: this single two-year effort to hire Afghan trucks and truckers was worth 10 percent of the annual Afghan gross domestic product. NCL, the firm run by the defense minister’s well-connected son, had struck pure contracting gold.
Host Nation Trucking does indeed keep the US military efforts alive in Afghanistan. “We supply everything the army needs to survive here,” one American trucking executive told me. “We bring them their toilet paper, their water, their fuel, their guns, their vehicles.” The epicenter is Bagram Air Base, just an hour north of Kabul, from which virtually everything in Afghanistan is trucked to the outer reaches of what the Army calls “the Battlespace”–that is, the entire country. Parked near Entry Control Point 3, the trucks line up, shifting gears and sending up clouds of dust as they prepare for their various missions across the country.
The real secret to trucking in Afghanistan is ensuring security on the perilous roads, controlled by warlords, tribal militias, insurgents and Taliban commanders. The American executive I talked to was fairly specific about it: “The Army is basically paying the Taliban not to shoot at them. It is Department of Defense money.” That is something everyone seems to agree on.
Mike Hanna is the project manager for a trucking company called Afghan American Army Services. The company, which still operates in Afghanistan, had been trucking for the United States for years but lost out in the Host Nation Trucking contract that NCL won. Hanna explained the security realities quite simply: “You are paying the people in the local areas–some are warlords, some are politicians in the police force–to move your trucks through.”
Hanna explained that the prices charged are different, depending on the route: “We’re basically being extorted. Where you don’t pay, you’re going to get attacked. We just have our field guys go down there, and they pay off who they need to.” Sometimes, he says, the extortion fee is high, and sometimes it is low. “Moving ten trucks, it is probably $800 per truck to move through an area. It’s based on the number of trucks and what you’re carrying. If you have fuel trucks, they are going to charge you more. If you have dry trucks, they’re not going to charge you as much. If you are carrying MRAPs or Humvees, they are going to charge you more.”
Hanna says it is just a necessary evil. “If you tell me not to pay these insurgents in this area, the chances of my trucks getting attacked increase exponentially.”
Whereas in Iraq the private security industry has been dominated by US and global firms like Blackwater, operating as de facto arms of the US government, in Afghanistan there are lots of local players as well. As a result, the industry in Kabul is far more dog-eat-dog. “Every warlord has his security company,” is the way one executive explained it to me.
In theory, private security companies in Kabul are heavily regulated, although the reality is different. Thirty-nine companies had licenses until September, when another dozen were granted licenses. Many licensed companies are politically connected: just as NCL is owned by the son of the defense minister and Watan Risk Management is run by President Karzai’s cousins, the Asia Security Group is controlled by Hashmat Karzai, another relative of the president. The company has blocked off an entire street in the expensive Sherpur District. Another security firm is controlled by the parliamentary speaker’s son, sources say. And so on.
In the same way, the Afghan trucking industry, key to logistics operations, is often tied to important figures and tribal leaders. One major hauler in Afghanistan, Afghan International Trucking (AIT), paid $20,000 a month in kickbacks to a US Army contracting official, according to the official’s plea agreement in US court in August. AIT is a very well-connected firm: it is run by the 25-year-old nephew of Gen. Baba Jan, a former Northern Alliance commander and later a Kabul police chief. In an interview, Baba Jan, a cheerful and charismatic leader, insisted he had nothing to do with his nephew’s corporate enterprise.
But the heart of the matter is that insurgents are getting paid for safe passage because there are few other ways to bring goods to the combat outposts and forward operating bases where soldiers need them. By definition, many outposts are situated in hostile terrain, in the southern parts of Afghanistan. The security firms don’t really protect convoys of American military goods here, because they simply can’t; they need the Taliban’s cooperation.
One of the big problems for the companies that ship American military supplies across the country is that they are banned from arming themselves with any weapon heavier than a rifle. That makes them ineffective for battling Taliban attacks on a convoy. “They are shooting the drivers from 3,000 feet away with PKMs,” a trucking company executive in Kabul told me. “They are using RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] that will blow up an up-armed vehicle. So the security companies are tied up. Because of the rules, security companies can only carry AK-47s, and that’s just a joke. I carry an AK–and that’s just to shoot myself if I have to!”
