Word: contractor
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Often, the death of a private security contractor in Afghanistan goes unheralded; after all, they risk their lives for money, not country. Yet the drivers and guards who ride shotgun on the long convoys snaking over the mountains also suffer heavy casualties. Many have died heroically. Figures released to TIME by NATO showed that from June to September, more than 145 truck drivers and guards were killed in attacks on convoys and 123 vehicles were destroyed. (See up-close pictures of the war in Afghanistan...
...trying to explain the worsening security situation on the roads, a British contractor recounts a joke that Afghans love to tell about themselves. It goes something like this: Alexander the Great was marching across the Hindu Kush mountains on his way to India over 2,000 years ago. The Greek had heard that Afghan tribes had fierce fighters, so he dispatched part of his force through the northwest, which was supposed to be the easier route, and led the remainder of his army straight through the middle of the Hindu Kush. The commander who had gone through the northwest, expecting...
...What was true 2,000 years ago is still true today," says the contractor as he finishes the joke. "If you want to get through the mountain passes, you fight or you pay." Like most contractors interviewed for this article, he preferred to remain anonymous because the U.S. and NATO have understandably strict rules about paying bribes to the Taliban, since that cash can in turn be used to buy more arms for fighting U.S. and NATO forces. NATO observes a "Don't ask, don't tell" policy on such payments. "We know that sometimes the contractors pay bribes...
...Yamamah" probe. (Britain's High Court ruled in 2008 that the SFO had acted unlawfully in scrapping the inquiry, a decision later overturned by the House of Lords.) And the prosecution of BAE for overseas corruption would be only the second such case against a British firm. Building contractor Mabey & Johnson was last month fined $10.5 million for similar offenses dating back to the early 1990s. (Read: "The Gulf: An Exquisite Balancing...
...country has been a key focus of U.S. development efforts, both to undermine the need for and appeal of religious schools (or madrasahs) and to advance literacy, which is 43% among adults; two-thirds of Pakistani women cannot read or write. In long, jargon-filled reports, the principal USAID contractor on an $83 million, five-year education-sector reform project, North Carolina-headquartered RTI (also known as Research Triangle Institute), claims to have "positively impacted" more than 400,000 students (out of 70 million school-age kids) through strengthening policy and planning, teacher and school-administrator training, and youth...