THE US has resisted Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s demand to rid his country of private security firms.
In an announcement that appeared to catch NATO officials by surprise, Mr Karzai vowed to shutter the lucrative network of private security firms.
“The government of Afghanistan has decided that the security companies have to go,” Mr Karzai’s spokesman Waheed Omar said on Monday night.
Mr Karzai gave a four-month deadline to firms to disband armed personnel, who had been criticised by Afghans as overbearing and seen by the Afghan government as diverting resources needed to train the army and police.
The US State Department, which accounts for some of the contracts, yesterday said that it would be hard to meet the deadline without an alternative to private firms that escorted diplomats, aid workers, media and others around Afghanistan.
“We have security requirements that can’t be met under the traditional arrangements . . . that we normally have with any other sovereign state,” State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said.
A senior State Department official was more blunt: “Can we have all private security contractors out of Afghanistan in four months? The answer is no.”
Mr Crowley said US officials would co-operate with the Karzai government to understand what the President intended and to meet the larger goal of transferring security responsibilities to the Afghan government. The Pentagon, the overwhelming source for the firms’ contracts, did not comment directly on the deadline but said it shared Mr Karzai’s goal of eventually axing private security companies.
But Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the dissolution should take place “in a deliberate way and a way that recognises the scale and scope of this challenge”.
Until the day when private security firms were no longer needed, he said, “we’re going to continue to work with the government of Afghanistan to improve the oversight and management as well as developing plans to progressively reduce their numbers as the security conditions permit.”
Mr Omar said private firms employed 30,000 to 40,000 armed personnel across Afghanistan. They are employed by more than 50 companies, roughly half of them Afghan.
Mr Whitman said 26,000 of the personnel were contracted by the US government, of which 19,000 were paid by the Defence Department. Others were mostly with the State Department and the US Agency for International Development.
The US and its allies would be likely to count on security firms to support future international operations in Afghanistan. Removal of such firms could create a pool of disaffected militants, some of whom are already suspected of having links with the Taliban and of staging attacks on convoys that pass through their areas.
“Security will get worse,” warned Matiullah Khan, an influential figure in the security convoy business.
Be the first to comment