The U.S. war in Afghanistan is supposed to be winding down. Its contractor-led drug war? Not so much.<\/p>\n
Inside a compound in Kabul called Camp Integrity, the Pentagon stations a small group of officers to oversee the U.S. military\u2019s various operations to curb the spread of Afghanistan\u2019s cash crops of heroin and marijuana, which help line the Taliban\u2019s pockets. Only Camp Integrity isn\u2019t a U.S. military base at all. It\u2019s the 10-acre Afghanistan headquarters of the private security company formerly known as Blackwater.<\/p>\n
Those officers work for an obscure Pentagon agency called the Counter Narco-Terrorism Program Office, or CNTPO. Quietly, it\u2019s grown into one of the biggest dispensers of cash for private security contractors in the entire U.S. government: One pile of contracts last year from CNTPO was worth more than $3 billion. And it sees a future for itself in Afghanistan over the long haul.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, a U.S. government solicitation sought to hire a security firm to help CNTPO \u201cmaintain a basic, operational support cell\u201d in Kabul. Army Lt. Col. James Gregory, a Pentagon spokesman, explains that \u201ccell\u201d doesn\u2019t kick in the doors of any Afghan narco-kingpins. It handles the more mundane tasks of overseeing the contracts of the Pentagon\u2019s counter-narcotics programs, from \u201ctraining and linguists, and [providing] supplies, such as vehicles and equipment.\u201d The solicitation, however, indicates those services aren\u2019t going anywhere: When all the options are exercised, the contract extends through September 29, 2015, over a year past the date when Afghan soldiers and cops are supposed to take over the war. And the \u201cgovernment preferred location\u201d to base CNTPO? Camp Integrity.<\/p>\n