The Michael Hastings profile, “The Runaway General,” in Rolling Stone Magazine was an indictment of COIN theory and the restrictive Rules of Engagement. In this regard, the outcome of the McChrystal-Obama sitdown, today, is mere window dressing to the events of June 22, 2010. Perhaps purposely overshadowed by the sensational piece, on Tuesday the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs held a hearing on the failures of the Department of Defense in the Private Security Contractor (PSC) operations of the eight companies involved in the contract known as Afghan Host Nation Trucking (HNT). Kandahar is the center of both storms; however, Tuesday’s events prove that the failures America is witnessing this week began last March.
On March 27, 2009, President Obama announced his fated “AfPak” strategy to the world, declaring that America would disrupt, dismantle, and defeat the Al Qaeda network. However, the Obama Administration, in announcing an increase of 21,000 forces to the Afghan theatre failed to properly coordinate the initial surge with its supply command. Following an in-depth, six-month investigation, what became clear on Tuesday was that the initial contract to the companies involved in the Afghan Host Nation Trucking effort was for $360 million. This contract quickly ballooned to a $2.16 billion concession. The supply chain for the Afghan war effort, then, was improperly tooled for the troop surge announcements of 2009 and were never remedied by the military commanders overseeing the players involved in the massive logistics operation.
U.S. Marines with Combat Engineer Platoon, Marine Wing Support Squadron 473 prepare a convoy to a military operations on urban terrain facility to conduct live demolition training June 16, 2010, in Hawthorne, Nev. More than 4,500 Marines were participating in exercise Javelin Thrust. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Martin L Krieger/Released)
Ultimately, through the whir of media discussions about the implications of The Runaway General, what the American people should recognize in the aftermath of the bombshell report is that the results of the investigation of Afghan Host Nation Trucking, which provides nearly 70% of all U.S. supplies to the theatre, revealed a serious DoD failure in the Afghan contingency operation.
The findings of the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs investigation were released at 10:30pmEST Monday evening in a report entitled Warlord, Inc: Extortion and Corruption Along the U.S. Supply Chain in Afghanistan.
As the Subcommittee Chairman John F. Tierney’s opening statement notes, “The findings of this report range from sobering to shocking.”
According to the report, “The Department of Defense is grossly out of compliance with applicable regulations and has no visibility into the operations of the private security companies that are subcontractors on the HNT contract.”
Warlord, Inc. details that the security for the U.S. supply chain is “principally” generated by a warlord protection racket. This protection racket is a potential source of funding for the Taliban, fuels corruption in Afghanistan and undermines counterinsurgency operations. More disturbingly, while communications to this effect were acknowledged by officials in command, all warnings to the DoD of the activities and shakedowns regarding the forced extortion racket were not “appropriately addressed.”
The seven recommendations that were put forward in the report called for more direct oversight of operations by the DoD, an internal review of the negative impacts of the HNT protection racket on Afghanistan, a re-drafting of the terms of contracts to guarantee subcontractor transparency, and the conducting of a complete survey to determine the actual trucking capacity of the DoD.
Also, per the findings of the report, the role of the Afghan National Security forces on future highway security activities and the corrupting effects at play in the outsourcing of supply chain security in Afghanistan should both be analyzed by all components of the U.S. national security apparatus and NATO.
By “fueling unaccountable warlords and funding parallel power structures,” Warlord, Inc. finds, “the United States undercuts efforts to establish popular confidence in a credible and sustainable Afghan government.”
In this frame, the true back story of the Afghan strategy deliberations in the Obama war room this afternoon has little to do with General McChrystal and everything to do with the fact that the Department of Defense has dropped the ball in its support of the effort to legitimize the Karzai government by knowingly outsourcing the U.S. military and civilian supply chains to a protection racket that fuels the insurgency.
Moreover, the Department of Defense could have rectified the failed policy by re-tooling the effort following the announcement of the AfPak strategy in March, following the Triage assessment of General McChrystal upon assuming command last summer, following the 10 war council sessions that led to the December 1, 2009 announcement of a second troop surge, or at any time during the last six months following President Obama’s recommitment to the Afghan theatre with an additional 30,000 troops.
The U.S. Department of Defense had four major opportunities to step up and seal the breach in the failed elements of the supply chain; but, it chose, instead, to continue down the path of a failed policy – a policy, which has crippled all political shaping efforts in Kandahar, and has literally created an environment in which upwards of 70,000 armed Afghan civilians are operating with differing levels of oversight and regulation throughout Afghanistan.
The massive failure of the Department of Defense is literally veiled by the sensational McChrystal fiasco; but, at the end of the day, the outsourcing of U.S. supply line security has critically undercut the overall effectiveness and viability for success of COIN ops on a July 2011 timetable.
The blood of all coalition soldiers and civilians, the blood of all Afghan and foreign contractors, who have died along the supply routes in southern Afghanistan since the signing of the HNT contract, falls to the hands of the Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Upon a clear-eyed assessment, the American people will in time realize that Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen and Defense Secretary Robert Gates should have been on the chopping block, today, not General McChrystal.
