"All Americans Out ... Local Nationals Left Behind"

Afghanistan — From someone at Embassy: All Americans out. Landed in Doha. Local nationals left behind.

— Michael Yon (@Michael_Yon) August 15, 2021

Contrast that with SecState Blinken's performance on ABC News' This Week, less than one hour ago:

  

'This Week' Transcript 8-15-21: Sec. Antony Blinken

KARL: Respectfully, not much about what we're seeing seems too orderly or standard operating procedure. I just -- just last month, President Biden said that under no circumstance, and that was his word -- those were his words, under no circumstance would the U.S. personnel, embassy personnel be airlifted out of Kabul in a replay of the scenes that we saw in Saigon in 1975.

So, isn't that exactly what we're seeing now? I mean, even the images are evocative of what happened in Vietnam.

BLINKEN: Let's take a step back. This is manifestly not Saigon.

Not to dispute SecState Blinken, but it is manifestly the case that in the evacuation of Saigon we did not leave (most) of the local nationals behind. 

 

An Infrequent Wind is Blowing

We're not quite to that point yet, but somebody in Kabul is probably keying up White Christmas about now.

Massive Truck Bomb Attack in Kabul Escapes Notice

Photo from Reddit

Consumer Notice: This post is certified 100% free of Matters of Official Concern that are not referenced from publicly available sources of information.

Did the Taliban attack a U.S. Embassy Kabul convoy of security contractors on Monday, January 4, as they departed their quarters at Camp Sullivan en route to the Embassy? And did they do so using one of the largest vehicle-borne bombs employed in a terrorist attack in recent history?

I didn't see anything about it in the WaPo. It's like the tree that falls in the forest with no one there to hear the crash. In fact, if Diplopundit hadn't posted about it I would have doubted it even happened.

Some news media did report it, although most reports described it as an attack on the airport in Kabul vice a U.S. Mission facility and personnel. Also, there were three separate Taliban attacks in Kabul on that same day, so the Embassy angle could get lost, I suppose.

So far, Embassy Kabul has had almost nothing to say about this incident. Deafening silence, as some have noticed.

NBC News had something:

A convoy of U.S. embassy guards who live at Camp Sullivan was targeted in the second attack [of the day], the official said, but none of the guards were injured. The Ministry of Public Health said 19 civilians in the area were injured and taken to various hospitals, but there were no indications they are Americans.

The official added that the attacker missed the convoy and detonated the explosives at the gate that leads to Camp Sullivan, a residential compound for civilian contractors attached to Camp Baron.

"The car bomb detonated at the gate of Camp Baron on the military side of Kabul airport," a spokesperson for the Ministry of Interior Sediq Sediqqi confirmed.

The Wall Street Journal had some more:

The attacks, one of which struck near the gates of a compound used by U.S. government contractors, highlight the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan as its government struggles to hold parts of the country against an advancing Taliban.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the powerful evening blast which officials said was likely caused by a truck bomb. Witnesses at the scene said the crater was easily 20 feet deep. Body parts were found at the scene and the shock wave had flattened one of the compound’s walls and buildings inside.

Officials declined to give details on the number of international casualties, but Western security sources said buildings inside Camp Sullivan, one of the compounds along the route, had collapsed and casualties were feared.

An emergency operation to rescue those wounded by debris in the compounds was under way and being handled by the U.S. embassy.

The New York Times mentioned the other, failed, vehicle bomb attack of the same day near Kabul's airport:

Earlier in the day, a suicide bomber detonated his vest near the entrance to the airport, but the vehicle he was driving in, also laden with explosives, did not blow up, security officials said. There were no other casualties.

Stars and Stripes had some description of the bomb's impact:

Several people at a U.S. Embassy compound in Kabul were among the injured in Monday’s massive truck bomb attack, an embassy spokesman said.

Two Afghans were killed in the blast and more than 30 wounded, said Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi.

The blast from the bomb, which contained an estimated 3,000 pounds of explosives, could be felt miles away. Photos by witnesses showed heavily fortified walls obliterated, damaged buildings and a gaping crater in the road. The bomb damaged buildings and shattered glass far from the blast site.

-- snip --

No Americans were killed in the blast, said the embassy spokesman, who did not specify the nationalities of the injured. The Taliban claimed credit for the attack.

There are three compounds close to each other in the area, which is near a major foreign military base. There was confusion initially about exactly what buildings were hit by the bomb. Even a day later, media were kept hundreds of yards away from the blast site by Afghan police, who said foreign troops had ordered them to keep reporters away.

