Via the Just the Facts blog, this U.S. Trade and Aid Monitor* details the corporatist approach to drug war foreign policy. The Department of Defense is extending a privately contracted five-year global counter narcotics program valued upwards of $15 billion. The program employs five primary corporations in the military industrial complex: Blackwater Lodge & Training Center, Inc.; Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems; ARINC Engineering Services, LLC;Raytheon Technical Service Company; and Northrop Grumman/TASC, Inc. The countries in which these taxpayer-funded rent-seekers and mercenaries have been and will be operating in include Afghanistan, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Colombia, and Mexico.
The extended program would again be granted for a five-year period, beginning on or about June 1, 2012, and would continue to support the CNTPO’s mission to “disrupt, deter, and defeat the threat to national security posed by illicit trafficking in drugs, small arms and explosives, precursor chemicals, people, and illicitly-gained and laundered money.
[…] Specific details about the extended program have not been released, but the announcement did include four attachments (attachments 2-5) detailing projects anticipated under the follow-on contract…
Those four attachments are worth exploring. They detail the program’s projects – which include everything from training and equipping counter-narcotics forces, to construction of high-tech facilities and equipment for border and airport security, to language lessons and media training – within the above mentioned countries.
See recent drug war coverage at Antiwar.com:
Latin America Beware: The Imperial Pretext Is Changing
US-Trained Guatemalan Forces Tied To Drug Gangs
Interventionism South of the Border: Teaching Drug Cartels How to Kill
CIA, DEA, Contractors Operate Secretly Inside Mexico
Mexico Blocks US Extradition of ‘Drug Queen’
Supporting Atrocities in Colombia
Update on US Support for Colombia
US Pledges $300 Million More for Central America Drug War
Drug War Wreaking Havoc in Latin America
*The original language of this post incorrectly described the U.S. Trade and Aid Monitor as affiliated with the Christian Science Monitor.
Update: Jason Ditz writes in the news section on the U.S. hiring Blackwater for the Afghan drug war.
Dear Mr. Glaser:
U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor is not affiliated with the Christian Science Monitor. It is an independent, original news blog. Nonetheless, I thank you for posting a link to the above-mentioned article, which I am also pleased to see that Just the Facts had summarized and linked to.
Dear Mr. Glaser:
In your defense, I belatedly learned that Just the Facts had erroneously referred to my website as a CSM asset. I will contact them about that oversight.
Apologies, Steve. I should not have simply taken Just the Facts's word for it. I've made the appropriate changes.
It absolutely requires government involvement to stop and fight with drugs. And I think the government has to be affiliated with others governments to make this effort effective. This is not the US own battle.