Pentagon Wants to Keep Running Its Afghan Drug War From Blackwater’s HQ
An Afghan soldier in Helmand Province prepares to burn a marijuana field as part of Operation Crack Back, 2011.
Photo: Flickr/ISAF
11.21.12 6:30 AM
By Spencer Ackerman
The U.S. war in Afghanistan is supposed to be winding down. Its contractor-led drug war? Not so much.
Inside a compound in Kabul called Camp Integrity, the Pentagon stations a small group of officers to oversee the U.S. militarys various operations to curb the spread of Afghanistans cash crops of heroin and marijuana, which help line the Talibans pockets. Only Camp Integrity isnt a U.S. military base at all. Its the 10-acre Afghanistan headquarters of the private security company formerly known as Blackwater.
Those officers work for an obscure Pentagon agency called the Counter Narco-Terrorism Program Office, or CNTPO. Quietly, its grown into one of the biggest dispensers of cash for private security contractors in the entire U.S. government: One pile of contracts last year from CNTPO was worth more than $3 billion. And it sees a future for itself in Afghanistan over the long haul.
Earlier this month, a U.S. government solicitation sought to hire a security firm to help CNTPO maintain a basic, operational support cell in Kabul. Army Lt. Col. James Gregory, a Pentagon spokesman, explains that cell doesnt kick in the doors of any Afghan narco-kingpins. It handles the more mundane tasks of overseeing the contracts of the Pentagons counter-narcotics programs, from training and linguists, and [providing] supplies, such as vehicles and equipment. The solicitation, however, indicates those services arent going anywhere: When all the options are exercised, the contract extends through September 29, 2015, over a year past the date when Afghan soldiers and cops are supposed to take over the war. And the government preferred location to base CNTPO? Camp Integrity.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/11/cntpo/