Karzai just kills me sometimes. It was guys from DynCorp and other companies over the years that saved his life with professional PSD teams, over and over again. But hey, if these anticorruption units are tearing apart Crazy Karzai’s little mafia, then that is great and he can cry all he wants. Maybe he will get the point that there are a lot of people fighting and dying for the sake of his government, and the least he could do is square away his house. And if he can’t do it, then by god, we will pull him along kicking and screaming. Call it tough love. lol
As for him actually banning companies? Good luck there. It is the foreign companies that are actually delivering a better service than these local afghani companies, just because these ‘foreign PSC’s’ have folks who are trained and have discipline. They also operate with more scrutiny than any of the local companies.
I think what might really be happening is that maybe these foreign companies are being tasked to watch over, or even take over some of these local national contracts that have been so screwed up. If that is the case, then of course Crazy Karzai and his insane clown posse would be pissed, because that would cut into his crew’s profit margin. This is just another opportunity for him to try and further consolidate the market under his family’s control. Just some thoughts on the matter, and it sounds like politics and business as usual.-Matt
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Karzai Calls for Ban on Private Security Companies
Afghan President’s Remarks Add to Strains With U.S. Over Anticorruption Efforts
AUGUST 8, 2010
By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV And MARIA ABI-HABIB
KABUL—Afghan President Hamid Karzai lashed out against foreign interference and called for a ban on the private security companies that protect many Western installations here, in a speech that ratchets up recent tensions with the U.S. over two American-backed anticorruption agencies.
“We have the ability to rule and govern our country and we have our sovereignty. We hope that NATO countries and the U.S. pay attention,” Mr. Karzai told a gathering of Afghan public servants in a speech on Saturday. “No Afghan administration will be successful unless it lays off its foreign advisers and replaces them with Afghans.”
The call to ban private security companies came a week after a convoy of DynCorp International, which provides security in Afghanistan under a U.S. State Department contract, was involved in a car accident that killed an Afghan civilian in Kabul. The accident sparked rioting and anti-American protests.
The 10 aid workers killed last week as they returned to Kabul from a remote part of the country didn’t have a security detail.
The Afghan leader’s defiant weekend speech came days after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton phoned Mr. Karzai to press him to live up to his anticorruption commitments, according to U.S. officials, warning that his recent attempt to weaken two U.S.-mentored antigraft agencies could endanger the chances of congressional approval for billions of dollars in aid to Afghanistan.
Mr. Karzai, Afghan officials say, told her that the Major Crimes Task Force and the Sensitive Investigative Unit—which investigate high-level corruption in the Afghan government and operate with heavy involvement from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Drug Enforcement Agency—have violated the Afghan constitution.
“We don’t want our Afghan administration to be run by two different sets of people and to be accountable to two different sources. It’s destroying the national sovereignty of Afghanistan and we will not allow it,” Mr. Karzai said in his Saturday speech.
The latest confrontation with Washington flared after the MCTF and the SIU last month, without Mr. Karzai’s approval, raided the home of a senior Afghan presidential aide who had been taped while allegedly soliciting a bribe.
The scandal is threatening to become the most serious crisis in the U.S.’s relations with Mr. Karzai since the controversy over accusations of widespread fraud in the presidential elections a year ago. Mrs. Clinton phoned Mr. Karzai last week after he created a commission to oversee the MCTF and the SIU.
The rift over the agencies appears to have wiped out any residual goodwill from Mr. Karzai’s May trip to Washington, where he was praised by the Obama administration for his pledges to clean up the Afghan government.
Mr. Karzai has also had a stormy beginning with the new U.S.-led coalition commander, Gen. David Petraeus.
U.S. commanders were upset last month when Mr. Karzai issued a statement condemning coalition forces for allegedly causing 52 civilian casualties in a rocket attack in Helmand.
The coalition military says it had no record of carrying out such an attack—and that local hospitals had no record of such casualties from that area.
“The people who are working in private security companies are against Afghan national interest, and their salaries are illegal money. They are thieves during the day and terrorists during the night,” Mr. Karzai said in Saturday’s speech. “If they want to serve Afghanistan they have to join the Afghan police.”
