Army pilot's widow carries on his giving spirit

Two weeks ago Kryste Buoniconti cleared out some of the clothes she had been keeping since the death of her Amy pilot husband three years ago.

“Time to let more of his things go to better use,” she wrote on Facebook.

She wanted to give the clothes away to people in need, figuring that’s what Chief Warrant Officer 3 Frank Buoniconti would have wanted her to do.

She took his things to an Olympia shelter, and snuck a note into one of the coat pockets:

“This coat belonged to Frank. He was 36 when he died in service of his country. He would have wanted you to be warm. Be warm. Be well,” it read.

The note was a small gesture among the many projects Buoniconti has launched in memory of Buoniconti, who was killed with three other pilots on Dec. 12, 2011 when their helicopters collided in a Joint Base Lewis-McChord training accident.

“I had to, just had to put this note in one of the pockets,” she wrote when she shared a photo of the note.

Kryste is the founder of Live Your Love Loud, a nonprofit group that has raised money to help military families adopt children and taken on other projects in Frank’s memory. She’s also a mom who has raised three kids on her own since her high school sweetheart’s death.

Her nonprofit aims to carry on Frank’s spirit. She describes Frank as a serious pilot who’d be relentlessly generous and fun with loved ones and strangers alike. The couple had a “heart for orphans” all their lives.

Live Your Love Loud in the midst of a fundraising drive to do something big for three-year anniversary of Buoniconti’s death.

“I was lucky enough to be married to man who had a huge heart, a generous spirit and a fire in his gut for helping others. We made a good team. I cannot sit and do nothing. I cannot only think about myself and my pain, my loss, my brokenheartedness. I have to DO something,” she writes at the Live Your Love Loud web site.

Amy Bushatz, a military journalist who spent a few intense wartime years of her own at Lewis-McChord with her Army officer husband, picked up on Buoniconti’s note for a column she wrote at Military.com.

Bushatz, now in Kentucky, is still close to the military community in the South Sound. You can tell her heart’s here, too, when she writes about the families she met here.

“Watching Kryste work is inspiring and heart breaking all at the same time,” Bushatz wrote. “When she gives to the homeless, she doesn’t ask why they are there or question their stories. She gives because she has to, because Frank would’ve wanted her to, because she has been called to live her love loud and make sense of her grief through giving.”

I met Kryste in May 2013 for a story about her family and Live Your Love Loud. If I could go back, I’d try to reveal more about the wry humor Kryste shows as a parent to her kids and a friend to many.

She jokingly told me to remind people that she’s only human when I told her I wanted to follow up on Amy’s column. Kryste said she spent 20 minutes today cursing at her Christmas tree. “Let’s keep it real,” she said.

For real, Kryste Buoniconti was a dynamo determined to turn her loss into something good for the world when I met her a year and a half ago. She still is.

©2014 The News Tribune (Tacoma, Wash.)

Pentagon imposes strict standards on private security firms

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is for the first time requiring private security contractors to meet a series of certifiable standards that govern how their businesses are run and how they operate overseas, a move that some say is long overdue.

Sparked in part by the fatal shooting of 14 unarmed Iraqis in 2007 by Blackwater Worldwide guards, the effort gives the Pentagon the ability to more easily hold accountable companies that go rogue and is designed to improve the performance and image of an industry often seen as run by mercenaries.

In future contracts, the Pentagon will require companies to meet dozens of standards, including thoroughly vetting and training employees, safeguarding weapons and ammunition, abiding by local laws, protecting human rights and outlining rules for use of force.

Because the standards will become part of the contracts, the Defense Department then has recourse if things go bad, officials said.

If there is an incident "you can take action immediately and notify the company you’re canceling the contract," Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Gary Motsek said in an interview. Contracting officers "have the tools and standards to measure against, so there’s a better level of positive control than we’ve ever had before."

But Christopher Shays, the former Connecticut Republican congressman who was the co-chair of the Commission on Wartime Contracting, said being able to hold private contractors to account should have been done far earlier.

"It’s just sad that it takes so long to do the obvious," he said. "It’s taken far too long, embarrassingly long. . . . Candidly, it’s just one more kind of example where people begin to lack faith in their government."

Another problem, officials said, is that while the Pentagon has adopted the standards, the State Department has not. That is troubling, they said, given that the State Department relies on private security contractors in large numbers and was the agency Blackwater was working for at the time of the shooting.

In a statement, the department said that, as of now, Congress required the standards to apply only to the Pentagon but that it "is looking at incorporating them into its future security contract opportunities," including when it awards a major contract to protect diplomatic personnel around the world next year.

Motsek and others said that developing the standards was a massive and time-consuming undertaking that involved more than 200 people from 24 countries, with representatives of governments around the globe, the industry and human rights organizations.

Given the complexity of the effort, it was actually done quite quickly, they said.

Concerns over how private contractors were operating overseas spiked during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2004, four Americans working for a security contractor were killed and two of their burned bodies were hung over a bridge in Fallujah. In 2007, the Blackwater shooting in Nisour Square again drew attention to the roles they were playing in the wars. And last month, a federal jury in Washington convicted four guards in the shooting - one of the darkest chapters of the Iraq war.

At one point, there were as many as 50 private security companies with more than 30,000 employees working in Iraq, providing security and intelligence services.

Congress ordered the Pentagon in 2011 to come up with a set of standards that could be audited and made part of the contracting process. The initiative grew out of earlier efforts designed to raise the professionalism of the industry - such as the Montreux document and the International Code of Conduct, which has hundreds of companies across the world as signatories.

While those efforts have been criticized as toothless, the association overseeing the international code is working to increase oversight and accountability.