Who, exactly, made that estimate of the bomb's size? The Afghan Interior Ministry, I assume. I further assume the estimate was based on nothing but the size of the crater. My own unscientific guess, based on comparison of that crater to the ones left by the 2008 Marriott bombing in Islamabad and the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Dhahran, is that the bomb might have been even larger than 3,000 pounds.

The best information came from one of the U.S. Government contractors who survived the attack. His first-hand account is on Reddit and was linked by Diplopundit (here).

The contractor, who worked as an Air Traffic Controller at Kabul Airport, related details that tell us something about the bomb's impact:

My entire room imploded around me in a surreal blur of glass and brick. If I had been standing instead of lying in bed, I wouldn't be typing this ... It rendered our compound pretty much useless ... My room was the closest room to it from our building. Probably about 200 feet.

Photo from Freerange International

Here's a photo of Camp Sullivan's quarters when they were new. Prefab trailer-type accommodations, certainly not made of brick.

So, where did the flying brick come from? From Camp Sullivan's perimeter wall, that's where.

Photo from BBC Producer's Twitter feed

That perimeter wall is thoroughly breached. Like, completely destroyed and turned into those high velocity chunks that struck the contractor's living quarters 200 feet away with lethal force.

It's a good thing the Taliban were aiming that bomb at a moving convoy and not launching a dedicated attack on Camp Sullivan itself, or else they could have followed up with a ground attack and or further bombs inside the compound. Merely the one bomb was sufficient - reportedly - to render useless buildings that the U.S. Embassy relies on for support.

A couple obvious takeaways. First, the huge size of the bomb indicates the Taliban have acquired a high level of technical capability. Second, the fact that they can execute multiple coordinated attacks at more or less the same time and place - even though one of them failed - shows a high level of operational expertise.

None of this is the least bit reassuring as we enter the end stage of our long involvement in Afghanistan, and the Taliban ramps up its efforts to persuade us to leave.
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Little Oversight at Today's Hearing, But Some Humor, Some Aggravation

Raise your hand if you're fed up with Jason Chaffetz

The hearing was unenlightening, and the performance of our elected officials met my low expectations. OBO Director Muniz, however, did much better this time than she did in last year's hearing on design excellence. The Committee website might link to the video in case you want to watch the hearing tonight. Personally, I'll be surfing Netflix.

Here are the highlights.

GAO's witness, Mr. Courts, opened by making his two big points. First, that a purported lack of strategic facilities planning on the part of Overseas Buildings Operations has led to challenges in addressing the embassy’s future facility needs. (Say, did the U.S. Government as a whole ever have a larger strategic plan for its presence in Kabul? If so, I missed that.)

Ms. Muniz rebutted that by saying OBO did, indeed, do strategic planning, and re-planning as our national requirements in Kabul changed. She backed that up by noting that office space requirements grew from 500-some desks at the beginning of the endless Kabul project to over 1,000-some desks now. Also, there was the rather large matter of Pakistan closing its border and cutting off our main supply route to Kabul. Lots of material changes that were not known and could not have been anticipated when the project began, in other words.

Courts' second big point concerned the State Department's rejection of GAO's recommendation that it create explicit security standards for application to temporary buildings. He noted that State says it applies the same standards to temporary buildings as to permanent ones, in so far as that is possible, and waives standards case-by-case when it is not possible. However, Courts went on, in his interpretation of State's position on temporary buildings, it is never possible to fully meet those standards except in permanent, or at least purpose-built, buildings.

That one was more in Greg Starr's ballpark, and he answered it by saying that it is, in fact, possible to approximate or even fully meet security standards in temporary buildings. For example, by constructing a hard shell around a soft-skin trailer. Or by fielding hardened trailers that actually do meet 'permanent building' security standards albeit in a temporary platform. There is more than one way to get to the same level of physical protection, including down and dirty options that have been expressly developed for expeditionary situations. As he said in his opening statement, “simply put, our physical security countermeasures work.” And so they have, through several unsuccessful attacks on our presence in Kabul and elsewhere in Afghanistan.

Chairman Jason Chaffetz returned again and again to blaming OBO for not implementing cost containment recommendations that were made in a 'value engineering' study of the Kabul project. Chaffetz, who opening the hearing by modestly claiming "I'm not an expert" about these matters, certainly played one on TV when it came to OBO's management practices.

Like Chaffetz, I’m not an expert either - or am I? - but unlike Chaffetz, I have participated in value engineering studies, and I’m on Ms. Muniz's side here. She noted that no gain in cost containment from the VE recommendations would have outweighed the additional time imposed on the project as a result. What's more, any VE savings would have vanished in the wake of major impacts such as the closure of the Pakistani border to OBO shipments. No harm no foul.

