WASHINGTON – In a commentary this week for Real Clear Politics, Erik D.Prince, the founder and former CEO of Blackwater security company, wrotethat it was time for the US President Donald Trump to take a closer look athow to end America’s longest war and suggested, once again, that the Afghanwar should be handled by private security contractors.
Prince said Afghanistan was never about troop levels; it is about howtroops are utilized.
“After 9/11, a few hundred CIA and Special Operations personnel, backed byairpower and Afghan militias, devastated Taliban and al-Qaeda forces. Thateffort has since turned into a conventional Pentagon nation-buildingexercise and gone backward,” he wrote.
He points out that BBC stated recently that the Afghan government firmlycontrols less than 30 percent of the country.
“If the US goal in Afghanistan is to deny terrorists sanctuary, thenwe—with the most expensive military in human history—are losing to a bandof largely illiterate Taliban and ISIS (Daesh) fighters wearing sandalsastride motor bikes while armed with improvised weapons,” he said.
He goes on to say the Pentagon now classifies the bleak and unsustainableAfghan casualty counts and has resorted to measuring effort, such as howmany bombs were dropped, instead of actual outcomes.
He also raises the issue of budget and says the Trump administration plansto spend over $60 billion—more than the UK’s total defense spending, or ourannual Homeland Security budget—on a failing Afghanistan effort in 2019alone. “That excludes another $1 trillion in future health care costs forwounded vets.”
Prince blames the US military leadership for the failing efforts and saysthey are “unable to adapt to irregular warfare,” and a Congress thatblindly continues to fund failure.
He says for the last 17 years, the Pentagon deploys units that spend a fewmonths acclimating, then become productive only to be turned over.
“Experienced personnel return home, many of them never to come back,replaced by new units. The process repeats. Each new unit must deploy,embed, forge relationships and learn the terrain. It’s impossible toeffectively transfer that information between transient units.
“The US has repeated this insanity for over 30 troop rotations, whilerotating the top commander in the country 16 times since 2001,” he pointsout.
He also says “the US is still getting played by Pakistan”.
“We have no real leverage since we’re entirely dependent on the logisticlines crossing that nation, feeding the Pentagon’s expensive footprint inAfghanistan,” he added.
In Prince’s opinion, Trump should immediately change course and implement aTrump Economy of Force using “proven and cheaper unconventional warfaremethods to defeat the terror malignancy plaguing Afghanistan”.
This “Trump Doctrine” would cost less than 10 percent of what the US spendsin Afghanistan and by utilizing the right blend of Western contractedveterans and Special Forces, it would insert a mentor team into everyAfghan ground unit, provide blanket air coverage and ensure processcontrols are in place to prevent pervasive corruption in Afghan supply andpersonnel systems, he said.
He went on to say a contractor based system would decrease the manpower tounder 16 percent of what is currently in the country and this alone wouldimmediately save American taxpayers over $50 billion per year.
Prince did say the idea would not be to have a private army, but rather a“long-term contracted skeletal support structure for the Afghan securityforces”.
He warned that continuing the failure of the last two decades was bothpolitically and financially “irresponsible” and that it would eventuallynecessitate a complete withdrawal of US support in Afghanistan.
This is not however the first time that Prince has called for the expandeduse of contractors in Afghanistan.In an interview with the UK’s Independent recently Prince essentiallyproposed the privatization of the war. However, the Independent said hewould prefer to call it “rationalizing and restructuring”.