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| Afghanistan |
| The Green Beret Who Wouldn't Go Home |
| 2017-04-01 |
| [WSJ] KABUL-- John Allen’s war officially ended in 2002, only months after it began, when an enemy grenade blast sent the young Green Beret hurtling through a windshield. Fifteen years later, he’s still in Afghanistan, holed up in a friend’s attic with a whiskey bottle and a piano for company. Mr. Allen is hoping to ride out the latest controversy surrounding his private security firm, which flared up when Afghan militiamen he was advising cut off the heads of four enemy fighters and put them on display. The former Green Beret was helping mobilize the militia to target and kill commanders from the terrorist group Islamic State. At the time of the beheadings, in late 2015, a U.S. Special Forces team based in Nangarhar province was assisting Mr. Allen in his efforts. Islamic State had begun to lay roots there, sparking fears that Afghanistan would become another haven for the terrorist group like Syria, Iraq and Libya had. After the ghastly display, Mr. Allen was told to drop his project. "You’re f---ing done," Mr. Allen said a U.S. Special Forces captain told him. Afghanistan is full of U.S. veterans who served here in the early years of the war and returned to work as contractors, part of an industry worth billions of dollars. The U.S. Defense Department alone employs more than 9,000 U.S. contractors in Afghanistan to handle logistics, help train local forces and provide security. Early on, there was little oversight over guns for hire before a series of scandals led then-President Hamid Karzai in 2010 to issue strict regulations that dramatically reduced the number of providers and scaled back their freedom to operate. The U.S. embassy and the command of North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces here say the Wild West days are gone for good. Mr. Allen’s misadventures in Nangarhar show that the slow withdrawal from America’s longest-running war sometimes leaves loose ends--including soldiers who have spent so long at war that they don’t know how to go home. The vets are prized in some military circles for their institutional knowledge--a counterweight to the short tours of duty for troops and diplomats who rotate in and out and barely get to know the country. They are free of the many restrictions that bind the military and U.S. embassy. The danger, of course, is what happens if they go rogue. If anyone could navigate Afghanistan’s complex conflict it was Mr. Allen. The son of a military pilot, Mr. Allen arrived in Afghanistan as a Green Beret after the Sept. 11 terror attacks to fight the Taliban. In 2002, a grenade blast left him so badly injured that he spent over 18 months in the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. Doctors warned he might never walk again. But Mr. Allen recovered enough to return to Afghanistan to set up a private military company, Four Horsemen International, or FHI, which provided wartime services for clients ranging from the Afghan government to the Central Intelligence Agency. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #1 Early on, there was little oversight over guns for hire before a series of scandals led then-President Hamid Karzai in 2010 to issue strict regulations that dramatically reduced the number of providers and scaled back their freedom to operate. The U.S. embassy and the command of North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces here say the Wild West days are gone for good. Note that this coincided with territorial losses to the Taliban. Bush chose Karzai. Nuff said. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2017-04-01 19:21 |