International Security

This incident may be a bad omen. The Taliban may be behind this awful shooting. The NYT reports that the soldiers had taken off their body armor and helmets
never thinking that they would be attacked by one of the men they lived and worked with, said a local provincial official.
The Times also noted a similar [...]

Around Boston, Whitey and Billy Bulger are famous brothers. Whitey as the long-time head of a violent criminal gang; Billy for being a tenacious politician who fell out of favor near the end of his public career.  For many years, Whitey has been on the run and is on the top of the FBI’s Most [...]

14 Americans killed in two air crashes in Afghanistan.

David Rohde offers a riveting account in the New York Times of his kidnapping by the Haqqani network and captivity in Pakistan for over 7 months. He notes that Carlotta Gall, the intrepid NYT reporter in Quetta, never does interviews with the Taliban in person — only on the phone, as a safety measure. [...]

An excerpt from my interview for International Affairs Forum with Dr. David Ucko on his book, The New Counterinsurgency Era: Transforming the U.S. Military for Modern Wars:
IA-Forum: In counterinsurgency, victory can be hard to measure. Are we asking our military to engage in drawn out conflicts that end only when both parties are exhausted?
Dr. Ucko: [...]

An article in TIME magazine today continues the coverage of the sorry private security situation at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. First there were the photos of security contractors behaving ingloriously and the scathing report of the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) and its letter to Sec. of State Clinton. Yesterday (9/10) Spencer Ackerman of [...]

I’ve been following this story from POGO to Danger Room since it broke earlier this week.  Having written my master’s thesis on DOS’ private security in Iraq, I have to say I am taken aback at how willfully resistant State is to fixing these kind of problems with their private security. You’d think after the [...]

A couple of excerpts from my interview for IA-Forum with James Cockayne on his new book, Beyond Market Forces: Regulating the Global Security Industry.
When I asked him about private security in Afghanistan and possible lessons from Iraq, he replied

I think there are important lessons from Iraq for us in Afghanistan. The various actors in Afghanistan [...]

It’s been a good year for US and UK snipers. After camping on a roof for three days, Cpl. Chris Reynolds took his shot and
“the bullet flew 1,853 metres before hitting its target, a warlord known as Mula.”

Walter Pincus reports in WaPo that the U.S. Army is considering using private security contractors at forward operating bases in Afghanistan.
The job listing states
The Principal Assistant Responsible for Contracting, Afghanistan (PARC-A) is contemplating a solicitation for a theater-wide armed security guard (ASG)/private security company (PSC) contract. The contract would provide for a variety of [...]