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KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - 0829kabul-explosion A powerful car bomb detonated outside the office of a U.S. security contractor in the Afghan capital Sunday, killing at least seven people, including two Americans, and wounding several others, officials and witnesses said. Hours earlier, a blast wrecked a religious school in southeastern Afghanistan, reportedly killing at least eight children and one adult and underlining the country's fragile security as it moves toward its first post-Taliban election in October. Security officials have issued several warnings in recent weeks about possible car bombings and suicide attacks in the Afghan capital. NATO forces patrolling Kabul have...

Thursday, Aug 26, 2004 Kansan recounts ambush in Kosovo BY DANA STRONGIN The Wichita Eagle "I'm about to get killed," he thought. "I'm 4,900 miles from home, I don't really know these people, and I'm getting ready to die here." Bullets had brought Ron Hicks to the ground. He was lying on the concrete, eyes closed tight, hands gripping his head in hopes of protecting it. Hicks had left his Hutchinson home for Kosovo in search of a professional challenge. Instead, he was fighting for his life. Hicks had arrived in Kosovo just 10 days before, on April 7, 2004....

Senator Kerry's national security adviser had to take back comments he made under oath in 2002 to a federal court that members of a Colombian paramilitary group received training from Al Qaeda in Afghanistant The disclosure of Rand Beers's amended deposition in Arias v. Dyncorp, may weaken a central claim of the Democratic campaign for the White House that the Bush administration knowingly lied about pre-war Iraq intelligence.

When Iraqi police raided the Baghdad home and offices of politician Ahmed Chalabi on May 20, US officials hurried to distance themselves from the operation, saying it was an Iraqi affair and that no US Government employees were involved. But eight armed American contractors paid by a US State Department program went on the raid, directing and encouraging the Iraqi policemen who, witnesses say, ripped out computers, turned over furniture and smashed photographs. Some of the Americans helped themselves to baklava, apples and diet soda from Mr Chalabi's refrigerator, sitting in a garden outside to enjoy their looted snacks, according...

XI. SFOR CONTRACTOR INVOLVEMENT Human Rights Watch did not find direct evidence that SFOR soldiers engaged in trafficking of women and girls in Bosnia and Herzegovina.84 Substantial evidence, however, pointed to involvement by SFOR U.S. civilian contractors, who had more freedom to move around Bosnia and Herzegovina than the SFOR peacekeepers and did not face the same prohibitions on visiting nightclubs.85 The contractors, many of them employed by DynCorp, faced allegations of buying women, transporting trafficked women, and violence against trafficked women. DynCorp issued a statement in January 2002 stating that the corporation "took prompt action to understand and deal...

They bustle through the Palestine Hotel lobby in central Baghdad clanking with military hardware. They have a very special look. The head is crew-cut, the sunglasses wraparound. A Heckler and Koch 9mm submachine gun is de rigueur — strapped across a black Kevlar bullet-proof vest, barely hidden by a photographer’s jacket. Pockets are stuffed with radios, a hand-held global positioning system, medical trauma packs. From the webbing belt holding up ‘rip-proof’ combat trousers, a Gerber multi-tool dangles beside a Leatherman knife. Another gun, usually a Glock 9mm, is held in a black nylon holster halfway down one thigh. Spare clips...

Hired Guns by Tucker Carlson | Mar 01 '04 Never before in a war zone has the United States relied so much on private citizens to perform military functions. Security firms such as DynCorp and Kroll, retained on State Department and Pentagon contracts worth billions of dollars, have sent thousands of civilian contractors to do the work that the undermanned U. S. military can't. Here, for the first time, the inside story of the private armies of Operation Iraqi Freedom. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About a hundred yards into Iraq, we stopped to pick up weapons. A half dozen Kurds in white Citroëns...

Hired Guns by Tucker Carlson | Mar 01 '04 Never before in a war zone has the United States relied so much on private citizens to perform military functions. Security firms such as DynCorp and Kroll, retained on State Department and Pentagon contracts worth billions of dollars, have sent thousands of civilian contractors to do the work that the undermanned U. S. military can't. Here, for the first time, the inside story of the private armies of Operation Iraqi Freedom. About a hundred yards into Iraq, we stopped to pick up weapons. A half dozen Kurds in white Citroëns met...

  The secret world of corporate mercenariesCorporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry by Peter W Singer Reviewed by David Isenberg It is rare in the field of international security to find a new book dealing with a subject that hasn't already been covered to death. It is even more rare when that book makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the subject and promises to be the gold standard of analysis for years to come, a-la Samuel Huntington's The Soldier and the States. And, most unusual of all, is when said book was formerly a PhD...

In Iraq, private contractors do just about everything a soldier would do. They sling Spam in mess tents. They tote guns along base perimeters. They shoot. They get shot. Sometimes they get killed. And it's not just in Iraq, but around the world — in conflict zones from Liberia to Kosovo to Afghanistan — that the United States is putting hired help behind the front lines to ease the burden of its overworked armed forces. By paying civilians to handle military tasks, the Bush administration is freeing up U.S. troops to fight. But the use of contractors also hides the...

