Four months left for private security firms in Afghanistan

KABUL: President Hamid Karzai will give armed contracting firms in Afghanistan four months to dissolve, his spokesman said Monday, sparking fears over a potential security crisis in the war-torn country.

“Today the president is going to issue a four-month deadline for the dissolution of private security companies,” Waheed Omer said.

Omer gave notice last week that Karzai intended to deal with private security firms, calling it “a serious programme that the government of Afghanistan will execute”.

He said the firms employ 30,000-40,000 armed personnel throughout Afghanistan.

These are employed by more than 50 companies, roughly half of them Afghan.

Omer said last week that Karzai had spoken to his western backers as well as leaders of the US and Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) who contract the companies to safeguard many aspects of their work, including supply convoys.

The flourishing sector provides security services to the international forces, the Pentagon, the UN mission, aid and non-governmental organisations, embassies and Western media companies in Afghanistan.

But Afghans criticise the private security forces as overbearing and abusive, notably on the country's roads.

Karzai has often complained that they duplicate the work of the Afghan security forces, and divert resources needed to train the army and police.

Isaf said Monday dissolving private security firms would not be practical or possible until an alternative force was ready to take over.

“It's very clear for the Afghan side and for us as well to dissolve private security companies as soon as possible,” Isaf spokesman General Josef Blotz told reporters.

“But there's a condition to it and this condition is that we need to have enough Afghan national security force that can provide the necessary security which is prerequisite for the private security companies to do it,” he added.

The Pentagon last week played down Karzai's plans, saying the issue was under discussion, though conceded there were problems.

Colonel David Lapan, Pentagon spokesman, said efforts were underway to address issues raised by Karzai in a way that also met US security needs.

Allison Stanger, author of “One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy”, said eliminating private security firms would pose a major problem for western forces.

“Ending the use of private security contractors in Afghanistan effective immediately would be equivalent to accelerating the end of western involvement in Afghanistan,” she said.

“Our current programmes simply cannot be sustained without that vital support — unless we were to further increase the number of uniformed personnel on the ground,” she said.

It would also cut off a major source of jobs because more than 90 per cent of security contractors in Afghanistan are Afghans, she added.

At an international conference in Kabul on July 20, donors endorsed sweeping Afghan government plans to take responsibility for security by 2014.

The Taliban, overthrown in a 2001 US-led invasion, control large swathes of the south and have put up stiff resistance to a troop surge deploying 150,000 US and Nato troops as part of a counter-insurgency strategy.

Karzai's western backers have supported his call for Afghan security forces to “lead and conduct military operations in all provinces by the end of 2014”, allowing foreign troops to start pulling out.

The west is under increasing pressure at home to justify their commitments to Afghanistan, where the war has killed more than 400 foreign soldiers so far this year.