By Cliff Montgomery – Oct. 1st, 2009
U.S. Defense Department contractors in Afghanistan now outnumber the uniformed American military personnel in that country, declares a recent study from the Congressional Research Service (CRS).
It gets better.
“As of March 2009, there were 68,197 DOD contractors in Afghanistan, compared to 52,300 uniformed personnel,” stated the August report.
“Contractors made up 57% of DOD’s workforce in Afghanistan,” the study continued.
“This apparently represented the highest recorded percentage of contractors used by DOD in any conflict in the history of the United States,” declared the CRS report.
As Obama officials debate a possible increase of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, the CRS report reminds American citizens of their high reliance on defense contractors in that war-torn nation.
The study points outs that over 75% of the contractors are Afghan nationals, and that only around 15% are citizens of the U.S. It also states that Pentagon contractors provide such essential services as logistics and translations.
But contractors by definition are not part of the federal government. Hence they also pose inevitable challenges in preventing fraud and monitoring performance.
These concerns increase when one reads of the Defense Department’s apparent inability “to effectively manage contractors during contingency operations.”
For example, a number of analysts say that the Pentagon “has not adequately planned for the use of contractors, lacks contingency contracting experience, and does not sufficiently coordinate contracts across military services,” states the study.
“In 2007, the Commission on Army Acquisition and Program Management in Expeditionary Operations…found that Contracting Officer Representatives”–the people responsible for contract management–“usually have no prior experience with contractors and receive negligible training on how to manage contractors.”
The result? In some especially ugly cases, “abuses and crimes committed by armed private security contractors and interrogators against local nationals may have undermined U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan,” noted the CRS report.
