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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsA Security Company Cashed In on America's Wars--And Then Disappeared
Man Bahadur Thapa had his doubts about the safety of the travel arrangements. Taliban spies were everywhere in the Afghan capital, and the bus transporting him and the Canadian embassys other guards, all Nepalese and Indian, was unarmored. But Thapa was used to pushing worries to the back of his mind. After all, he thought, the British company he worked for was trustworthy. So, as he did nearly every day, the 50-year-old boarded a yellow and white minibus and rode through the Kabul dawn to his shift.
Thapas memory of that dayJune 20, 2016stops about two minutes into the journey. He woke up 13 days later in the hospital, his body riven with shrapnel. A bomb had ripped through the bus, killing 13 of his fellow Nepalese and two Indians.
His family had seen the blast on the news, but didnt find out he was wounded until a doctor treating him thought to pick up his patients phone. As Thapa lay in a hospital bed, his son-in-law, who speaks English, emailed the guards employers, a well-established company called Sabre International Security, with urgent questions: How would the critical surgery Thapa needed be paid for? What would happen to him afterward, given that he clearly wouldnt be able to work for a long time? Apart from one brush-off email, no one responded. That might have been the last that anyone in the West heard of the guards plight if a Nepali labor-rights expert helping the families hadnt asked an American lawyer he knew to take a look at the case.
Matthew Handley specializes in getting compensation for vulnerable workers in war zones, and has taken on military-contracting giants like the company formerly known as KBR Halliburton. This case, however, was different: When Handley Googled Sabre, he couldn't even find a company website. There seemed to be no way of getting in touch with anyone.
It was one of the most extreme examples of a company and all indicators of its presence just really disappearing, he told The Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
It has been more than a decade since a group of contractors killed more than a dozen people in central Baghdad, drawing attention to the emergence of a global private military industry. The world has since gotten so used to companies assuming traditional state functions that the Donald Trump administration is now considering handing over the Afghan War to them. But as the strange, seemingly overnight disappearance of one of its major players shows, the industry doesnt yet appear to be significantly constrained by rules and norms. As Handley would discover, Sabres corporate history had as many red flags as it did prestigious contracts. And this was not even the first time the company had done a vanishing act.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/a-security-company-cashed-in-on-americas-wars-and-then-disappeared/ar-BBSTgvt?li=BBnb7Kz
DBoon
(22,397 posts)No wonder these private contractors are shady characters
Scurrilous
(38,687 posts)El Shaman
(583 posts)Giuliani World Wide Security still around ???
erronis
(15,335 posts)can get their hands on it directly?
I'm sure there's another trumpian organization out there helping to siphon off funds before they get send to the armed forces or abroad. Maybe one of the few that doesn't have that detested trump logo. How about "Carlisle Security" or "Blackwater Assistance"?
yaesu
(8,020 posts)the border to build fences.
Haggis for Breakfast
(6,831 posts)constrained by rules and norms."
I think that this qualifies as understatement of the year.
They apparently aren't constrained by those pesky ethics either.
Yikes.
This story should have gotten much wider coverage. People NEED to understand exactly what kind of business that Blackwater (or whatever they're calling themselves these days) conducts and just how expendable people are to them.
magicarpet
(14,174 posts)US military presents in the entire Middle East - $yria, Afghan, And Iraq.
Hasta La Vista send the American soldiers home, valiant effort but they blew the mission just like trDump said would happen.
Besides it costs too damn much money and has drained the US treasury of precious funds for decades and decades.
After a brief cooling down period,.. trDump will start shitting bricks because now that the US military has made its departure,.. Isis, Al-Qaida, Hamas, and the Iranian Republican Guard has taken over the former war zone.
Bibby Netanyahu feels threatened by all the Arab terrorists now wandering freely all over the Middle East and trDump must do something or Israel commences bombing anyone they suspect of being a terrorist. Israel promises to use American war planes, American/Raytheon sophisticated fly by laser guidance missiles, and pound their Arab enemies into the desert sands.
trDump sends Bolton to Israel to sooth and comfort Netanyahu with the promise the Erik Prince will come to the aid of America and our great friend Israel by stationing 100,000 of his mercenary soldiers through out the various lands of the Middle East with a $ 75 billion dollar contract plus costs with said contract renewable annually as trDump and Bolton deem we need boots on the ground over there. The US military had there shot and blew it ,.. now Prince has an exclusive contract where as his privatized army are the only troops allowed into the Middle East war zone to finally clean up the mess as expeditiously as possible.
With in 90 days or sooner if trDump needs a political diversion or distraction (think Mueller) trDump, Bolton, Netanyahu, and Erik Prince conjure and concoct a land war with Iran. Then the shit really hits the fan. Turkey, Russia, Jordan, Chechen, The Kurds, the SawDie and UAE royal crowns all jump in and join the fray and the world unravels into a major World War.
trDump's poll numbers rocket into the stratosphere because he is anointed the nuke war president. And by pResidential Executive Order trDump decrees anyone over two years old, whether male or female, must wear a red MAGA hat if not within the confines of your home. Anyone caught without a red MAGA hat will be deemed unpatriotic and captured, and removed from society a dealt with accordingly for this un-American infraction.
GOD Bless America and God bless Donald J. trDump. May he win the second term he so clearly well deserves.