Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Is this what you want to pay for?
Along with the increase of 30,000 troops to the Kabul Quagmire, there will be an increase in the number of private contractors and mercenaries hired to support their effort. As the Army Times reports, we would be much better off without some of that "support".
Ill-disciplined private security guards escorting supply convoys to coalition bases are wreaking havoc as they pass through western Kandahar province, undermining the coalition’s counterinsurgency strategy here and leading to at least one confrontation with U.S. forces, say U.S. Army officers and Afghan government officials.So if they are junkies at least are money is going back to our friends the Karzais, who may be the only friends we have if the mercs keep shooting up the countryside.
The security guards are responsible for killing and wounding more than 30 innocent civilians during the past four years in Maywand district alone, said Mohammad Zareef, the senior representative in the district for Afghanistan’s intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security.
Highway 1, the country’s main east-west artery, runs through Maywand and is the route taken by logistics convoys moving west from Kabul and Kandahar to coalition bases in Helmand province. The Afghan government’s district chief for Maywand says the men hired to protect the convoys are heroin addicts armed with rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles.
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