Military, Security & Surveillance

This weekend marks the fifth anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan. Fariba Nawa, an Afghan-American who returned to her native country to examine the progress of reconstruction, uncovers some examples of where the money has (and hasn't) gone, how the system of international aid works (and doesn't), and what it is really like in the villages and cities where outsiders are rebuilding the war-torn countryside. Click here to download the complete report. An HTML text version of the report is also available. Listen, watch or read an interview with Fariba Nawa on Democracy Now! about reconstruction, security, and life in Afghanistan five years after the invasion. Read More

European firms such as AugustaWestland and Eurocopter are supplying components for Chinese combat helicopters via networks of global subsidiaries and re-exporters despite the EU's 17-year old China arms embargo, NGOs have warned. Read More

A public relations company that participated in a controversial U.S. military program that paid Iraqi newspapers for stories favorable to coalition forces has been awarded another multimillion-dollar media contract with American forces in Iraq. Read More

Boeing Co. has been chosen to build a "virtual fence" using sensors and cameras along the U.S. border with Mexico and Canada to help control illegal immigration in a contract projected to be worth up to $2 billion. Read More

The thousands of mercenary security contractors employed in the Bush administration's "War on Terror" are billed to American taxpayers, but they've handed Osama Bin Laden his greatest victories -- public relations coups that have transformed him from just another face in a crowd of radical clerics to a hero of millions in the global South (posters of Bin Laden have been spotted in largely Catholic Latin America during protests against George W. Bush). Read More

Dramatic evidence that America is involved in illegal mercenary operations in east Africa has emerged in a string of confidential emails seen by The Observer. The leaked communications between US private military companies suggest the CIA had knowledge of the plans to run covert military operations inside Somalia - against UN rulings - and they hint at involvement of British security firms. Read More

Ottawa may have the reputation of a government town, but it's also home to Canada's military-industrial complex. Read More

CorpWatch unveils major report on corporate profiteering in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on the American Gulf Coast. Read More

L-3 Communications, a little-known but gigantic military contractor, provides 300 contract intelligence experts to the Pentagon in Iraq to support operations ranging from interrogation to media analysis. The secretive $426.5 million operation, which is run out of Virginia, may be a recipe for disaster, say critics. Also see related story, A Translator's Tale, by Pratap Chatterjee. Read More

Goran Habbeb was shot and left for dead by gunmen in Iraq for helping troops in counter-intelligence tasks. He worked for Titan, a military contractor, who supply translators to the military under a profitable multi-billion dollar contract. Almost 200 of their workers have been killed, the highest by far of any contractor in Iraq. Read More