Lemme tell a tale of how the DoD's insistence on contractors almost got an ODA driven out of country by the locals.
Several years ago my team was the first people on the ground in an African nation as part of a larger operation. We were tasked with establishing a camp in the middle of a jungle, next to a village that had no power and got it's water supply from lead contaminated wells. During my 9 months there we established excellent rapport with the village, their tribal leaders, and the governmental representatives. A core part of this was hiring local villagers for our camp work to include construction, cooking, and laundry.
The DoD insisted that FLUOR perform these services. My ODA delayed this as much as possible. The rapport we built up was crucial to making what little headway we could with our catch-22 style mission. The next ODA we handed over to wasn't as successful in fighting off the FLUOR contract. Within a few weeks of FLUOR taking over the entire village was trying to get our follow-on ODA removed from the area. The contractors were apparently being rude and insulting to locals when they went out into the village, the locals that we had hired had been given no warning and were (justifiably) angry at the loss of income. Many had given up their seasonal migration for work in other areas because were giving them steady employment in their home village.
You'd imagine in a country with an official endemic rate of HIV at around 50%, and our worker population testing out at close to 75% during their initial medical screening, westerners wouldn't mess with the local prostitutes. Of course 2 of the FLUOR contractors tested positive for HIV and had to be sent away after a month. Another broke into the medic's medical supply and was stealing muscle relaxers.
I have numerous stories of Contractor fuck-ups in Afghanistan too. Fuck ups that left a camp on the main Jalabad Airfield without functional shitters and showers for "at least 6 weeks until we can get someone free." Or at a different site deciding to build the "Connex condos" higher than the surrounding concrete walls and barriers so that people from outside the base can have a clean shot at anyone on 2nd level. Eventually the Hescos were constructed high enough to allow people to move into the 2nd level.
Fuck contractors.