It was established by Hyatt Hotels executive chairman Thomas Pritzker and former Pentagon official Paul Brinkley to build businesses in the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa.

NSD's operational headquarters is in a highly secure complex situated in Zubair, ensuring the rapid transportation of goods to the oil fields that surround it.

At the Task Force, Brinkley recruited dozens of American business executives to tour Iraq and Afghanistan, including top officials at Honeywell, IBM, and Boeing.

[2] In 2010, Brinkley told the World Affairs Council of Northern California that: “[Recruitment] was the easiest part of my job.

I have yet to find that I can’t take an American businessman, ideally in his mid-forties, going through a raging midlife crisis, take this guy to a war zone, show him around with our troops, and then put him in front of a general.