Contractors Role In Nation Building

Oct 27, 2009 Uncategorized

Thanks to Matt at Feral Jundi for digging this one up. Dr. Thomas Barnett is a former Pentagon analyst and advisor who has some pretty compelling points to make about the U.S. ability (or lack of it) to conduct nation building in our current mindset and configuration. Pay special attention to the area he calls ‘Systems Admin Force’. Hope you enjoy and leave a comment letting me know what you think.

Tags: Barnett, nation building, TED

Mean Time Between Stupidity

Oct 20, 2009 Jake's Posts, Uncategorized

By Jake Allen

Is it just me or has there been very few security contractor related news stories over these past few weeks?  I am not complaining mind you, actually it’s quite nice to have the industry off the front pages, the blogs, C-SPAN and the nightly news.  It makes you wonder how long we can keep it that way.

Matt at Feral Jundi is often talking about the application of quality systems in a manufacturing environment and how they can be useful in our own industry.  This got me to thinking about a tool called  Mean Time Between Failures or MTBF.  Basically it’s a way of measuring the time that transpires between a system failure.  It’s useful when looking at machinery for example to measure how many hours, days or months transpire between breakdowns.  An low MTBF is indicative of a system which is not functioning properly.  Conversely, a high MTBF is good because it illustrates that you can have long runs between breakdowns.

Here’s how the calculation works:  If for example you have a system that runs for 15 days then fails, runs again for 10 days…fails,  5 days…fails.  Then you would have a mean (average) time between failures of 10 days.  (15 + 10 + 5 = 30 divided by 3 =10).

It might be useful to see how long our industry can go without a significant event which draws a lot of negative attention.  Of course we don’t live or work in isolation, and there is an active insurgency bent on attacking and killing our members, that of course we have little control over.  But we do have control over our own self inflicted wounds such as the Danny Fitzsimons case.

Bottom line gang is keep up the good work, take it one day at a time and police each other.  It only takes one stupid event to bring the heat down on everyone.  Focus on the mission, provide a quality service and avoid you are likely to avoid any headlines.  This is the recipe for longevity in this business.

Arrival of dead security expert’s baby eases fiancee’s pain

Oct 15, 2009 Uncategorized

This is one of those stories that is both heartening and sad at the same time.  The tragedy of Paul McGuigan’s unnecessary death is tough to take for everyone and knowing that his daughter will never know her dad is very sobering.  On the other hand it appears that mom and baby are healthy and coping as best they can.  I wish them the best.  -Jake-

By Cordelia O’Neill

The fiancee of a security contractor who was shot dead in Baghdad spoke yesterday of her joy and sadness after she gave birth to the couple’s first child on the day he was due to return home for good.

Paul McGuigan, a former Royal Marine Commando, died in the Iraqi capital’s fortified Green Zone in August with Australian colleague Darren Hoare.

The 37-year-old was caught up in an attack in the city’s International Zone.

A British national, Danny Fitzsimmons, has been charged with the murder of both men and is being held in custody in Baghdad.

Mr McGuigan’s fiancee, Nicci Prestage, gave birth to the couple’s daughter four weeks early, on October 4 – the same day he would have returned permanently to the UK.

Ms Prestage, 36, who lives in Manchester, said her baby, who weighed 5lb, was “the image of her father”.

“She is gorgeous,” she said. “I still can’t believe that Paul is never going to see her.

“The last few months have been an emotional rollercoaster.”

She added: “I know I have to face up to life without him but it is so very hard to. We were looking forward to being together as a family and bringing up our baby together.”

Mr McGuigan, 37, originally came from Peebles in the Borders but left in 1990 when he joined the Royal Marines.

He started working for the security company ArmorGroup Iraq in 2003, and became a personal security detail team leader. It is understood that his father, who now lives in Ireland, and his mother, Corinne, who ran a travel agency and has moved away from the area, have also seen their granddaughter.

A spokesman for the family said: “Paul’s family have met their granddaughter – a very moving experience, especially as baby looks so like their son.”

The business of war and profit: Aren’t we proud?

Sep 18, 2009 Uncategorized

The American Conservative’s Kelley Vlahos had what I thought was some excellent perspective on contracting in her article titled The business of war and profit: Aren’t we proud?

