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An online fundraiser for the pregnant wife of a soldier killed in Afghanistan on Wednesday has raised more than $32,000 in its first day,Army Times reported.

The money will go to support the wife of 25-year-old Spc. Christopher Michael Harris of Jackson Springs, North Carolina, according to the description of aGoFundMe account set up by a friend.

Britt has recently discovered that she and Chris were expecting their first child, wrote Jenny Ann Stone, who created the fundraising page. During this time, money should be the absolute least important thing on her mind.

The page has a goal of $50,000.

Funds pledged to the account will supplement survivors benefits paid out by the Defense Department a tax-free $100,000 gratuity and Servicemembers Group Life Insurance, which automatically enrolls all service members for a $400,000 death benefit, Army Times reported.

Harris was one of two soldiers killed during an attack in Afghanistans Kandahar Province,Fox News reported. The other man who died was 23-year-old Sgt. Jonathon Michael Hunter, of Columbus, Indiana. Both men died when an explosive device detonated near their convoy, Pentagon officials said Thursday.

Both soldiers were part of the 82nd Airborne Division, 2nd Battalion, 504th Infantry Regiment.

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Fundraiser for wife of soldier killed in Afghanistan tops $32K in first day - Atlanta Journal Constitution

Contractor training Afghan troops

Eric Prince, the former CEO of Blackwater, argues for expanded use of contractors in Afghanistan. Some of his proposals deserve attention.

The idea apparently resonated with the White House (though not with Secretary of Defense Mattis) and has continued to get attention. Prince is widely regarded as the spawn of Satan because of the many controversies surrounding Blackwaters conduct in Iraq and Afghanistan, so commentators have lined up to criticize his proposals. Many of his proposals are, indeed, highly debatable, such as creating an army of contractors and establishing a viceroy.

But there are three policy points that Prince gets right, and these deserve more discussion:

Mark Cancian

First, as Prince points out, the US needs, and has always lacked, people who stay on the ground for years and really know the turf. The Vietnam War had John Paul Vann, who spent seven years in theater and knew everyone. The Afghan War had Carter Malkasian. In two years working with Afghan leaders, he had enough time to understand their problems and win their trust.(Learning to speak the language also helped.) But these individuals were unique. The military has nothing comparable.Service membersrotate quickly because long deployments stress the force and reduce retention, and few speak the language outside of a few foreign area officers. They stay in theater seven months to a year. Thus it is said that the US does not have 16 years of experience in Afghanistan; it has one year of experience 16 times.

Further, the military personnel system discourages building such expertise because such assignments would hurt careers. Military personnel, particularly senior enlisted and officers, need to move through a set series of assignments to be competitive. Captains need to command companies, majors need to be operations officers, lieutenant colonels need to command battalions. Getting sidetracked by a long assignment outside established units makes individuals uncompetitive, irrespective of whatever guidance senior leaders might give promotion boards. FM 3-24, Counterinsurgency does not even raise the possibility of such long tours.The military and counterinsurgency community understand this problem. Many commentators, from Tom Ricks to RAND have noted the need for such a cadre, but nothing has ever happened. (Creating roughly half-a-dozen regional regiments is a favorite cause of Breaking Defenses editor.)

Afghan non-commissioned officer training.

Contractors provide a different and much more flexible personnel system. They can hire people with the right qualifications, often prior military, and put them in place for extended periods because both sides know that that is the deal. They can leverage existing skills and do so without many of the constraints of the military system, like age or the need to retain for a 20-year career.Getting the right contractor into the right billet is not automatic, it takes effort, but the mechanism is there.

Second, creating viable Afghan security forces is the only way well be able to pull our forces out without causing a collapse behind us. Long-term embeds down to the lowest levels, as Price suggests, might be the way to accomplish that. Our current approach of using generalists however brave and well intentioned who turn over rapidly is not working. Most Afghan units, outside of special forces, although fighting and dying, are not very effective.The U.S. Army is building regionally aligned security force assistance brigades to provide such capabilities, but that effort is just beginning.

A British officer fights mutinying Indian soldiers in the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857/

Prince points to the 19th century army of the East India Company as a model.That army failed, revolting in the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. (In any case, creating a whole contractor army is highly debatable.)But the success of the successor British India Army of the Raj is undeniable.It maintained peace on the subcontinent and fought effectively in both World Wars.One reason the British were so successful with Indian forces was that many military personnel went native, integrated fully, learned the language, and took up local customs, including Indian dress. British officers and NCOs spent entire careers with Indian troops. Deep acculturation also avoids the mirror imaging that Price, and many others, criticize; other militaries dont need to be structured and equipped like the U.S. military.

