Warfare continues to become more professional and dehumanized every day.

The purpose of Extraordinary Edition is being revisited for winter, headed into 2013. U.S. foreign policy, Central Asia and the Middle East remain key focal points. Economics and culture on your front doorstep are coming into focus here.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Pentagon Seeks Private Contractor to Move Weapons Through Pakistan/Afghanistan

From Jeremy Scahill May 25 Rebel Reports & The Nation magazine online

It is not, of course, a secret supplies must be delivered to forward operating bases in Afghanistan. What's interesting here is areas where the provisions of the contract being offered--work that apparently can't effectively be done by the U.S. military itself--differs from verbiage in the White House strategy for Afghanistan which contains a draw-down and eventual withdrawal in 2011. The notion that Pakistan and Afghanistan are too dangerous for the U.S. military to negotiate supplies into in coming months is a grim outlook. It's just a proposal of a contract for services, but plans indicate intent to some degree, do they not?

Excerpt taken from Scahill's Rebel Reports appears below ...

"[The United States military is in the process of taking bids from private war contractors to secure and ship massive amounts of US military equipment through sensitive areas of Pakistan into Afghanistan where it will then be distributed to various US Forward Operating Bases and other facilities. According to the contract solicitation, “There will be an average of 5000” import shipments “transiting the Afghanistan and Pakistan ground lines of communication (GLOC) per month,” along with 500 export shipments.” The solicitation states that, “This number may increase or decrease due to US military transportation requirements,” adding, “The contractor must maintain a constant capability to surge to any location within Afghanistan or Pakistan” within a 30-day period. Among the duties the contractor will perform is “intelligence, to include threat assessments throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

And while it seems the US is trying to put a Pakistani or Afghan face on the work, the terms of the contract mandate that US personnel will be involved with inherently risky and potentially lethal operations. Among the firms listed by the Department of Defense as “interested vendors” are an Afghan firm tied to a veteran CIA officer and run by the son of Afghan defense minister, Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak, and a Pakistani firm with links to Blackwater.]"

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