Mark Pyman discussed the Defence and Security Programme’s work with legal experts and students of the George Washington University, stressing that 10 years ago it would have been very difficult for civil society to engage the defence sector. “Defence companies, governments and the military didn’t feel the need to justify themselves to any outside group” explained Pyman.

Now, things have changed substantially. “Many governments approach us and tell us they have a defence corruption problem and need to talk to us” said Pyman.

Doors have also opened due to the programme’s work with NATO and because of the mutual respect amongst senior military officials across borders. As Pyman puts it, “their thought when they see me with one of our retired military advisors is: ’this general wouldn’t come to see us unless he thought this was important'”.

Pyman’s presentation then focused on the challenges of expeditionary contracting, highlighting there are 5 distinct areas which need to be improved:

1. The waste of donor funds, which fuels local corruption and cynicism.
2. Contractors are central to operations, yet processes and controls are weak.
3. The military approach needs to be carefully considered, in order to avoid jeopardising the mission's success.
4. The political economy of injecting funds, which means that this money can fuel power dynamics; the new jobs created result in lower insecurity; and all this brings economic growth, which is central to stability.
5. Local markets and contractors face different risks and often have less experience.

The amount of money wasted to corruption in Afghanistan, as highlighted by the Wartime Contracting Commission's report, show the consequences of the lack of oversight in the contracting sector in the country. “What comes out of the Afghan story is that service contractors are much less scrutinised. In order to bring the local economy back to its feet, we need to encourage local contracting, in order to build local jobs and markets” emphasised Pyman.

He added that many times the answer he receives to this suggestion is a discouraging one, as it is assumed that local contractors will be corrupt. “You haven’t tried, so you don’t know” is Pyman’s standard answer. There are military contracting chiefs who are making a success of local contracting. It's just that they are a minority.

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