Third, if the US really wants to play a long game in Afghanistan, it will need to reduce the wars visibility. Its hard to do that with large numbers of Americans wearing uniforms because servicemembers get so much attention, and DOD keeps pointing to them.

Continuous stories about deployments and stress on military personnel remind the public about the war. Thus, the political questions constantly arise: how are we doing and when will the war be over? On the other hand, one of the tenets of counterinsurgency is that it takes a long time and requires strategic patience. Some go on for decades. As FM 3-24, Counterinsurgency, notes: Counterinsurgency operations may demand considerable expenditures of time and resources. The population must have confidence in the staying power of both the affected government and any counterinsurgency forces supporting it.

In supporting the decades-long Colombian counterinsurgency, the US deployed no military units but instead used contractors extensively.As a result, the war stayed off the publics radar, and the US was able to sustain a long-term effort that culminated in the 2016 peace agreement and, in effect, surrender of the insurgents. Yes, there is an element of cynicism in substituting contractors for military personnel and capitalizing on the publics lack of interest in contractors, but the world is what it is and decision-makers must deal with it.Reduced visibility is something every White House looks for, and this White House (like the two previous administrations) is anxious to avoid an endless war.

The US already has a lot of contractors in Afghanistan 26,000 according to the most recent report of whom 9,500 are Americans. Two-thirds perform base functions like logistics and communications support, 13 percent are in security, only 3 percent in training. Using contractors is not an either-or proposition, but a question of changing the manpower mix.

Texas National Guard soldiers in Afghanistan.

If the US were to rely more on contractors, it should apply the painful lessons learned of the last two decades. The early years of the Iraq war were marred by extensive abuses. Although contractors were generally effective, government contracting organizations were overwhelmed and unable to provide the oversight necessary. As a result, many safeguards are now in place, from a beefed-up contingency contracting capability, to regulations holding contractors accountable to military authorities, to doctrine on how to employ contractors.

Prince proposes that the Afghan government employ contractors, which, among other effects, gets around prohibitions on contractors performing inherently governmental functions that exist in US law. However, the Afghan government is almost certainly unable to efficiently and effectively exercise control over this much money and capability. The U.S. would need to be in charge.

So we should take these points seriously, even if some of Princes other recommendations are debatable, and many people dont like his past. Yes, the military personnel system might be changed to accomplish some of these goals, but changes during 16 years of war have been modest, so there is no reason to believe that major shifts are near. Maybe a different manpower balance could do better.

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Contractors in Afghanistan: What Erik Prince Gets Right - Breaking Defense

Amid new U.S. sanctions, North Korea's "No. 2" official began a 10-day visit to Iran on Thursday that could result in the two sides expanding their ties.

Iran's official IRNA news agency reported Kim Yong Nam, chairman of the Supreme Assembly of North Korea, arrived Thursday for the weekend inauguration ceremony for Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

But given the head of North Korea's parliament is expected to stay for 10 days in Iran, the trip is being seen as a front for other purposes, including expanding military cooperation. At the same time, Pyongyang is looking for ways to counter sanctions and to boost the hard currency for Kim Jong Un's regime.

"There could be very problematic cooperation going on because of the past history and because it makes strategic sense, especially for Iran now," said Emily Landau, a senior research fellow at the Israeli-based Institute for National Security Studies and head of the Arms Control and Regional Security Program. INSS is an independent think tank affiliated with Tel Aviv University.

The man whom Iran described as the North's "No. 2" is believed to be traveling with a delegation of other officials from Pyongyang, including economic and military officials.

"For North Korea, it's not a question of ideology," Landau said. "It's not a question of being close politically and maybe in terms of any of their religious orientation. It's all about who can pay in hard cash. That's what makes North Korea a very dangerous source of nuclear technology, components and know-how."

Last month, Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo said in a speech at the Intelligence and National Security Alliance that he had "created two new mission centers aimed at focusing on putting a dagger in the heart of the Korean problem and the problem in Iran."