Pretty poignant considering that The American Conservative is not exactly the place you normally find gratuitous contractor bashing.  It’s one thing to take a beating from The  Nation on this subject but when TAC Magazine is on your case maybe it’s finally time to take an honest critical look at ourselves.

Kudos to Vlahos for saying what needs to be said.   Most PSCs put too much emphasis on profit and not enough on staff selection, development, training, management and oversight.  But the U.S. taxpayer is really to blame for not holding their government accountable.

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By Kelley Vlahos

You know what prostitutes and pimps and drugs and rape and electrocuted soldiers all have in common? You’re paying for it.

There is such a lack of outrage for the way that private military contractors have pillaged and profiteered from our nearly-decade occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan that it leaves one speechless. Almost. Thanks to whistle-blowers — at the threat of their own security, professionally or otherwise — we have been informed  of some of the basest, grossest behavior coming out of the contracting world on the taxpayers’ dime today. Whether it be soldiers electrocuted by cheap, poorly installed showers by KBR and Triple Canopy, the vodka-drug- fueled pimping frat boys from the Armor Group or the gang rape of a female American contractor by her fellow KBR employees, there is seemingly no end to evidence that the proliferation of privatization has created a runaway Frankenstein of venality, arrogance, avarice and corruption and downright evil, with no restraint that I can see, whatsoever.

Take this latest bit about the Armor Group. Thanks to the Project on Government Oversight, which had the wherewithal to FOIA the goods on this group, we now know that there has been unfettered depravity — including, we heard last week, the procurement of imported, unwitting Chinese girls for sex — at our U.S Embassy. Not surprisingly, there has been a ton of finger-pointing about who knew what and when, but the fact remains that the company got its $187 million contract renewed even after allegations began to surface. Not much different than (Blackwater) Xe, which got its contract renewed in Iraq last week even as their former guards stand trial for murder and the company has banned by the Maliki government for ever working there again.

Allegations of misconduct and corruption on this level go way back — Dyncorp was accused of pimping out skinny, war ravaged girls back in Bosnia. No one seems to care. They just got another contract worth up to $7.5 billion in Afghanistan. They have contracts elsewhere in the expanding U.S footprint, including Africa.

Meanwhile, there are earnest, but ineffective attempts by members of congress to put the brakes on Frank. The Democratic Policy Committee held numerous hearings over the Bush years on these and other subjects of contractor malfeasance, to no real avail. The Commission on Wartime Contracting was created last year and has held some truly eyeopening hearings, even published a nifty report on the 240,000 private contractors now overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan and the companies they work for  — but to what end? As for President Obama, who pledged during his campaign to review the troubling inflation of private contracting and to hold contractors accountable — crickets.

Read the entire article here.

Tags: Afghanistan, Africa, Blackwater, contractors, contracts, DynCorp, Iraq, Obama

4 UN Peacekeepers Wounded in Darfur Attack

Mar 11, 2009 Uncategorized

Four United Nations peacekeepers were wounded when gunmen attacked their vehicle in Western Darfur. The attack is the first on peacekeepers since the International Criminal Court approved an arrest warrant for Sudan’s president last week.

The joint UN-African Union peacekeeping mission said the peacekeepers were ambushed by five or six unidentified gunmen on Monday evening while driving near the town of El-Geneina in West Darfur.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yardimci mulls armed guards for ships transiting Gulf Of Aden

Jan 13, 2009 Uncategorized

David Osler - Lloyd’s List

YARDIMCI Group vessels may now consider armed guards when transiting the Gulf of Aden, chairman Sevret Yardimci said today after confirming the release of Karagöl, the chemtanker held by Somali pirates since last November.

The crew of 14 are safe, and are likely to be disembarked at a port yet to be decided, at which the crew will be changed and provisions and bunkers provided before the 5,500 dwt vessel of 1987 year of build proceeds with its interrupted voyage to India ex-Israel.

After that, the plan is to take the vessel back to the Mediterranean to undertake repairs, Mr Yardimci added.

“We are just pleased that everything is fine now. The crew is in good health and we got the ship out finally,” he commented. He declined to specify whether or not a ransom had been paid.

