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What is America fighting for in Afghanistan? After a two year investigation, @B_Margaux and I uncovered an illegal mining corruption ring involving an American military contractor, the President of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, his brother, Hashmat, and even American Special Forces
The story is published here, with @OCCRP, and it gets even more important now, with the withdrawal of U.S. troops planned for September, as the bulk of the American involvement in Afghanistan will be through contractors. https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/how-afghanistans-president-helped-his-brother-secure-lucrative-mining-deals-with-a-us-contractor
This story starts with a Pentagon office's mining project in Afghanistan's Kunar province in 2011. A small Defense Department group, the Task Force for Business and Stability Operations, was tasked with promoting local business development and asked special forces for help
Special Forces told the Task Force to help two local warlords who they were buddies with. These warlords had been selling chromite into Pakistan, but if they could process the chromite, it would be worth more. The Task Force got the local warlords $3.8 million in equipment
Unfortunately, this was illegal under Afghan law for several reasons. Government officials can't hold mining to prevent corruption and these warlords qualified as close enough to government officials to make this inappropriate
Also, the mines were unregistered, meaning there were no health, safety, environment or child labor protections. They even could be controlled by the Taliban or other militant groups. But the Pentagon and special forces pushed ahead to make this mining happen.
This lasted until 2013, when @IntegrityWatchA exposed it and it was shut down by the then Karzai-administration
https://iwaweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/05-chromite_extraction_in_kunar_factor_of_instability.pdf
https://iwaweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/05-chromite_extraction_in_kunar_factor_of_instability.pdf
Unfortunately the Task Force and Special Forces operatives behind this project weren't ready to give up. In his graduate thesis, a special forces major outlined how next time special forces wanted to promote mining, they should provide government officials "some sort of benefit"
The whole thesis is pretty foundational to understanding special operations mining ops in Afghanistan
https://www.soc.mil/SWCS/DOTDP/AY_2013/Hartwig,%20R%202013.pdf
https://www.soc.mil/SWCS/DOTDP/AY_2013/Hartwig,%20R%202013.pdf
Anyway, enter Emily Scott King, the head of the Task Force's natural resources group. It didn't make the article, but King was basically out on her own, hanging out with Special Forces and living on a special forces compound, Morehead, with an unlicensed arsenal of weapons
King quit the Task Force after the project was shut down and leadership changed, but she never gave up. She and her husband Mark, who also worked for the Task Force, started a consultancy, Global Venture, which provided special forces mining solutions
https://www.aglobalventure.com
https://www.aglobalventure.com
The next step for this mining project was to go private. King took the plans to SOS International, a military contractor that she may well have had connections to from her government days.
SOS International, which goes by SOSi, an ambitious upcoming contractor, was well connected to the office of General David Petraeus, who was a huge backer of Task Force while in the military
It also had a bunch of apparent spare cash from corrupt deals in Iraq. (SOSi is under FBI investigation in Iraq for allegedly bribing the former Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki.)
One of those deals (and this didn't make it into the story, I love these little extras), was called Iraq Oil Technology. Funded by an al-Maliki connected oligarch, it went belly up, but according to a SOSi employee, was rebranded as something called Southern Development
A leaked document from a Dubai Free Zone shows a share transfer from the parent company of the Iraqi company to Southern Development https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6705315-Arax-SODEVCO
So what is Southern Development? Let's start with the easy part. It's registered in Afghanistan, under Rob Baker, a SOSi employee and former Army General who was forced out after sexual harassment allegations, and in a UAE free zone.