The rules are there for a good reason: to guard against devastating collateral damage by private security forces. Still, as Hanna of Afghan American Army Services points out, “An AK-47 versus a rocket-propelled grenade–you are going to lose!” That said, at least one of the Host Nation Trucking companies has tried to do battle instead of paying off insurgents and warlords. It is a US-owned firm called Four Horsemen International. Instead of providing payments, it has tried to fight off attackers. And it has paid the price in lives, with horrendous casualties. FHI, like many other firms, refused to talk publicly; but I’ve been told by insiders in the security industry that FHI’s convoys are attacked on virtually every mission.
For the most part, the security firms do as they must to survive. A veteran American manager in Afghanistan who has worked there as both a soldier and a private security contractor in the field told me, “What we are doing is paying warlords associated with the Taliban, because none of our security elements is able to deal with the threat.” He’s an Army veteran with years of Special Forces experience, and he’s not happy about what’s being done. He says that at a minimum American military forces should try to learn more about who is getting paid off.
“Most escorting is done by the Taliban,” an Afghan private security official told me. He’s a Pashto and former mujahedeen commander who has his finger on the pulse of the military situation and the security industry. And he works with one of the trucking companies carrying US supplies. “Now the government is so weak,” he added, “everyone is paying the Taliban.”
To Afghan trucking officials, this is barely even something to worry about. One woman I met was an extraordinary entrepreneur who had built up a trucking business in this male-dominated field. She told me the security company she had hired dealt directly with Taliban leaders in the south. Paying the Taliban leaders meant they would send along an escort to ensure that no other insurgents would attack. In fact, she said, they just needed two armed Taliban vehicles. “Two Taliban is enough,” she told me. “One in the front and one in the back.” She shrugged. “You cannot work otherwise. Otherwise it is not possible.”
Which leads us back to the case of Watan Risk, the firm run by Ahmad Rateb Popal and Rashid Popal, the Karzai family relatives and former drug dealers. Watan is known to control one key stretch of road that all the truckers use: the strategic route to Kandahar called Highway 1. Think of it as the road to the war–to the south and to the west. If the Army wants to get supplies down to Helmand, for example, the trucks must make their way through Kandahar.
Watan Risk, according to seven different security and trucking company officials, is the sole provider of security along this route. The reason is simple: Watan is allied with the local warlord who controls the road. Watan’s company website is quite impressive, and claims its personnel “are diligently screened to weed out all ex-militia members, supporters of the Taliban, or individuals with loyalty to warlords, drug barons, or any other group opposed to international support of the democratic process.” Whatever screening methods it uses, Watan’s secret weapon to protect American supplies heading through Kandahar is a man named Commander Ruhullah. Said to be a handsome man in his 40s, Ruhullah has an oddly high-pitched voice. He wears traditional salwar kameez and a Rolex watch. He rarely, if ever, associates with Westerners. He commands a large group of irregular fighters with no known government affiliation, and his name, security officials tell me, inspires obedience or fear in villages along the road.
It is a dangerous business, of course: until last spring Ruhullah had competition–a one-legged warlord named Commander Abdul Khaliq. He was killed in an ambush.
So Ruhullah is the surviving road warrior for that stretch of highway. According to witnesses, he works like this: he waits until there are hundreds of trucks ready to convoy south down the highway. Then he gets his men together, setting them up in 4×4s and pickups. Witnesses say he does not limit his arsenal to AK-47s but uses any weapons he can get. His chief weapon is his reputation. And for that, Watan is paid royally, collecting a fee for each truck that passes through his corridor. The American trucking official told me that Ruhullah “charges $1,500 per truck to go to Kandahar. Just 300 kilometers.”
It’s hard to pinpoint what this is, exactly–security, extortion or a form of “insurance.” Then there is the question, Does Ruhullah have ties to the Taliban? That’s impossible to know. As an American private security veteran familiar with the route said, “He works both sides… whatever is most profitable. He’s the main commander. He’s got to be involved with the Taliban. How much, no one knows.”
Even NCL, the company owned by Hamed Wardak, pays. Two sources with direct knowledge tell me that NCL sends its portion of US logistics goods in Watan’s and Ruhullah’s convoys. Sources say NCL is billed $500,000 per month for Watan’s services. To underline the point: NCL, operating on a $360 million contract from the US military, and owned by the Afghan defense minister’s son, is paying millions per year from those funds to a company owned by President Karzai’s cousins, for protection.