“We are going to be very careful from now on. I don’t think we will be using the Suez Canal in the near future, but we want to make sure that we do not experience the same problem.”

Asked about the possibility of using armed guards, Mr Yardimci admitted that the company is looking at the possibility: “We are considering it on the way back. But I don’t think they will capture Karagöl again.”

Last week, Somali pirates released another Turkish ship hijacked in October after its owners reportedly paid a ransom. The 82,849dwt bulk carrier Yasa Neslihan then continued its journey to China with its cargo of iron ore. But another Turkish-operated vessel hijacked in December is still controlled by the pirates.

In addition, a Korean-owned bulk carrier hijacked three months ago was released on Monday, the International Maritime Bureau stated in London today. The Panama-flagged, 58798 dwt, 2008-built African Sanderling and its 21 Filipino crew were captured last October. It is again not clear if a ransom was paid.

The recent spate of releases brings the number of vessels held in Somalia down to 11 from 15 at the start of the year. The number of seafarers taken hostage has been cut to around 201, a reduction of getting on for a third since the beginning of 2009.

The IMB’s Cyrus Mody commented: “Most of the ships [released] have been under negotiations for around six weeks on average, which is the period of time it takes for negotiations to be completed. I guess we are seeing vessels released on successful completion of negotiations now.

“It could go back up again, but let’s hope it doesn’t, especially because navies are in the area now. Fingers crossed, let’s hope figures don’t go up.”

Meanwhile, a cable vessel associated with Eidesvik Offshore was damaged by gunfire during an attack off the Nigerian coast in the early hours of yesterday morning.

According to a statement from the company, the incident took place at around 0415 LT while Viking Forcados was near the Idaho field outside. None of the 52-strong crew were physically harmed, it added.

“The incident is considered to be clarified. The ship is in secure water and the captain announces that the crew are doing fine,” Eidesvik said.

According to its account, the pirates approached in two or three smaller speedboats, and a number were able to board the ship, but failed to reach the superstructure where the crew were situated. After opening fire on the superstructure, the attackers left the vessel.

“Viking Forcados worked on an underwater pipeline when the incident occurred.

The crew on board has even had the opportunity to contact their relatives on the phone from the ship,” the statement noted.

In addition to 12 Norwegian nationals, other crew members included nationals of Nigeria, Germany, Britain, the United States, Botswana, Sweden and Poland.

Tags: Piracy, Somalia

Container ship charter rates crash to all-time lows

Jan 8, 2009 Uncategorized

LONDON — Container ship charter rates crashed to all-time lows in the past week, with demand for tonnage evaporating as carriers prepare to axe more services in the face of sharply declining cargo volumes.

The charter market has come to a virtual standstill with carriers reluctant to take on new tonnage, or renew expiring charters, amid increasingly bleak trade forecasts for the next two years. Instead of committing to long-term charters of 12 months and more, carriers are fixing ships on a spot basis for between one and three months to cover immediate requirements.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Piracy, shipping

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Jan 4, 2009 Uncategorized

Give us your feedback or comments!  We want the site to meet the needs of today’s operators so we need your input….

Iraq withdrawal — not so fast

Jan 3, 2009 Uncategorized

Part of the new Status of Forces accord could put a crimp in U.S. plans for a pullout of troops.

By Kal Raustiala

The Iraqi parliament recently approved an agreement with the United States that sets a much-heralded timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. But another part of that so-called Status of Forces Agreement may ultimately make withdrawing those troops difficult.

One reason the Bush administration has been able to keep troop levels so low in Iraq (relative to the size of the country) has been a widespread reliance on private contractors to provide services that might otherwise fall to the military. Nearly 200,000 contractors currently work in Iraq, and by some estimates more than 1,000 have been killed in the course of their work.

Until now, these private contractors enjoyed complete immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts for actions that occurred during the performance of their duties. That immunity, decreed by the U.S.-led occupation government in Iraq in 2003-2004, was highly unusual and anachronistic. To many Iraqi leaders, immunity for American civilians is a humiliating sign that Iraq remains under the thumb of an imperialistic power.

Withdrawing this immunity, as the new U.S.-Iraq agreement does, is long overdue. Yet it will create a new set of problems.

