U.S. Likely to End Police Program in Iraq

This may surprise some, but it really should not be a surprise.  After the military left Iraq, the work environment for police trainers has basically left them totally "handcuffed" to where they cannot really conduct any kind of effective training.

According to the article at the NY Times, the costs have skyrocketed and the Iraqi government really was not consulted on what they wanted in the first place.  This is not the first time this type of thing has happened.  People in charge of programs often never check with the host country to see what they need.  I would not be surprise if a lot of them still do not understand how Iraqi police work or how their judicial system works - neither of which are anywhere close to similar to that of the US.

Add that to the fact that the Iraqi government has been very slow to grant visas to contractors doing this work in Iraq, and you had a formula for failure written all over it.

Stay Safe!

My Look at the GOA Report on ANP Training

I will be giving a review/overview of the GAO’s report on training the Afghanistan National Police (with pictures!).  According to the report: “In January 2011, Congress required that we (GAO) report on the use of U.S. government (USG) personnel, rather than contractor personnel, to train the ANP.”  Just so you know, the report never directly addresses that issue. The audit for the report covers the period July 2011 -February 2012.

The report says that before the DOD awarded DynCorp the contract, they considered using government personnel to carry out the mission.  The only problem with that was they found that the ANP training program “did not include any inherently governmental functions.”  This was supposed to be a seamless transition from US State Department to the DOD. (Even though there is still no law allowing US Military to train local police forces in other countries. That is a reserved function of the US State Department.)

US Pulling Advisors Back

I do not know exactly what is happening in Afghanistan, but according to the news, the US is pulling Advisors out of all Afghan Ministries.  I do not know if all US Police Advisors are pulled out of their respective locations...maybe our Afghanistan deployed friends can help us out with that.

Maybe it is about time we pulled out all together.  It seems that the who "nation building" program has failed according to this report.

Whatever you do - stay safe!

At Least 2 More Months Before Police Contractors "Really" Hiring

Just from one contractor - but likely true for all concerning CJPS.

The DoS has set the resolution date for the latest round of protests for February 29, 2012. Many of you know this, but others may not. Please be advised that this is the projected resolution date and does not mean that we will be hiring on that day. It will hopefully get the ball rolling. If everything starts to progress from the Feb 29 resolution, we should have a kick off meeting within two weeks and then look for task order rfp's to bid on. Plan on at least 30 days for those rfp's to be out and another 30 days for the proposals to be reviewed prior to award. If we are awarded a contract, then we will be moving forward very rapidly from there.

This means at least 2 months before any real hiring on new contracts.


Stay Safe!!

No News for Police Advisors

There is no news for police advisors for new contracts coming up. the "word" is that it will be "sometime in April" before the contract stuff is sorted out. By then the US Military will be in draw-down in Afghanistan. We all know that the country is so far in debt that it cannot realistically afford to "train up Afghan Security Forces" as in reality that will take years and years. The other contracts are just kind-of sort-of continued basically on a month by month basis until real hard decisions are made in Washington (DC). Don't expect such a thing during an election year. My dire prediction is that things will pretty much stay in limbo until the election in November or later. I am hoping I am wrong, but there is nothing to indicate anything otherwise. Stay safe!

Iraq - No Longer a Viable Place for Contractors

The title is my own opinion.  Hey, it is my blog, I can say what I want.  However, you would be hard pressed to find a strong argument against the title.  I believe that Iraq is no longer a viable option for contractors.  It was nearly that way even before the US military pulled out.

Contractors have long been jealously looked at by the local government as having too much authority and too little accountability to Iraq.  This is for good reason.  The contractors were working for the US government, directly or indirectly.  They still are, but now that there is no protection, no medical support, no means of evacuation other than by commercial means - it is not a contractor friendly environment.  Hundreds - yes you read that right, hundreds of contractors have already been detained by the Iraqi government.

Read more about this here.

Maybe the contractors in Iraq have a good counter point, I actually hope so, but I doubt it.

Special thanks to Conflict Area Management on Facebook where I learned about this little gem.

Whatever you do - stay safe!

One Place You Need to Check for Work

If you are looking for over seas employment.  There is one place you should check out for sure.  You need a Facebook account to do any good there.

Check out the Conflict Area Management page.  You will have so many entries that you need to take your time to wade through them, but it is an excellent resource.

Whatever you do,  stay safe!