Hamed Wardak wouldn’t return my phone calls. Milt Bearden, the former CIA officer affiliated with the company, wouldn’t speak with me either. There’s nothing wrong with Bearden engaging in business in Afghanistan, but disclosure of his business interests might have been expected when testifying on US policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. After all, NCL stands to make or lose hundreds of millions based on the whims of US policy-makers.
It is certainly worth asking why NCL, a company with no known trucking experience, and little security experience to speak of, would win a contract worth $360 million. Plenty of Afghan insiders are asking questions. “Why would the US government give him a contract if he is the son of the minister of defense?” That’s what Mahmoud Karzai asked me. He is the brother of President Karzai, and he himself has been treated in the press as a poster boy for access to government officials. The New York Times even profiled him in a highly critical piece. In his defense, Karzai emphasized that he, at least, has refrained from US government or Afghan government contracting. He pointed out, as others have, that Hamed Wardak had little security or trucking background before his company received security and trucking contracts from the Defense Department. “That’s a questionable business practice,” he said. “They shouldn’t give it to him. How come that’s not questioned?”
I did get the opportunity to ask General Wardak, Hamed’s father, about it. He is quite dapper, although he is no longer the debonair “Gucci commander” Bearden once described. I asked Wardak about his son and NCL. “I’ve tried to be straightforward and correct and fight corruption all my life,” the defense minister said. “This has been something people have tried to use against me, so it has been painful.”
Wardak would speak only briefly about NCL. The issue seems to have produced a rift with his son. “I was against it from the beginning, and that’s why we have not talked for a long time. I have never tried to support him or to use my power or influence that he should benefit.”
When I told Wardak that his son’s company had a US contract worth as much as $360 million, he did a double take. “This is impossible,” he said. “I do not believe this.”
I believed the general when he said he really didn’t know what his son was up to. But cleaning up what look like insider deals may be easier than the next step: shutting down the money pipeline going from DoD contracts to potential insurgents.
Two years ago, a top Afghan security official told me, Afghanistan’s intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security, had alerted the American military to the problem. The NDS delivered what I’m told are “very detailed” reports to the Americans explaining how the Taliban are profiting from protecting convoys of US supplies.
The Afghan intelligence service even offered a solution: what if the United States were to take the tens of millions paid to security contractors and instead set up a dedicated and professional convoy support unit to guard its logistics lines? The suggestion went nowhere.
The bizarre fact is that the practice of buying the Taliban’s protection is not a secret. I asked Col. David Haight, who commands the Third Brigade of the Tenth Mountain Division, about it. After all, part of Highway 1 runs through his area of operations. What did he think about security companies paying off insurgents? “The American soldier in me is repulsed by it,” he said in an interview in his office at FOB Shank in Logar Province. “But I know that it is what it is: essentially paying the enemy, saying, ‘Hey, don’t hassle me.’ I don’t like it, but it is what it is.”
As a military official in Kabul explained contracting in Afghanistan overall, “We understand that across the board 10 percent to 20 percent goes to the insurgents. My intel guy would say it is closer to 10 percent. Generally it is happening in logistics.”
In a statement to The Nation about Host Nation Trucking, Col. Wayne Shanks, the chief public affairs officer for the international forces in Afghanistan, said that military officials are “aware of allegations that procurement funds may find their way into the hands of insurgent groups, but we do not directly support or condone this activity, if it is occurring.” He added that, despite oversight, “the relationships between contractors and their subcontractors, as well as between subcontractors and others in their operational communities, are not entirely transparent.”
In any case, the main issue is not that the US military is turning a blind eye to the problem. Many officials acknowledge what is going on while also expressing a deep disquiet about the situation. The trouble is that–as with so much in Afghanistan–the United States doesn’t seem to know how to fix it.
* Copyright © 2009 The Nation
This Afghanistan war is a big business, which is taking many human lives to increase the personal
wealth of the few. Corruption is the password to continue it, at the financial expense of the United States’
taxpayers.
Drugs is their main objective, to supply the crime syndicate that each day makes their profits
killing many young addicts throughout this planet, as well as the terrorists groups that survive
through the opium production as one of their main source of financing their terrorism.
In my opinion, the only reasonable thing that the invading forces could do, is to eradicate all of these drug
producing plants in Afghanistan, using sprays, or crop dusting that will destroy these opium plants that
are being used for evil purposes.
And at the sametime promote another type of crop for these farmers to cultivate so that they can make
an honest living without destroying many lives through their opium production, which contributes to the
destruction of mankind when it is being used indiscriminately other than for medical use.
