KABUL: The Afghan government rolled back its plan to disband all private security firms, declaring that those protecting embassies and military bases could maintain those operations in the country.
President Hamid Karzai’s office said firms “providing security for embassies, transport of diplomats, diplomatic residences, international forces’ bases and depots can continue operation within these limits”.
Karzai in August ordered that all private security contractors operating in the country, both Afghan and international, must cease operations by January 1, 2011, despite a continuing Taliban and Al-Qaeda insurgency.
The decree led to widespread concern that the deadline was too tight to find alternatives amid a deteriorating security situation, and fears that some diplomats and private companies would be forced to leave Afghanistan.
While the measure received widespread support in principle, diplomats, military officials and private security contractors have said Karzai’s government has been under intense pressure to reconsider the blanket ban.
In a brief statement Sunday, Karzai’s office said that “concerns expressed by NATO commanders and foreign embassies about the dissolution of private security companies” had been considered.
Firms not involved in military or diplomatic security would be dissolved as planned, it said.
“Other private security companies pose a serious threat to internal security and national sovereignty, and the dissolution process will continue with no exception,” the statement said.
Afghan officials have said that more than 50 private security firms, about half of them Afghan, employ tens of thousands of armed personnel across the country.
Following the collapse of the Taliban regime in a US-led invasion in 2001 private security firms rushed in to fill a vacuum created by a lack of adequately trained police and army forces.
In 2006 the Afghan authorities began registering, regulating and licensing the firms but there have been questions about the activities of some.
The companies provide security to the international forces, the Pentagon, the UN mission, aid and non-governmental organisations, embassies and Western media companies in Afghanistan.
The Afghan government earlier this month formally banned eight foreign private security firms, including Xe, the controversial company formerly called Blackwater.
Executives with private security firms have refused to speak publicly about the ban, but have said that visas for some employees have been cancelled as part of the dissolution process.
Some have also said that clients had expressed concerns about the ban, as the insurgency spreads across the country and foreign construction and aid contractors are targeted by the Taliban.
But Karzai has accused the security companies of running an “economic mafia” based around “corruption contracts” favoured by the international community.
He has said the firms duplicate the work of the Afghan security forces and divert much-needed resources, while Afghans criticise the private guards as overbearing and abusive, particularly on the country’s roads.
Critics have said the tight deadline would not allow enough time to negotiate an alternative to private contractors in a country were security is a priority and police are generally not trusted.
Karzai’s spokesman Waheed Omer said earlier this month that the ban would not immediately affect companies dealing with the training of national security forces or guards operating inside buildings to provide protection.
“The focus is on those security companies which are protecting the highways, protecting transport caravans — those areas other than the training of Afghan security forces or protecting the internal premises of international organisations or embassies, or others,” he said.
Omer said security had improved along some highways since the ban on private guards operating as escorts for supply convoys in those areas.
Xe, formerly Blackwater, gained notoriety in Iraq after guards protecting a convoy opened fire in a busy Baghdad square in September 2007, killing as many as 17 civilians.
Last month two former Blackwater security guards went on trial in the United States, accused of the murder of two Afghan citizens in a 2009 shooting.
