AFGHANISTAN’S GIANT private security industry that guards everything from western embassies to Nato supply convoys is set to be scrapped within four months under dramatic new plans by President Hamid Karzai.
According to Mr Karzai’s spokesman, the president is due to bring forward plans to dissolve all private security companies and hand over responsibility to the country’s still ill-trained and often corrupt police force.
In November, Mr Karzai had said that the firms, which employ tens of thousands of gunmen, would be phased out by late 2011.
The sudden announcement caught the private security industry by surprise, with many western managers in Kabul simply refusing to believe that the international community, which relies heavily on private armed guards to secure embassies and other facilities, would tolerate Afghan police guarding their foreign staff.
“If you go and talk to any of the big donors you will find that none of them will stay in the country if they can’t have international security companies protecting them,” said one senior executive of a major international security company.
He said his organisation was still absorbing the unexpected news, saying that the threat to shut down security companies “seems to be a bit of a cyclical issue coming back every four to six months”.
“It seems to be almost every time there is a push from the US on anti-corruption, there is push back by the Afghan government saying [corruption] is all the private security companies’ fault,” he said.
The industry is seen by the Afghan government and its key allies as a source of instability, and indeed many of the companies are little more than private militias operating in their own specific patches of the country.
Currently there are 52 registered companies with an estimated 30,000 staff. However, there are also huge numbers of unregistered companies, including 22 in the southern province of Kandahar alone.
According to some estimates there could be as many as 50,000 people working for private security companies in Afghanistan.
A recent study by the US Congress heavily criticised a $2.2 billion (€1.7 billion) US government contract for trucking services, which said some of the security companies involved in protecting road convoys were paying protection money direct to insurgents.
For years, the average pay for Afghans working for private security companies has outstripped rewards for policeman and soldiers, making it difficult for the government to recruit its own security forces.
On Sunday a military spokesman for Nato said the alliance was “in total support of the president of Afghanistan’s intent to do away with security companies and to do away with the need for private security companies”. However, he said, these should be done “in a logical and sequential manner and as conditions permit”.
The government has made various attempts to clamp down on the operations of the private security industry, including the most recent initiative ordering guards at all companies to wear a standardised uniform, which is due to come into effect in the coming weeks. But for all the trouble caused by such companies, the entire military effort in Afghanistan has essentially outsourced most of its logistics requirements to the private sector, making them totally reliant on security contractors to bring in food, fuel and equipment to Nato bases all over the country.
Most embassies would not want to be guarded by an Afghan police force that is plagued by corruption and is also largely illiterate.
A western security official predicted that most embassies would find ways to avoid any ban. One option would be to issue embassy guards with diplomatic passports. – (Guardian service)