I completely agree with my good friends in OBO on this. In a normal construction project there is a time and a place for VE studies, but not so in an urgent, constantly changing, effort being conducted in a war zone. "So close your rule book on that one, Poindextor,” to quote White Goodman from the great movie Dodgeball.

In other highlights, Representative Mica expressed amazement at the $2 billion cost of the Kabul projects, especially in comparison to the paltry Gross National Product of Afghanistan. "This must be the biggest infrastructure project in Afghanistan” he guessed. Well, maybe, except for the actual infrastructure projects that have cost USAID $17 billion since 2002, and the futher $21 billion in DOD's reconstruction spending (google Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction report 15-40 SP for details). Did Rep Mica forget about those? It had been a long morning and was getting close to lunchtime, after all.

Rep Lynch provided a refreshing change of pace during his question period by going in the opposite direction and asking why OBO doesn't add a helicopter landing zone to the Kabul project at this late date. There has not been enough infrastructure or construction costs yet for his taste.

Late in the hearing, Chaffetz had the considerable gall to say that State's Assistant Secretary Starr was not testifying truthfully regarding, if I recall correctly, the matter of protecting temporary buildings. He offered to straighten Starr out in a classified setting. That's bold talk from some twerp who was a marketer for a Utah-based pyrimid scheme business before he got elected. If Congressional oversight hearings were not fundamentally a harmless form of Kabuki theater, Starr might have taken offense.

Rep Ron DeSantis of Florida broke ranks during his question period and frankly stated that he doesn’t care about Afghanistan construction costs. Instead, he wants to score a boondoggle project by forcing State to place its new hard skills training center in the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in southern Georgia rather than in Fort Pickett Virginia where it belongs. Starr explained why that won't work. DeSantis didn't care. His colleague from Georgia, Rep “Buddy” Carter, backed up DeSantis on this. Who the hell cares how much you waste in Kabul, he all but said, we want that sweet, sweet, money spent in Georgia.

Towards the end of the hearing, Rep Russell wanted to know how Starr justifies the need for 5,500 USG employees to be located in Kabul in the first place. What? He wants Starr to justify that? He’s the elected official, so that question ought to go to him. What programs did he and his fellow Congressmen and women vote for? We have 5,500 people in Kabul because our elected representatives wanted them there.

Actually, that was the whole hearing in a nutshell right there. The witnesses ought to have asked the Congressmen why our national mission requirements in Afghanistan have been repeatedly changed on them. Why have we been fighting some kind of a war in Afghanistan for four times as long as this nation was in WWII, and what exactly are we doing?

Figure that out and you’ll have your answer as to why embassy facility planning wasn’t simple and consistent over those many years.

House Oversight Commitee Hearing Tomorrow on Embassy Kabul Construction Delays

Architect's-eye view of U.S. Embassy Kabul, Afghanistan (GAO report)

It will be Must-See TV tomorrow morning when the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee holds a hearing on Kabul. Representative Jason Chaffetz will school OBO Director Lydia Muniz and Diplomatic Security Assistant Secretary Gregory Starr on how to do construction work in a war zone with maximum efficiency, because, you know, like, that's something he would know all about.

Here's the hearing announcement: Construction Costs and Delays at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. The stated purpose of the hearing is to "examine the State Department’s risk management practices overseas, focusing on construction of the new U.S. embassy compound in Kabul, Afghanistan" and also to "continue the Oversight Committee’s examination of safety and security of U.S personnel serving in embassies and consulates around the world."

Here's the GAO report that will be the factual basis for the substance of the hearing. Cheffetz will supply everything else a good entertaining hearing needs, like melodrama and histrionics.

U.S. Embassy Guard Contracts: Can We Stay Ahead of the Stupidity Curve?

The most sensible remarks I've seen so far on the snowballing scandal of U.S. Embassy Kabul's mismanaged guard force contract come from Tim Lynch, a former U.S. Marine who worked for the original guard contractor that took over from the U.S. Marine contingent which protected the embassy compound until 2005.

"Babatim" at Free Range International ("outside the wire, inside the loop") has many pertinent things to say about the business of U.S. embassy guard contracting, the management of expat security contractors, and the deficiencies of Camp Sullivan. A few quotes from his post on Animal House: The Real Story will give you the flavor.

On guard stupidity:

The main reason why managing these contracts is so difficult is that it is impossible to stay ahead of the stupidity curve your men will generate. There is no way to anticipate it because some of these guys do the most unbelievably stupid things sober; add alcohol and the potential for Darwin Award level stupidity goes up exponentially ... Your average young enlisted Marine has the ability to do stupid things too but they fall into an easily anticipated set of behaviors which savvy leadership can recognize and at times circumvent. Not true with contractors.