"Both the North Koreans and Iranians feel a serious threat from the United States and the West and sort of see each other as very different countries but facing a somewhat similar situation," said Matthew Bunn, a nuclear proliferation expert and professor of practice at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

In July, nuclear-armed North Korea conducted two tests of an intercontinental ballistic missile. Iran could have an ICBM capability similar to North Korea within a few years, as just last week it successfully launched a satellite-carrying rocket that some see as a precursor to long-range ballistic missile weapon capability.

"There's been fairly extensive cooperation on missiles," said Bunn. "And in fact, early generations of Iranian missiles were thought to be basically modestly adapted North Korean missiles."

For example, Tehran's Shahab-3 ballistic missile, capable of reaching Saudi Arabia from Iranian land, is based on technology from North Korea's Nodong-1 rockets. Iran's Ghadir small submarine, which in May conducted a cruise-missile test, is a vessel remarkably similar to those used by Pyongyang.

There's still a bit of a mystery on the nuclear side, but some former CIA analysts have previously said Iranian scientists have attended nuclear tests in North Korea. There have been recent reports North Korea may be preparing for its sixth nuclear test.

Tehran's hands are tied due to the international nuclear agreement, although there's a possibility it could quietly be teaming up with North Korea on nuclear research and doing it from the Korean Peninsula.

"The fact they are cooperating so closely on the missile realm is cause to believe that there could be even more cooperation going on even directly in the nuclear realm," said Landau, the Israeli-based national security expert.

Bunn, however, isn't so sure there's currently any collaboration on the nuclear side between the two regimes but said "there's a real danger potential" of it happening.

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North Korea's 'No. 2' official on 10-day visit to Iran that may signal wider military ties - CNBC

Hassan Rouhani. Despite defeating his conservative rival by a landslide in Mays elections, opposition is ranged against him at home and abroad. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

When the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, is sworn in again on Saturday, the EUs foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and ministers from Britain, France and Germany will be in Tehran to watch; an indication of how far relations with the west warmed in his first term. Yetashe embarks upon his second, he may feel the chill. Despite defeating his conservative rival by a landslide in Mays elections, opposition is ranged against him at home and abroad. The great domestic uncertainty he faces supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is 78 and without aclear successor is for now overshadowed by Donald Trumps threat to pull out of the landmark nuclear deal signed in 2015.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors its implementation, says Iran is complying with the requirements to curb its nuclear programme and accept inspections in return for sanctions relief. But Mr Trump has vowed to overturn the Obama administrations stand-out foreign policy achievement. He has twice signed the sanctions waiver, but with extreme reluctance. He has asked aides to find a way to ditch the deal and says he expects Iran to be declared non-compliant next month. Officials say it has breached the pact in spirit.

Mr Rouhani promised that the agreement would bring prosperity. Irans economy is growing again; he has slashed inflation and stabilised the currency. But poverty has risen, a quarter of young people are unemployed, and foreign investment remains well below projections. Iranians have not yet felt the benefits they expected. Alongside the economic dissatisfaction run other concerns. Younger people especially want reform, and to see more women in government, and better links with the outside world. Meanwhile, the presidents hardline opponents, including the Revolutionary Guard and the judiciary, have portrayed the deal as a capitulation for little reward not least, because it challenges their vested interests. They sense opportunity; note the recent detention of Mr Rouhanis brother. Iranian presidents are usually weakened in their second term and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has fired a shot across the presidents bows by implying a parallel with Abolhassan Banisadr, a reformist removed from office early.

For now, Irans elite seems to be playing down divisions. That may make it harder for the US to push Tehran into abandoning the agreement, as Mr Trump apparently hoped. Iran says the US is breaching it by applying separate sanctions relating to missiles and human rights, but does not want to walk away. European parties to the deal want to shore it up; Frances Total signed a multibillion-dollar gas deal with Iran last month. But should the US pull out, secondary sanctions would hobble foreign companies seeking to do business with Iran.

Iran has much to answer for; most of all, assisting Bashar al-Assads crimes against his people in Syria. The countrys grim human rights record at home is further tarnished by the deteriorating health of opposition leaders Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi, held under house arrest since the popular protests of 2011. Its elections are anything but free and fair yet they are competitive, meaningful and much more than most US allies in the region offer. No one could deny that Mr Rouhani is a very different president to his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. YetMr Trump greeted his re-election by throwing US weight more fully behind SaudiArabia in its struggle with Iran for regional hegemony.

