The New York Times reported Sunday that Gen. David Petraeus, the recently installed commander of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, has released a new set of guidelines for commanders in the field to follow when utilizing contractors. While broad, the guidelines – if vigorously implemented – may end up blunting many of the worst unintended consequences that often result from contingency contracting in a war zone.

In an unclassified memorandum directed at both military and civilian personnel, Petraeus, acknowledging the potential impact, both good and bad, of contracting on the overall war effort, urges commanders to make contracting part of their "business" and provides 11 directives for doing so.

The guidelines, which concentrate on rooting out corruption – including graft created by criminal and patronage networks within the country – are big on oversight. The guidelines include directing commanders to "Understand the role of contracting in [counterinsurgency] COIN," "Know those with whom we are contracting," and "Look beyond cost, schedule, and performance."

The directives also raise, as the Times article points out, "the possibility that some contractors now on the NATO payroll could be purged or barred from further work" if personnel indentify linkages between contractors and criminal networks. Petraeus mentions as possible courses of action: "suspension and debarment of the individuals or the company, contract termination, or not renewing a contract option period."

Interestingly, any mention of security contractors is absent from the memo, as Afghan President Hamid Karzai recently declared that all security contracting firms within Afghanistan must disband by the end of the year, while all firms outside the country must leave by the same deadline.

It's unclear how effective Petraeus and his staff will be in enforcing these new guidelines. Yet, enforcement will be the key. The roughly $14 billion that the U.S.-led effort in Afghanistan spends on contracting per year is frequently doled out unwisely, sometimes with devastating consequences.

Furthermore, the larger fight against corruption is exceptionally important to fostering any kind of success in propping up Afghanistan as a working country. As Matt Yglesias recently highlighted, in the eyes of its citizens, Afghanistan is the second most corrupt country in the world, second only to Somalia. If these new guidelines can't get Afghans to believe that the money spent on them is doing any good or at the very least is going where it's supposed to go, Petraeus' memo will mean nothing.

Image by Flickr user isafmedia used under a Creative Commons license.