Report: Pentagon Contracts Lining the Pockets of….the Taliban

The Christian Science Monitor offers this fascinating and troubling report on the use of private contractors in Afghanistan. Half of the private security companies that the Pentagon is paying in that country are Afghan owned. The paper writes:

“The Senate investigation also turned up mounting evidence to suggest that largely unmonitored Pentagon contracts with private security companies – half of which are Afghan-owned – may also be lining the pockets of Taliban insurgents who agree not to attack convoys in exchange for cash.

‘If you want to know the driving force of corruption in Afghanistan, it’s not Afghan culture,’ warns Anthony Cordesman, a security specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. ‘It’s American contracting.'”