Contractors Said to Pay 'Protection' Money to Taliban, Warlords by Jason Ditz, June 21, 2010 The US Army Criminal Investigation Command has announced that it is conducting an inquiry into allegations that portions of a $2.1 billion Pentagon contract may be going to pay “protection” money to Taliban and warlord groups in Afghanistan.
The allegations say that a US contractor, the Afghan Host Nation Trucking company, is paying between $2 million and $4 million a week to insurgent groups to allow NATO supplies to pass through their territory without being attacked. If true it would mean US war funds are being funneled into the pockets of the insurgents the war is meant to fight.
Investigations into the allegation have been going on since last year through the House Subcommittee for National Security, but it is only recently that evidence has been uncovered that not only did the security for the trucking company pay off unaffiliated warlords, but actual Taliban leaders.
One of the security contractors, the Watan Risk Management firm, amounts to 600 gunmen overseen by a fair of cousins of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The group has often been hired to protect NATO convoys, but at least one trucking company executive said that his trucks had been attacked by Watan’s fighters after refusing to hire them.
Poster Comment:
The next few weeks and months IMO will see an unraveling of the Afghan war effort at really breathtaking speed, along with it the lies, dissemblings, and sickening cover ups that have been taking place since 2001. Factors that will be at work include
(1) Congress reluctance to keep providing additional emergency funds,
(2) The upcoming Wikileaks release of a US air attack video which killed over 100 women and children who were falsely claimed by the US military to be jihadis,
(3) A film of the battlefield death of ex-NFL star Pat Tillman where he is truthfully depicted as a patriotic atheist instead of a gunhumping Christian soldier, who may have been murdered by his Special Forces compatriots and was posthumously awarded a false Silver Star in spite of generals knowing he may have been fratricided,
(4) A Rolling Stone magazine article quoting US General McChrystal disparaging Obama and "Bite Me" (VP Joe Biden) and saying the real enemy is the "wimps in the White House,",
(5) Afghan President Hamid Karzai willing to talk directly to all factions of Taliban with or without US approval.
Obama's failed Kandahar offensive, and pledge to withdraw troops by the middle of 2011 no matter what, were never based in reality and are now every day putting more and more pressure on the ill-prepared occupying forces to do something - but they don't know what. The end result will be a public fed up with the war, unwilling to listen to arguments why it is necessary, and unwilling to spend the last of shrinking resources to fund a failure.