Sammy fron Sicily
I’d be all for shifting around the NATO mission for more focus on stopping the funding that comes from drugs. Don’t know if it could succeed alone though if they are still getting money from sympathizers outside Afghanistan. (do not know how big that funding really is).
And then they run the protection racket mentioned in the article. We are told in the Canadian media that the Taliban has an ideologic motive which will cause them to keep fighting probably.
Jeff the day after your post # 13 I saw a news story that said Obama has rejected all the options presented to him, which included a troop buildup. He could be trying to reorganize the war in some way.
In regards to the USA, I have to place, the blame at the root of the government, the people. As a group we have been indoctrinated that every generation can expect to live better than the one preceding it, can everyone can expect to amass a personal fortune they should be able to pass onto heirs. All in all we have become it’s all about us, inside our own nation, and as a nation, in the world community at large. In the USA if not all, too many citizens if given the chance would do the same things that the elected government-bankers-corporation-etc, are doing, to aid in their personal fortune. I have observed it, and it’s the only reason I can find why the actions of the elected government-bankers-corporation-etc, are being tolerated.
The accumulation of wealth to pass it on to future generations to me is not correct. Because
it destroys the innitiative of the future generations to become self sufficient, and independent.
When people know that they are born with a silver spoon in their mouth, they loose the innitiatve to
become self sufficient. In my opinion they become parasites that live off a dying plant.
I believe that society in general should make sure that there are plenty of opportunities where people
can earn through their own resources to achieve a better way of life. I do believe that many who are
heirs to large fortunes, are not really happy, but in their minds they would rather have had the freedom
to achieve their own fortune for themselves, rather than being slaves to their inheritance, which in some
it has destroyed their basic freedom of competing on their own merits to become self-made, financially
speaking, and having no obligation to those that left them their heritance.
The worst thing that a generation can pass upon another generation, is financial wealth. But the best thing
that a generation can pass to a future generation is knowledge, education, and favorable conditions, where
all will have an equal chance, and opportunity to earn through their own resources, to achieve a good way of life.
And I believe these were some of the basic principles that America was founded upon, and that is to “Live and let live”
But in today’s society, it is “dog eat dog”, where the practice is “Live and let die” even governments are destructive
for humanity, rather than being constructive, and create more opportunities for all the people, and not just think
to save the wealth of the wealthy.
I read in an article where over 40% of U.S Congressmen are multi-milonaires, and I believe in according to simple
logic, that they protect their own interests first.
Sammy from Sicily
There are over 50 million users of mind altering drugs in the US. One of the ways their minds have been altered is by hating the people that threaten to arrest them. Most have become loners and trust nobody. The war on drugs is being updated and the use of drones is the latest technological advance. They are equipped with sniffers and can detect the aroma of marijuana as they cruise at 3.5 thousand feet. A mind altered by drugs cannot be depended on to blindly follow orders. That is why the war on drugs must be won.
Here in the USA we are conditioned to believe that one expect to have it better than the previous generation; and that everyone can accumalate a personal fortune beyond their immediate and lifetime security needs, a fortune they can pass on to thier heirs. In a world with limited resources, that aren’t sustainable expectations that could quite possibly result in a quasi-feudal society. While the US Constitution was crafted to guarantee a republican form of government and protect commerce between the individual States, along with commerce between a State and a foreign country, the constitution doesn’t proscribe or prohibit any particular economic model/system. Not that I can read anyway, those who tell me it does to date fail to point me to the supporting evidence. I’m not anti capitalism, but I can’t support laissez faire capitalism. From what I can tell even Karl Marx understood that communism and socialism need a capitalist foundation supporting them to conduct commerce. Commerce isn’t for capitalism only, as those who would warp I minds would have us believe.
On personal liberty pay close attention How US policy affects the personal liberty of the citizens of governments that the US has propped up, currently propping up, and is occupying, That is how we can expect our own liberty to be treated when the chips are down. Be very cautious out the over use of the terms collateral damage and human shields, don’t be desensitized to them. Those concepts will surely be put into play in battles concerning US domestic policy, along with other nations setting their own domestic policies Personally I have never given much importance to cultural traditions, because too many use those traditions to curtail or attempt to curtail the rights of those who are different than the “norm”. Not to discount those traditions that strengthen rights, but those are increasingly under attack by those who now have much, and want more at the expense of others.