If at first you don’t succeed, spend, spend more money. That’s the Department of Defense’s solution for training Afghanistan’s still-not-ready-for-primetime police force, which has suffered from corruption, incompetence and illiteracy. But it’s not for want of trying, or doling out billion-dollar contracts to security firm DynCorp.

 

From 2003 to 2009, DynCorp made $1 billion from contracts with the State Department, when it was in charge of training Afghanistan’s finest. Now, with the Pentagon overseeing police training, the contractor has received another deal that could run for up to three more years and be worth $1.04 billion.

 

Re-upping with DynCorp comes despite its troubles involving alcohol and prostitutes. According to Spencer Ackerman of Wired, company “guards assigned to protect Afghan President Hamid Karzai were fired after drinking and whoring in 2005; late payments to a subcontractor got an elderly U.S. citizen thrown in an Afghan jail this weekend; and WikiLeaks released a cable seeming to indicate that DynCorp guards hired young male prostitutes for a party it threw in 2009 for Afghan bigshots. (The company and the State Department deny that.)”

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Mercs Win Billion Dollar Afghan Cop Deal. Again (by Spencer Ackerman, Wired)