But the Pentagon said contractors can now be audited to ensure they are in compliance with its standards. And some contractors are starting to get certifications from independent, third parties to show they meet the standards.

"There was recognition that okay great we’ve identified best practices for states. What about the companies themselves?" said Rebecca DeWinter-Schmitt, co-director of the Human Rights in Business Program at American University’s College of Law, who helped craft the standards. "While there were industry codes in existence, there was nothing with real teeth to it out there."

Companies, particularly the more reputable ones, were eager for the standards because it will raise the quality of the entire industry, said Marc Siegel, commissioner of the Global Standards Initiative at ASIS International, the group that developed the standards.

"The good companies want the bottom feeders out of the market," he said. "Bottom feeders can always underbid, and if one of them screws up, it casts a bad light on everybody else. . . . The companies that really want to do this as a serious business want to be seen as doing it seriously."

One of the first companies to be certified by an accredited body is Canadian-based GardaWorld, the largest privately owned security company in the world.

The company said it is "wholly committed to the application of effective standards to this industry" because it "will significantly reduce the likelihood and the impact of negative or disruptive incidents, and will support a safer workplace, even in high risk environments."

There is a benefit for the government agencies and companies that hire security contracts as well, officials said.

"It will minimize the likelihood of something going wrong," Siegel said. "And it will also give them some protection because they can say, ’We really did try to do this the right way.’ "

Putin woos Pakistan as Cold War friend India buys U.S. arms

NEW DELHI — Russian President Vladimir Putin is seeking to build military ties with Pakistan as India buys more weapons from the United States, changing an approach toward the nuclear- powered neighbors that has endured since the Cold War.

Sergei Shoigu, making the first visit by a Russian defense minister to Pakistan since the Soviet Union's collapse, last week signed a "milestone" military cooperation agreement. The world community "wants to do business with Pakistan now," Shoigu said, according to a Pakistan government statement.

The move comes as Putin seeks to expand relations with Asia in the face of growing isolation from the U.S. and its allies over his support for separatist rebels in Ukraine. The U.S. overtook Russia as India's biggest weapons supplier in recent years, prompting leaders in Moscow to reassess their strategy toward South Asia.

"We're seeing a new Russia," C. Uday Bhaskar, director of the Delhi-based Society for Policy Studies. "With India now widening its search for defense supplies to the U.S. and Israel, Russia too wants to expand the market for its equipment. Both Russia and India are reviewing their policies."

Putin plans to visit India next month to meet with Modi as Russia seeks to counter sanctions from the U.S. and others. Russia this month announced plans to build a second gas pipeline to China, an ally of Pakistan, in a move that would cement Putin's policy of tilting energy exports toward Asia.

"China and Russia are also allying themselves, so it's also one factor why Russia is looking toward Pakistan more cooperatively," retired Lt. Gen. Talat Masood, a former chairman of Pakistan Ordnance Factories, said by phone from Islamabad. "It's important to be an ally of an ally."

Russia's gross domestic product will contract by 1.7 percent next year after stalling in 2014, with inflation rising to 8.4 percent from 7.6 percent, IHS Inc. forecasts. The ruble has fallen about 28 percent against the U.S. dollar this year, the worst performance among 24 emerging market currencies tracked by Bloomberg.

Russia and the Soviet Union have been India's biggest weapons suppliers, accounting for about 70 percent of its arms imports since 1950, according to data compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Pakistan, by contrast, has received only 2 percent of its weapons from Russia and the Soviet Union in that time, with the majority provided by the U.S. and China, the data show.

Russia and Pakistan plan to increase port calls of warships, cooperate in fighting terrorism and help stabilize Afghanistan, Russian state news service Tass reported. Shoigu also met Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who said steps were needed to boost the $542 million of bilateral trade between the two nations, according to the state-run Pakistan Broadcasting Corp.

"Shoigu's visit has come at a very critical juncture when U.S.-led NATO forces are drawing down from Afghanistan by the end of 2014," Pakistan's government said in a statement. "Apart from promoting bilateral defense relations, the visit will enable both countries to join hands in bringing peace and stability in the region."

It's important for countries to balance ties between India and Pakistan, which have fought three wars since they were split after British rule ended in 1947. President Barack Obama called Pakistani leader Sharif last week, shortly after accepting an invitation from Modi to attend India's Republic Day parade on Jan. 26.

The U.S. surpassed Russia as India's top supplier of defense equipment in the three years to March, according to figures submitted to parliament in August. They were followed by France and Israel.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is seeking to modernize India's armed forces and shift toward more domestic production to reduce reliance on imports.

Over the weekend, India approved a 158 billion-rupee ($2.5 billion) purchase of artillery, the first acquisition of large- caliber guns since the 1980s. If a foreign manufacturer wins the tender, the first 100 pieces will be imported and the remaining 714 will be made in India through technology transfer.

Alexander Kadakin, Russia's ambassador in New Delhi, told the Press Trust of India last month that "there is zero technology coming from the U.S. to India," whereas Russia is building a nuclear power plant and fighter jets with India.

He has also questioned India's fairness in awarding defense contracts, telling the Hindustan Times last year "we know what gimmicks are used to manipulate deals." He said that Russia has always stood by India and losing its position as the country's top weapons supplier "causes damage to our reputation."

Kadakin earlier this year dismissed concerns that Russia was changing its policy toward India in discussing the sale of Mi-35 defense helicopters to Pakistan. "Nothing will be done that will be detrimental to the deep relationship with India," Press Trust of India quoted Kadakin as saying.

With assistance from Kamran Haider in Islamabad.