On corporate cupidity:

The problem with the current guard force is that they are on a shit contract. Ignore the money value published in the papers – that number is for five years executed at full value which is impossible to do. Armor Group North America is losing big money on that job and they are about to lose a lot more. [TSB note: Wackenhut Inc., the corporate successor to ArmorGroup North America, has testified they are losing $1 million per month by fully performing on the underbid contract they inherited.] I was asked by a few companies to consult on their bids for it back in 2006 and my answer was always the same – don’t bid because if you win you’ll lose money.

On lousy living conditions:

The pay thing is a problem which can be worked through with good on the ground leadership and incentives ... the real problem is with the living conditions and job requirements of the guard force. There is no space on [Camp Sullivan] for the men to do anything outside of their crammed barracks and they have little ability to get off camp. When you are designing camps to house hundreds of guards for years at a time you have to pay attention to their morale recreation and welfare needs ... If you do not think through what they are going to do off duty as thoroughly as their on duty tasks than you are set up to fail.

And on the need for adult supervision:

The Bridge contract [TSB note: the bridge contract was a stopgap measure to fill in the period between the cancellation of the original guard contract and the award of the next contract] had a bar which prevented excessive drinking or rowdiness due to peer level monitoring which worked for us due to the number of very talented older guys who were not inclined to tolerate too much drunken stupidity ... We did have to explain to the 3rd Para vets that anything involving nakedness and other men's rear ends was considered homosexual behavior by definition and therefore prohibited under the terms of our contract ... I guess nobody had that talk with the current crew on this contract.

The bottom line is that an awful mess was created when the irresistible force of U.S. Federal Acquisition Regulations, which require contract award to the lowest technically-qualified offeror, met the immovable object of security contractor greed in the high threat environment of Kabul.

Babatim has a suggestion for cleaning up the mess:

There is only [one] way to fix the Embassy contract and that is to cut the number of guards in half, make them all Americans and pull them into the embassy where they can work and live along side the other Americans.

That solution could work. At least, it's a lot more practical than the idea of having the U.S. military provide embassy perimeter guard services.

The Line Forms Behind the Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight

No doubt, a whole slew of congressional committees and subcommittees will eventually pile on to that U.S. Embassy Kabul local guard force scandal. It pushes so many different buttons - government oversight, contracting, foreign affairs, overseas security, sexual harassment, even military affairs if you buy the premise that guarding U.S. embassies is a proper function of the military (I do not buy the premise) - that it has something for everyone.

It looks like the first committee out of the gate is the Senate Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight, the same one that already held hearings on the State Department's contract with ArmorGroup North America (AGNA) back in June, 2009. Here's the letter the subcommittee Chair sent to Under Secretary for Management Kennedy yesterday.

Speaking of gates, this scandal needs a good '___Gate' name to get it truly spun up into a media circus. Yesterday's letter to SecState Clinton provides plenty of raw material to work with, like this:

Numerous emails, photographs, and videos portray a Lord of the Flies environment. One email from a current guard describes scenes in which guards and supervisors are "peeing on people, eating potato chips out of [buttock] cracks, vodka shots out of [buttock] cracks (there is video of that one), broken doors after drunken [sic] brawls, threats and intimidation from those leaders participating in this activity…." (Attachment 2) Photograph after photograph shows guards—including supervisors—at parties in various stages of nudity, sometimes fondling each other.

I suppose that "Drunken-Groping-Naked-Gurkha-BrokenEnglish-Urinating-AbsentPost-UnderEquipped-Overworked-NeligentlySupervised-CongressMisleading-CornerCuttingContractor-Gate" is too long, but I'll keep working on it.

"Mr. Ambassador, Tear Down This Wire" (But Leave the Wall, We Might Need That)

Thanks to Diplopundit for pointing out this ceremonial de-fanging of U.S. Embassy Kabul's perimeter wall.

As someone familiar with razor-ribbon, I'm pleased to see it being removed in this instance because, matters of image aside, I don't think the embassy was getting much actual protective benefit from it. In the first place, they were using weak short-barb wire rather than the good stuff: U.S. Mil Spec General Purpose Barbed Tape Obstacle Type II. When you really need razor ribbon accept no substitutes. And in the second place, they had installed it ineffectively, just attaching it to wall outriggers (i.e., those short posts that point up at 45 degree angles from the top of the wall) instead of really tensioning it. In my judgment, that perimeter wall was easier for an attacker to scale when he could use the outriggers as hand-holds than it is now without the wire topping.

But the really interesting thing about the above photo is that the Ambassador is wearing a necktie the exact shade of Home Depot Orange that perfectly matches the step-ladder he's standing on. What fabulous dress sense he has!