Where is the Line Between U.S. Forces and Contractors?

By Rowan Wolf

Given the number of contractors being used by the U.S. military, one has to ask where the military ends and the contractors begin, and what the mission relationship between them is. A recent event in Afghanistan raises plenty of questions, but no real answers.

Among the various headlines, the one from the BBC reads "Afghan guards held after shootout." It is a headline one could just breeze right by unless one reads a bit further:

Forty-one US-trained Afghan guards have been arrested after a shootout in which Kandahar's provincial police chief was killed, the regional governor says.

One could still assume that among the thousands of local forces being trained by the U.S. military that these are a "rogue element." However, the BBC article offers some tantalizing clues (and little information).

Up to eight other policemen were killed after the guards, who are employed by US security forces, entered the prosecutor's office in Kandahar city.

They were trying to free colleagues held in the building, the BBC was told.

Say what? Here we have a fairly large force of U.S. trained Afghans who are employed by the U.S., who are trying to break someone out of jail.

There is remarkably little information, and most of it is repetitious. However, an article by the AP published in The Guardian gives us a bit more insight.

The US military said it was not involved in shooting, calling it an "Afghan-on-Afghan incident". However, Karzai's statement suggested that the guards sought refuge in a US coalition base after the killings, and he "demanded that coalition forces prevent such incidents, which weaken the government".

According to the article, the man these contractors / employees (?) were trying to break out of the jail at gun point had been arrested for "forging documents." What documents for what purpose? I have no idea at this point.

Among the officials killed were the provincial police chief, Matiullah Qati, and the province's criminal investigations director. Hours later, Karzai released a statement.

"President Hamid Karzai demanded that coalition forces hand over the private security individuals belonging to coalition forces responsible for the killing of Kandahar provincial security officials to the relevant security authorities of the Afghan government," the statement from the president's office said.

Here we have a situation where a man accused of forgery (and presumably also in the employ of the United States), is the center of a shootout by Afghans trained and employed by U.S. forces, who then run back to a U.S. installation for protection from Afghan authorities. Among those killed in this raid are the Police Chief of Kandahar and the head of criminal investigations (coincidence?).

We might write this off as some bizarre incident except that the United States is ratcheting up its use of "contractors" in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to an investigative report by Jeremy Scahill, there are currently almost 250,000 contractors employed by the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq, and

there has been a 23% increase in the number of "Private Security Contractors" working for the Department of Defense in Iraq in the second quarter of 2009 and a 29% increase in Afghanistan

Does this number even include those domestic forces that have been trained and are now employed by the United States? I think that it probably does not.

All this raises questions that need to be answered. Obama is continuing a policy of replacing U.S. military forces with "contractors" - in other words privatizing war. We know from numerous reports on contractors in Iraq that this creates 'gray" areas of mission, accountability, and even national security. It also presents the mirage that the United States is withdrawing forces (and influence) while exactly the opposite is happening - and happening at great expense monetarily and in terms of human life.

It also creates a "gray" area in terms of merging military, counter-terrorism, and covert operations. It all becomes one big tangled mass, and any attempts at oversight or transparency go out the window.

What is being created is a shadow complex of mixed mercenaries intersecting at various levels with U.S. military missions and political activities. Meanwhile they are also intersecting with the interests of whomever else these "forces" may be working for. The potential for "blowback" (bad boomerang consequences from previous actions) grows geometrically. During the Cold War and the proxy conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, we had the CIA create, train, and fund what was to become al Qaeda, followed by the rise of the Taliban to formal power in Afghanistan. What we are doing now is magnitudes of scale larger than that little "operation."

This "incident" needs to be fully, and publicly, investigated. I suspect that it is a case study in how U.S. military policy and intervention are currently being structured - and funded.