U.S. Military Contracting in Central Asia

Since 2009, the U.S. has been increasingly reliant upon the Northern Distribution Network (NDN) – a complex series of transport routes through Eastern Europe, Russia, the Caucuses, and Central Asia – to provide non-lethal supplies to U.S. troops in Afghanistan. As the withdrawal date of U.S. and NATO troops from Afghanistan draws near and little progress is made in reopening the Pakistani passage, the NDN is becoming strategically more important as a means for moving supplies out of the region. To secure access and basing rights on these routes, the U.S. conducted bilateral negotiations and established transit agreements with the respective host countries, with Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan being two of the key states. In addition to increasing military aid to the region, the US established an elaborate system for hiring contractors and subcontractors to ultimately transport goods along the NDN. Our hypothesis is that in Washington, the dominance of military-centric bureaucratic decisions in regard to the NDN has created a situation where there is very little transparency and accountability in the conduct of U.S. contingency contracting in Central Asia. This has in turn led some to argue that contracting money in the region has a corruptive effect.

Open Society Foundation requested from the Capstone team a set of feasible recommendations to stakeholders that would advance transparency and accountability while minimizing potential distortions to economic, political and social development in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan caused by U.S. military contracting in these two states.