<p>The deaths yesterday of three employees of a Reston-based defense company protecting U.S. diplomats in the Gaza Strip highlight the explosive growth of &#8212; and growing perils to &#8212; private companies taking over jobs once the exclusive domain of government and the military.</p>

The resignation of Rand Beers from the National Security Council is giving off plenty of sparks. Just before the Iraq war began, Beers quit as one of the government's top counterterrorism officials. He's now joined John Kerry's presidential campaign and went public this Monday in a Washington Post page-one profile, in which he branded the White House's Iraq policy an "ill-conceived and poorly executed strategy." That, apparently, was too much for Fox News Channel anchor Brit Hume, who on air accused Beers of having falsely testified under oath about Colombian terrorists training at al Qaeda's Afghan camps, reports our David...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.The war in Iraq could not have taken place without a network of for-profit contractors upon which the U.S. military has come to depend. Some 20,000 employees of private military companies (PMCs) and of more traditional military contractors accompanied the U.S. forces in the buildup to war in the Middle East. They maintained computers and communications systems in Kuwait, Qatar and other locations, handled many aspects of logistics as the military's supply lines moved through Iraq and helped the Pentagon identify key targets in Iraq. As hostilities began, many of these PMC...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States on Friday awarded a 50-million-dollar contract to a private, Virginia-based firm to recruit advisors to train police in post-war Iraq, the State Department and the company said. "We have awarded a contract to DynCorp International to identify, deploy and support up to 1,000 police, justice and prison advisors to Iraq," said Brenda Greenberg, a department spokeswoman. The value of the contract could be as high as 50 million dollars in the first year, she said, confirming a statement from DynCorp's parent company Computer Sciences Corporation. The final amount of the contract will depend...

<p>The State Department is looking for present and former NYPD cops willing to help restore order in Iraq by rebuilding and training new police departments in the post-Saddam Hussein era, The Post has learned.</p> <p>During the next month, the federal government wants to find as many as 1,150 cops, correction officers and other law-enforcement and criminal-justice experts to participate in the proposed establishment of U.S.-modeled police departments and court and prison systems.</p>

Scandal-hit US firm wins key contracts Antony Barnett Sunday April 13, 2003 The Observer A US military contractor accused of human rights violations has won a multi-million-dollar contract to police post-Saddam Iraq, The Observer can reveal. DynCorp, which has donated more than £100,000 to the Republican Party, began recruiting for a private police force in Iraq last week on behalf of the US State Department. The awarding of such a sensitive contract to DynCorp has caused consternation in some circles over the company's policing record. A British employment tribunal recently forced DynCorp to pay £110,000 in compensation to a UN...

Agency nears completion of financial enterprise architectureBy Matthew FrenchThe Defense Department next month will complete a $100 million project that few thought could be finished on time and within budget: the world's largest financial enterprise architecture. The financial management enterprise architecture project, an ambitious undertaking designed to consolidate and standardize all of DOD's financial reporting systems, is scheduled to be completed in April, just one year after the contract was awarded.The project is designed to help the department obtain a clean financial audit &#8212; something it has been unable to do. With DOD on the brink of war, this goal...

Deploying with today's U.S. military on its large-scale operations is a second, low-profile army - of contractors. These hired helpers build barracks and garages, run kitchens, guard bases and maintain vehicles and weapons.Despite this ever-growing contingent, the Department of Defense (DoD) does not track how many contractors it has, though the Army recently began doing so.Pentagon officials concede that numbers on contractors working in hot spots are sketchy, but experts agree the Cold War's end supercharged military reliance on contractors as it downsized."The data is hard to come by," said national security expert Peter Singer of the Brookings Institution, Washington....

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Corruption, organized crime and political obstruction remain serious problems in Bosnia as the U.N. mission charged with reforming the country's police prepares to wrap up its work, a U.N. report released Friday said. In a report to the Security Council, Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged Bosnia to speed up "judicial and legal reform" and hand war crimes suspects over to the U.N. tribunal as the country continues to rebuild after the 1992-1995 Bosnian war. "Key challenges lie ahead, most importantly the full establishment of the rule of law," Annan wrote. "Until local authorities hand over war crimes...

Peacekeepers held in Bosnian bar raid Peacekeepers had been banned from the bar By Nick Hawton BBC correspondent in Sarajevo The Nato-led force in Bosnia, S-For, has confirmed that 10 of its soldiers were detained following a raid on a bar near the capital, Sarajevo. The bar is believed to be part of a network of establishments involved in the trafficking of women from eastern Europe. Any punishment will be meted out by the soldiers' home officials Last week the UN in Bosnia warned of an increase in the activities of criminal gangs who force women into prostitution. The raid...