Companies such as Blackwater, a large employer of private security contractors, say the removal of immunity will make it much harder to retain and recruit contractors to work in Iraq. If they are right, and the military has to take over operations now being performed by civilians, a rapid troop withdrawal will be much more challenging.

Still, it’s not hard to understand why Iraqis bridled so vehemently at immunity provisions. Just think back a year or so, when newspapers, including this one, gave wide coverage to the deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians gunned down by Blackwater guards who feared an attack on the convoy they were leading.

Iraqis demanded the heads of those responsible, particularly because Blackwater had acquired a reputation for “spray and pray” tactics, in which bullets are sprayed into a crowd with a prayer that they will eliminate a threat. The Iraqi government vowed to prosecute the killers but was quickly stymied by the immunity rules.

The Blackwater incident virtually guaranteed that immunity would be a huge issue in the Status of Forces negotiations, which were supposed to end early last summer but lasted well into autumn. Victory on the issue was crucial to Iraq’s sense of itself as a sovereign nation.

The Bush administration fought hard but was forced to concede several points. First, American troops in Iraq, who now enjoy total freedom from prosecution in Iraqi courts, will no longer have such sweeping immunity. For “grave premeditated felonies” that occur off-base and off-duty, U.S. service members can be tried by Iraqi prosecutors. Private contractors like Blackwater will lose their legal immunity entirely.

The immunity system put in place during the occupation was not unique to Iraq. For more than 200 years, the U.S. had similar arrangements around the world. A century ago in China, for instance, ordinary Americans who killed Chinese could not be tried by Chinese authorities. Instead, they were tried by U.S. officials; until 1943, there was even a U.S. District Court for China that operated in Shanghai. Similar laws protected Americans in Japan, Morocco and throughout the so-called uncivilized world. They were known as “capitulations” and “unequal treaties,” and as these names suggest, they were not welcomed by the nations involved.

Eventually, this system was overturned as the idea of sovereign equality took root. In the 1950s, the U.S. terminated its last unequal treaty. At the same time, however, the U.S. was busily negotiating a new set of immunity treaties. These were aimed not at civilians in “uncivilized” nations but at protecting our troops, now stationed around the world. The idea was that U.S. troops, as they guarded such nations as South Korea during the Cold War, needed to be free from local prosecution.

Today, they generally are free from that threat except for serious crimes such as murder.

The enormous scope of immunity enjoyed by U.S. forces in Iraq, and by private contractors, is consequently a throwback to the distant, imperial past. Like current troop levels, this immunity is unsustainable and causes more harm than good. The ill-will engendered by such events as Blackwater’s killing of 17 civilians has serious political repercussions. Excessive immunity not only harms American interests in Iraq, it also feeds the broader perception that the United States believes it is above the law and can bully other nations into submission.

For these reasons, the new Status of Forces accord points in the right direction. But the catch is that the agreement may also make it much harder for the incoming Obama administration to meet the public’s expectations for a rapid withdrawal of American troops.

EO: A new kind of army for privatized global warfare

Dec 12, 2008 Uncategorized

Below is an interesting article featuring Eeben Barlow the original founder of EO.  It has been 10 years since EO closed up shop and nearly 20 years since it was founded.  It is particularly interesting to read about this since much of the African continent is no better off now than they were a decade ago.  We will never know how much better things could have been for millions of people had EO and similar concepts been adopted.  

TCO 

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Written by:  Anthony C. LoBaido ,and believed to have been originally published in August of 1998. 

Sitting on the patio of his lavish home in suburban Pretoria, Eeben Barlow poured afternoon tea and basked in the late summer sun, looking more like a successful businessman than a hardened, elite Special Forces operator of the now defunct Apartheid-era South African Defense Force (SADF). In fact, the former commander of the famed 32 Battalion’s Reconnaissance (Recce) Wing is both. At the center of Barlow’s synthesis of commerce and soldiering skills is his highly successful private corporate army known as Executive Outcomes or EO. The activities of EO, the clients it serves, and the global transnational corporate elite (including the DeBeers diamond cartel, Texaco and Gulf-Chevron) which fund its operations, offer an intriguing look into the realpolitik of the emerging world order.

Tags: Executive Outcomes, mercenary