Open thread for night owls: U.S. commandos in Afghanistan bunk down with Blackwater

Spencer Ackerman reports'U.S. Commandos' New Landlord in Afghanistan: Blackwater:

U.S. Special Operations Forces have a brand new home in Afghanistan. It's owned and operated by the security company formerly known as Blackwater, thanks to a no-bid deal worth $22 million. You might think that Blackwater, now called Academi, was banished into some bureaucratic exile after its operatives in Afghanistan stole guns from U.S. weapons depots and killed Afghan civilians. Wrong. Academi's private 10-acre compound outside Kabul, called Camp Integrity, is the new headquarters for perhaps the most important special operations unit in Afghanistan. That would be the Special Operations Joint Task Force'Afghanistan, created on July 1 to unite and oversee the three major spec-ops 'tribes' throughout Afghanistan, which command some 7,000 elite troops in all. It's run by Army Maj. Gen. Raymond 'Tony' Thomas, a former deputy commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, and is already tasked with reforming how those elite forces train Afghan villagers to fight the Taliban. And its role is only going to grow in Afghanistan, as regular U.S. forces withdraw by 2014 and the commandos take over the residual task of fighting al-Qaida and its allies. Perhaps that's why Academi's no-bid contract runs through May 2015. Academi spokeswoman Kelley Gannon declined to comment for this story. But it's highly unusual for U.S. military forces to take up official residence on a privately owned facility. According to Lt. Col. Tom Bryant, the spokesman for Special Operations Joint Task Force-Afghanistan, it's only supposed to be temporary, as the command plans to move to Bagram Air Field by summer 2013. But Camp Integrity is already shaping up to be a crucial location for an Afghanistan war that's rapidly changing.[...] Academi's old incarnation, Blackwater, had deep ties to the secretive U.S. special operations community. Founder Erik Prince was a Navy SEAL, and the firm aided the Joint Special Operations Command with counterterrorism targeting and 'snatch and grab' operations in Pakistan. But while the new ownership of the rebranded Academi has previously emphasized its differences with the old Blackwater regime, some continuities are on display ' like how the military's newly expanded spy service will rely on Academi for self-defense training.

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