How much money do contractors make in afghanistan
This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website. Outside the United States, the Pentagon controls a collection of military bases unprecedented in history. This giant collection of bases receives remarkably little media attention, costs a fortune , and even when cost cutting is the subject du jour, it still seems to get a free ride. Some of the money clearly pays for things like salaries, health care, and other benefits for around one million military and Defense Department personnel and their families overseas.
While some of these costs are for weapons procurement, rather than for bases and troop support, the hundreds of thousands of contracts believed to be omitted from these tallies thanks to government accounting errors make the numbers a reasonable reflection of the everyday moneys flowing to private contractors for the world of bases the United States has maintained since World War II.
Beyond the sheer volume of dollars heading overseas, an analysis of Pentagon spending reveals a troubling pattern: In addition, Pentagon spending on its baseworld has been marked by spiraling expenditures, the growing use of uncompetitive contracts and contracts lacking incentives to control costs, outright fraud, and the repeated awarding of non-competitive sweetheart contracts to companies with histories of fraud and abuse.
Since , US taxpayers have effectively shipped hundreds of billions of dollars out of the country to build and maintain an enormous military presence abroad, while major Pentagon contractors and a select group of politicians, lobbyists, and other friends have benefited mightily. Once upon a time, however, the military, not contractors, built the barracks, cleaned the clothes, and peeled the potatoes at these bases. By the first Gulf War, one in deployed personnel was a contractor.
By the second Gulf War, contractors represented roughly one in two deployed personnel in Iraq, with the company now known as KBR employing more than 50, people, or enough to staff army battalions.
Burger Kings, Starbucks, and car dealerships, as well as air conditioning, steak, and ice cream became regular features of often city-sized bases. US bases worldwide look much the same , which helps explain the staggering taxpayer dollars they consume.
This meant I had to pick through hundreds of thousands of contracts and research scores of companies in countries worldwide.
How Much Money Do Private Military Contractors Get Paid? - Woman
I began with publicly available government contract data and followed a methodology for tracking funds used by the Commission on Wartime Contracting. Generally, the companies winning the largest contracts have been doing one or more of four things: There are , contracts that list the place of performance as Switzerland, even though the vast majority are for delivering food to troops in Afghanistan and at bases worldwide.
Identifying the value of contracts given to specific companies is made more difficult by a general lack of corporate transparency, as well as complicated subcontracting arrangements, the use of foreign subsidiaries, and frequent corporate name changes.
Still, examining the top contractors is illuminating. It has almost five times the contracts of the next company on the list and is emblematic of broader problems in the contracting system. Later, while Cheney was vice president, Halliburton and its KBR subsidiary formed after acquiring Kellogg Industries won by far the largest wartime contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Without its work, there might have been no wars. Its experience reflected the near tripling of Pentagon contracts issued without competitive bidding between and The company has also faced accusations of overcharging for everything from delivering food and fuel and supplying housing for troops to providing base security services.
After years of bad publicity, in , Halliburton spun KBR off as an independent company and moved its headquarters from Houston to Dubai. Its growth perfectly symbolizes the soldiers-to-contractors shift in who peels the potatoes.
Supreme was founded in by an Army veteran who saw an opportunity to provide food for the hundreds of US bases in Germany. Next on the list is Agility Logistics, a Kuwaiti company. It won multi-billion-dollar contracts to transport food to troops in Iraq. When the Pentagon decided against awarding similar contracts in Afghanistan to a single firm, Agility partnered with Supreme in exchange for a 3. In and , grand juries indicted Agility for massive contracting fraud, and the Pentagon suspended the company and related companies from receiving new contracts.
Next come DynCorp International and Fluor Intercontinental, which along with KBR won the latest LOGCAP contracts. Awarding that contract to three companies rather than one was intended to increase competition. DynCorp, which has also won large wartime private security contracts, has a history littered with charges of overbilling , shoddy construction , smuggling laborers onto bases, sexual harassment , and sex trafficking.
After all, the US military runs on oil. It consumed five billion gallons in fiscal year alone, or more than all of Sweden. Pentagon officials, military personnel, members of Congress, and lobbyists, among others, have all benefited—financially, politically, and professionally—from the giant overseas presence.
In particular, contractors have spread the love by making millions in campaign contributions to members of Congress.
Salaires de DynCorp International | icamaveyi.web.fc2.com
Most of these have gone to members of the armed services and appropriations committees in the Senate and House of Representatives. These, of course, have primary authority over awarding military dollars.
Most contractors also pay lobbyists hundreds of thousands of dollars to sway military budgeteers and policymakers their way. Today, there are some signs of baseworld shrinkage. The hundreds of bases built in Iraq are long gone, and many of the hundreds built in Afghanistan are now being shut down as US combat troops prepare to withdraw. The military is downsizing an old base in the Portuguese Azores and studying further base and troop reductions in Europe. At the same time, however, the military is building or exploring the possibility of building new bases from Asia and Africa to the Persian Gulf and Latin America.
Small drone bases are on the rise from Niger to Saudi Arabia. Even in Europe, the Pentagon is still building bases while closing others.
The billions in contracts that sustain our bases, however, are a good reminder that there are immediate savings available by reducing troop deployments and Cold War bases abroad. For decades, tens of billions of dollars in overseas spending have ended up in the coffers of a select few, with many billions leaking out of the US economy entirely. Stemming those leaks by cutting overseas spending and redirecting precious resources toward long-neglected non-military needs is an important way to help revive an economy that has long benefited the few rather than the many.
David Vine, a Tom Dispatch regular , is assistant professor of anthropology at American University, in Washington, DC.
He is the author of Island of Shame: The Secret History of the US Military Base on Diego Garcia. He has written for the New York Times , the Washington Post , the Guardian , and Mother Jones , among other places. He is currently completing a book about the effects of US military bases located outside the United States.
For more of his writing, visit www. Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook or Tumblr. Special Ops, Drones, Proxy Fighters, Secret Bases, and Cyberwarfare. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch. David Vine is an associate professor of anthropology at American University in Washington, DC. His lastest book is Base Nation: How US Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World.
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Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email Print. CONTRACT AWARDEE TOTAL IN BILLIONS 1. Agility Logistics PWC 9. Bahrain Petroleum Company 5. Abu Dhabi Petroleum Company 4. Red Star Enterprises Mina Corporation 3. World Fuel Services Corporation 3. Motor Oil Hellas , Corinth Refineries S.
Combat Support Associates Ltd. Refinery Associates Texas, Inc. Lockheed Martin Corporation 3.
S-Oil Corporation Ssangyong 3. International Oil Trading Co. Tutor Perini Corporation Perini 1. Share on Facebook Share on Twitter. David Vine David Vine is an associate professor of anthropology at American University in Washington, DC.
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