American hostility can only bolster the isolationist, hardline forces ranged against Mr Rouhani; against the wishes and instincts of the Iranian people; against stability in the region and indeed against the interests of the US. Even defence secretary James Mattis who has defined the three gravest threats facing the US as Iran, Iran, Iran is among those pressing to maintain the deal. The president he serves calls the agreement a disaster. But Mr Trump is, as usual, wrong. It is scrapping it that could court catastrophe.

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The Guardian view on Iran: the nuclear deal is not a disaster but scrapping it could be - The Guardian

But a flood of major investment has not materialized -- and that's largely because of the United States.

More than two years have passed since Iran signed a landmark nuclear agreement with six world powers including the U.S. The deal allowed Tehran to get a handle on rampant inflation that resulted from years of crippling sanctions, and the country has dramatically boosted its oil production and exports.

Iran has been certified as being in compliance with the nuclear deal.

But foreign companies are still reluctant to invest because they fear the agreement could collapse.

"The train has left the station but its not moving at the pace that people expected," said Raul Heraud, head of financial services at strategic advisory firm Solidiance. "It is important to have a clear picture in terms of strategy of entering the market."

The U.S., which kept other sanctions on Iran in place even after the nuclear deal was signed, is the source of much of the investor anxiety.

President Trump has long promised a tough line on Iran -- including calls on the campaign trail to tear up or renegotiate the nuclear agreement, which he has described as "the worst deal ever."

On Wednesday, Trump signed into law new sanctions that target individuals associated with Iran's ballistic missile program. Tehran responded by saying the measures are designed to derail the 2015 nuclear agreement.

A trickle not a flood

Iran sits on 9% of the world's proven oil reserves and 18% of the planet's natural gas, according to data from BP (BP). And there has been a smattering of promising investments in the sector.

French oil giant Total and state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation last month signed a multi-billion dollar deal to further develop Iran's giant South Pars gas field. It was the first major Western investment since sanctions were eased.

"European oil and gas companies are still at the front of the queue. They are preferred by Iran for their technical and financial capabilities," said Homayoun Falakshahi a senior research analyst at Wood Mackenzie. "The latest sanctions are slowing things down but not stopping interest from companies."

European firms may feel more confident because of the position of the European Union, which said last month that it would "stay committed in preserving and implementing" the nuclear deal and "expects all sides to keep the commitments they took two years ago."

Consumer goods makers are getting in on the act, too: Germany's Volkswagen (VLKAF) has also announced that it will sell cars in Iran for the first time in 17 years.

The deals require a tremendous amount of planning. Many international banks, for example, won't provide financing over fears of violating U.S. sanctions.

Related: Amazon says it might have violated U.S. sanctions on Iran

U.S. companies on the sidelines

American firms, meanwhile, have largely stayed away from Iran.

"We've seen European players enter the market, the U.S. unfortunately has to look from the sidelines and have to wait for their turn," said Heraud.

The only major exception is Boeing (BA), which has inked an $8 billion deal to sell 80 jets to Iran Air. It has another agreement to sell 30 airplanes to Aseman Airlines.

U.S. firms must receive special approval from the Treasury Department to do business in Iran.

"We have heard first hand from many companies who have applied ... that the process takes a long time and that many applicants are unsuccessful," said Karim El Assir of KPMG's corporate intelligence team.

Even successful applicants can't be sure that the policy sands won't shift. Just last week, for example, the Treasury Department slapped sanctions on six Iran-based satellite companies following an Iranian rocket launch.

Related: The ride-hailing app that rules Tehran's busy streets

High risk, high reward

Some companies are willing to take the risk.

"Although Iran epitomizes the high-risk, high-reward dilemma, there no doubt that many foreign companies will follow in what is still a relatively untrodden path," said Torbjorn Soltvedt, an analyst at the global risk consultancy firm Maplecroft.

But caution is still the name of the game.

"They are doing extensive due diligence," said Falakshahi from Wood Mackenzie.

In July, the Trump administration begrudgingly certified that Iran was continuing to comply with the terms of the nuclear deal. But it signaled more trouble ahead.

"The secretary of state -- and the president -- intends to emphasize that Iran remains one of the most dangerous threats to the U.S. and to regional security," a senior administration official said at the time.

"Moving forward, the administration intends to employ a strategy that will address the totality of Iran's malign behavior and not just focus on the nuclear deal," the official added.

CNNMoney (Dubai) First published August 3, 2017: 12:01 PM ET

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Trump keeps scaring investors away from Iran - CNNMoney