Trade records show it importing mining equipment from South Africa and sending chromite and talc samples to a Pakistani conglomorate, the Adamjee Group
It also received special mineral rights from Afghanistan's High Economic Council in a process overseen by the President directly. https://bakhtarnews.com.af/president-ghani-chairs-high-economic-council-meeting/
These rights included the ability to purchase chromite ore from artisanal mines in six provinces and also acquire directly from the Afghan government. But again, like in the earlier case, unlicensed mining is illegal so the President went outside the law to grant these rights
Now the fun part, completing the circuit to the President's brother, Hashmat. Hashmat is a powerful politician in his own right and actually ran for President at the same time as his brother when he first won. He has also owned Southern Development for nearly two decades
The first hint came from a document obtained from a Kabul University library. It was an old city business directory from 2005 that listed Hashmat with Southern Development https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6536360-Southern-Development-in-the-Directory-of-Kabul
A directory of unclaimed assets in a Pakistani bank confirmed Ghani's address matched the one listed in the registry. And a later directory tagged the SD code from the registry to that address again https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6536498-Alfalah-Bank
A 2005 report also tagged Hashmat with Southern Development and an NGO, ACDI/VOCA, confirmed they hired Southern Development w/ Hashmat, in 2008
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6542058-ARIES-Program-Report
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6542058-ARIES-Program-Report
But his name disappeared from business registrations by 2013-ish, when he, and his brother, ran for President. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6536240-Southern-Development-Original
It took a while, but I found a second Afghan business registration for Southern Development, (searching the Afghan business registry is an art, not a science) and while it didn't have Hashmat's name, it had a phone number. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6535954-Southern-Development
Now I get to be super nerdy. I plugged the phone number into Skype and it gave me a name, Habibullah Habib. I got a photo of him from Whatsapp (and Viber) and found his Facebook. Turns out he's a nephew of a man named Hamid Aryanfar. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6536368-Habibullah-Habib-Whatsapp
Aryanfar, supposedly a relative of Ghani by marriage, is the manager for a lot of Ghani's companies. A similar phone number trick reveals that Aryanfar is behind the number listed on the website of the main family company, the Ghani Group
https://www.theghanigroup.com/index.php
https://www.theghanigroup.com/index.php
Also pay attention to this old copy of Aryanfar's Linkedin. He lists himself as the acting CEO of something called MILC, another Ghani company https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6540533-Screen-Shot-2019-11-05-at-1-58-49-PM
I managed to obtain the business registry for MILC and if you pay close attention, you'll notice that the phone number matches Habibullah's phone number for Southern Development https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6535952-MILC
So this is pretty good evidence that Ghani was involved with Southern Development, but the thing that just blew the lid off of everything was obtaining the ownership information of the secret company incorporated in UAE that showed Ghani maintained a 20% stake of the company
This is an extreme personal point of pride for me. It is so tough to get records from secrecy havens, which is why oligarchs like Ghani use them to cover up corrupt deals. Getting this document was sheer perseverance
How did SOSi hook up with Hashmat? Well that's not 100% clear, but Sultan Ghani, Hashmat's son and the President's nephew, interned with the company in 2013. Maybe that was a perk of sealing the deal. Here's a photo of Sultan with a SOSi VP in 2019 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6536363-Helmick-Sultan-Photo
So what does this mining project look like in reality? For that we go back to Emily Scott King, who helpfully gave a presentation on it at a Special Forces conference in 2019
A couple interesting points, she directly ties Southern Development to the old Kunar project and outlines a $4 million investment by SOSi. But she also mentions a mysterious $10 million investment into Afghan chromite mines.
We don't know what those mines are or who the investment was made by, but I bet you could come up with a pretty good guess after reading this thread.
Oh, also, because this wasn't enough, Hashmat Ghani responds to our story, denying all allegations, but inadvertently confirming the entire story by acknowledging Southern Development is his factory. Also provides some early numbers. Thanks Hashmat!
Ok, back to it, now for some lagniappe. First, my favorite politician to hate on, Mayor Pete. I don't think Pete was CIA, butttttttt, he worked for the Task Force's natural resources group. And I was told by a former staffer that Special Forces regarded them as an intel cut out.
They recounted a whole wink wink nudge nudge routine with some special forces officers who were quite insistent that they were soft intel and asked for help meeting local tribal chiefs. Apparently the guys at Baghram had briefed these special forces guys that they were intel.
Do with that what you will. At minimum, our Transportation Secretary was involved with some people who went on to do very bad things, and also in Iraq too https://fellowtravelersblog.com/2019/12/10/the-petty-profiteers-of-iraqs-reconstruction/
Next up is a little more on SOSi. This is an article I wrote about SOSi in Iraq, for some background. They didn't like it very much and accused me of being a fake journalist. https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-shady-connections-of-a-retired-us-general-who-made-it-rain-in-iraq
