Recovery

When we hear about war-torn countries in the news, we hear about the ‘heroes’ – those establishing security and legitimate governments, bringing in drinking water, education and healthcare, and building up infrastructure so citizens can go on with their lives. But most of us likely never think about what it takes to keep those ‘heroes’going. Someone, after all, has to provide the less glamorous basics the supplies and infrastructure that allow them do their job.

In steps RA International, a company which helps military and humanitarian organisations work in locations most companies will not dare go. “We allow our end customers to operate in difficult operating environments,” said CEO Yaser Moustafa in an interview in January.

Soraya Narfeldt, Founder and Chairwoman

“We facilitate every part of that solution, whether that is food, procuring trucks or computers, taking care of their waste or transportation. We offer a whole suite of services for our customer to operate.”

The company was born in Afghanistan in 2003, started operations in South Sudan in 2005 and will begin working in Chad for a United Nations (UN) contract this year. They have offices in Afghanistan, Sudan, Kenya and Dubai, and say they plan to open an office in Somalia by 2010.

One of its latest projects is servicing the United States State Department’s

aerial poppy eradication programme in Afghanistan. The military destroys opium-producing poppy crops, and RA International manages their forward operating base. RA has provided full camp support services for four years to the sub-contractor of the US State Department’s International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Bureau’s international civilian police programme.

Yaser Moustafa, CEO, RA International

“We generally have a large caravan o trucks, usually around 100. We’re servicing 400 to 500 personnel with these caravans,” said Moustafa.

“We provide breakfast, lunch and dinner. We take care of the waste that they generate and airlift it out. We also make sure fuel is provided.”

He said there are only two things his company won’t do: “We don’t provide weapons and we don’t provide security.”

So far, external providers have warded off any security threats, including farmers passionately willing to defend their poppy crops. “Obviously this is a sensitive thing to be doing,” admitted Moustafa when discussing the poppy eradication programme. “You are taking away someone’s livelihood, whether it’s the Taliban or a local farmer. Sometimes we have skirmishes with people, in which they are shooting at us.”

Working in Afghanistan comes with daily reminders of security threats. “Everyday there is an incident,” said Moustafa

“Yesterday there was a bombing in Kabul. We were not affected, but we have to take care of our personnel, so we put our camp on lockdown.”

He said not one of the company’s 350 staff in Afghanistan had experienced an injury or fatality. “We’ve not had any casualties or incidents as long as I’ve been here,” he said. This, he explains, is partly because his company hires locally. “Local employees have a better feeling for what is going on on the ground,” he said.

“We know the routes. There are certain places you drive, and there are certain places you don’t drive. There are certain types of drivers you use, and certain types of drivers you don’t use. You want to use the savvy local staff.”

This strategy also benefits the local economy. “We develop our employees,” said Moustafa. “A lot of those employees we hired as manual labourers have come up with training to be middle-level managers for us.”

He said the company has no shortage of demand for its services in Afghanistan. “A lot of the big spenders – the US, the UK and NATO – are willing to spend a lot more in Afghanistan to address the terrorist threat and address the Taliban,” said Moustafa. “You’re seeing increased competition in the North where it’s a little bit easier to do business. Kandahar is a little difficult to do business, because the security threat is so high.”

Projects in Kabul include operating the base camp for Armour Group North America, a company of 500 providing security for American diplomats. “It is essentially a turnkey operation,” said Moustafa. “We do construction for them.

We build a lot of their housing. We provide food, we provide waste removal, we procure items for them, we do ground maintenance, pest control. We do everything. It’s a massive contingent.”

In Kandahar, the company sources supplies for the United Kingdom Ministry, of Defence. “We do a lot of procurement under their hat – trucks, computers,” said Moustafa. “These are very mundane things, but it is actually very difficult to get that stuff into the country.”

Getting there RA International sources food from numerous sources. For its Afghan projects, for example, they often airlift fresh meat from Europe and tend to buy produce in Afghanistan itself. “Kabul has a very developed local market, in terms of fruits and vegetables,” said Moustafa.

The company ships most of its dry food such as beans and noodles through Dubai into Karachi and relies on Pakistani freight forwarders to move the goods into Kabul.

“Pakistan can be very tricky,” said Moustafa. “They have a fair amount of security concerns, so they will vet your containers pretty rigorously.”

“Obviously, there are problems with graft and corruption in these places,” he adds. “As a company policy, we do not do that.” Overall, he said this policy works to the company’s advantage. “Sometimes we’ll get burned,” he admits. “There are always problems with graft in these countries. As long as you make it clear from the beginning that you’re not paying, then I think that you will establish that reputation. And you’ll find that in the end, people will respect you more.”

Moustafa insisted that his company has maintained an excellent reputation in the countries it works in. “We provide a valuable service at a cost-efficient price,” he said. “We have local know-how, yet I think we operate a company that has financial transparency, good corporate governance, and we operate according to the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

I think we have the best of both worlds. We’re kind of a western solution with very local knowledge on the ground which a lot of companies don’t offer.” He said professionalism can be hard to find in his industry. “A lot of these companies are really cow-boy companies. A lot of companies will do things that are not very professional – they will stop a project midway through because they are not making money, and they will walk away and take the money they’ve made.”

But by no means does following standards make his work easy.

“This is the most challenging operating environment I have ever had to deal with,” he said.

Why? Considering the challenges – not to mention life threats – that come along with doing business in places like Afghanistan, why would any company bother?

“Because there is a demand,” said Chairwoman Soraya Narfeldt, who founded the RA International in Afghanistan in 2003 after volunteering with the United Nations.

“You have people who are sent to do a particular job, such as the UN and other agencies that have funding, but in order for them to do their job, they have to get their people settled and get everything they need to get that job done.”

“I used to get a lot of phone calls from people asking, ‘How can I…? Where can you…? What do you….? What? What? What?’”

She said it makes solid business sense for organisations such as the UN to rely on her company’s services. “The UN is a large entity. As a smaller, private player we’re much more efficient,” she explains. “What would cost them an arm and a leg and be a complete distraction to do internally, they outsource to us. We can do it cheaper, more efficiently and better. Ultimately, the funds that are being allocated to the UN are being used more efficiently.” But going into recovery zones is about more than the money.

Having lived through a war in her home country of Sierra Leone, she knows that people must continue their lives. “Most people assume that in a war everything stops. It doesn’t actually. Children go to school, doctors operate, women give birth life does go on.”

And with the same straight-forward attitude she is not afraid to walk the streets of Kabul. “I know Kabul pretty well, like the back of my hand,” she said.

How is she still alive? “Violence in these areas is targeted violence,” she explained. “I’m not part of that issue. I’m coming in to work within that issue. We are not politically affiliated, we are not giving our opinions. We are staying out of it, we are just doing our job.”

Narfeldt also said a little cultural understanding can go a long way. “The average Afghan ‘hello’ takes between seven and 12 minutes depending on how much they like you.”

At the end of the day, they have to work one step at a time. “When you go in looking at the bigger picture, such as ‘This country has to stand on its own two feet’, the smaller picture is, ‘How do we it in? What services can we offer?”

These services are certainly not going to be everything. We would love to build the whole country ourselves, but it is not going to happen.”

Still, she has hope for the bigger picture. “There is no expectation that anyone is going to solve a problem over night.

But slowly but surely you will get there. Schools will get built. They will get delayed, but they will get built. Who would ever say that girls would go to school in Afghanistan? But there are girls graduating now.”