Oh yeah, and this is what I actually do

I think a lot of my friends got this story from me as I was leaving:

“I’m supervising AP staff in a finance office in-country for DynCorp. As the country is being reconstructed, companies like DynCorp have been contracted to do some of that reconstruction, but also instructed to use Afghanistan-based businesses – so we are here to pay those bills when they come in.”

Yeah, that’s not it at all.

When I got here, I found out that the only bills I’m paying are the bills associated with the sole purpose of DynCorp’s mission here in Afghanistan. You might ask then, what is that mission? And you may have just asked a complicated question. But in short, DynCorp is a law enforcement company – training police forces around the world to bring their operations up to the standard of the police forces in the United States. Required training courses include: Doughnut Eating 102, Advanced Pastry Selection 203, Philosophy of Cruelers 301, Advanced Bear Claw Dipping 502, and General Deep Frying 101. Looking like a tough guy is a foundation of the curriculum, and as a benefit, all trainees get a pair of pretty cool aviator sunglasses.

Actually, the police training program is very dangerous – our instructors are deployed or embedded with the Afghan National Police (ANP) and spend most of their time at the police stations. You may have heard, but if you haven’t, a favorite target for terrorists in Afghanistan is the ANP stations. Keeping law enforcement as corrupt and unstable as possible is a high priority for the Taliban. So this is dangerous work.

But my job is not so much. I work in a finance office – paying the bills that relate to the primary mission of police training and the maintenance of the camp where I live.

We have several remote training centers (RTC) where we do training activities, and they are all over the country. As this contract winds down, those RTC’s are being transitioned over to another contract, but we still maintain and pay the bills for centers in Jalalabad and Islam Quala, which, if you look at a map, are at the far east and far west of the country. For a country the size of Texas, this situation makes for a healthy bit of travel. I don’t have to go to the RTC’s, but our police advisors do, and every bit of that travel is dangerous.

Lastly, the contract that I am working on with DynCorp was awarded by the Department of State. The contract is transitioning to the Department of Defense. Other popular contracts by the DoS and DoD include, poppy erradication, major crime investigation and bossing people around. I made that last one up.

So I thought you might want to know that this is what I’m doing for a living over here. I’ve got a lot of friends that are scattered across the spectrum of polictical views from far left to far right, so some of you will think I’m a war profiteer and some of you may think I’m serving my country. You would all be wrong. I’M DOING IT FOR THE MONEY! Okay, so you war profiteer opinion-havers would all be right.

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3 Responses to Oh yeah, and this is what I actually do

  1. Cari Kaplan says:

    Might be believable all you care about is the money if your heart never landed on your blog. You do care about the country, our country and all the people involved. You should be paid very well for your job and I hope you are.

    Our son is over there now, in the army. Helps to read your blog, Adam, thank you for writing it. Thank you for taking the risk, whatever your reasons, to make life over there better. We pray for you and for our son to be safe, body and soul.

    We see you pretty lady most every week – I think she misses you!

    Rich & Cari Kaplan

  2. Judi Watkins says:

    Be sure to turn off the tracking application on your Iphone. We don’t want everyone to know where you go everyday.

  3. Nicole says:

    i have to completely agree with Kapland’s. You have chosen to go over for money but to be debt free, to build a life for a future family, better yourself and to better the world. I know personally that your insight into this world is making a difference in not only your readers but in what they inturn do with your insight. Don’t cut yourself short.