Many of the 52 registered security companies operating in Afghanistan are foreign, but some of the bigger ones are Afghan-owned, and have close links with prominent government officials and members of Mr. Karzai’s family. They employ an estimated 30,000 people.
Private companies provide security for Western diplomatic missions and aid agencies, coalition installations, hotels and major infrastructure such as airports.
They also guard supply convoys that bring vital goods to landlocked Afghanistan from neighboring countries.
Many Western government agencies and contractors operating in Afghanistan are wary of relying on the Afghan police force, which is often infiltrated by the Taliban.
“There aren’t enough state or international security forces to provide all the services that private security companies do,” said John Dempsey, an analyst at the U.S. Institute for Peace.
A coalition spokesman, U.S. Air Force Maj. Joel Harper, said the international forces are “working with the Afghan government to build its police capabilities and capacity so that private security companies are no longer required.”
There is no firm deadline for shutting down the security firms, but Mr. Karzai wants them closed “as soon as possible,” said the president’s chief spokesman, Waheed Omar, on Saturday. “The process needs to start,” he said.
In mid-July, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, had held up the MCTF in Senate testimony as proof of Mr. Karzai’s seriousness in curbing graft. That followed a move in June by a congressional panel to freeze some $4 billion in aid to Afghanistan, after The Wall Street Journal reported that billions of dollars in cash—some of it in aid money—was being taken out each year through Kabul’s international airport.
The Kabul offices of the financial company most prominent in this outflow, the New Ansari Exchange, were raided by the SIU in January. The company has connections with senior members of the Afghan government and some of Mr. Karzai’s relatives.
New Ansari has denied any wrongdoing.
The presidential aide detained by the MCTF and SIU last month, Mohammed Zia Saleh, head of administration for Afghanistan’s National Security Council, was taped while allegedly discussing a bribe in the form of a car for quashing the New Ansari investigation.
Mr. Saleh, who has been freed on Afghan government orders, couldn’t be located to comment.
According to Western and Afghan officials, the MCTF and SIU are working normally so far, and their sensitive investigation files—including those targeting senior government figures—haven’t yet been taken by Mr. Karzai’s commission, which is headed by Attorney General Ishaq Aloko.
Asked whether the files could be seized, an aide to Mr. Karzai said: “The president issued an order asking the commission to review all the cases, so it could happen.”
Story here.
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Karzai and U.S. on collision course concerning corruption crackdown.
Aug 07, 2010
President Karzai promised to root out corruption a promise made to please his western funders. Now one of Karzai’s own top aides has been arrested by American supported anti-graft units. Karzai responded by investigating the investigators and trying to control them. Obviously Karzai wants the battle against corruption to be much more selective than the U.S. would like. Behind all the talk of cooperation and good relations there are obvious battles going on between Karzai the bad puppet and those in the west who fund his regime.
Hamid Karzai represents himself as a champion of human rights and claims that the anti-graft group are violating the rights of suspects who were arrested! This is according to a commission that Karzai set up to investigate the issue. Karzai also complained that Afghan sovereignty was being violated because of the U.S. involvement. Meanwhile the U.S. congress is withholding 4 billion in Afghan aid over a case closely related to the arrest of this Karzai aide.
Two powerful anticorruption organizations were set up within the Interior Ministry initially with the approval of Karzai urged on by the U.S.. The Major Crimes Task Force and the Sensitive Investigations Unit however do not work alone. The FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration of the U.S. are extensively involved. In fact the arrangement is meant to ensure that the agencies are run by the U.S. rather than the Afghan government.
They are self-contained, with their own lawyers, investigators, judges and even detention facilities. The arrangement was meant to insulate them from interference from other government agencies.
The Karzai aide, Mohammed Zia Saleh, head of administration for Afghanistan’s National Security Council, was arrested late in July. According to a Western official with knowledge of the case, the arrest came after investigators wiretapped Mr. Saleh soliciting bribes from the New Ansari Exchange, a money exchange operation, to impede an investigation into the company’s role in exporting large amounts of cash from the country.
Congress held up the Afghan financing after The Wall Street Journal reported that about $3 billion had been transferred out of Afghanistan – a huge amount considering the country’s gross national product of only $13.5 billion, according to The Journal account. The New Ansari Exchange was involved in many of those money transfers, and the organization was raided by the American-backed investigators, who seized many of its records.
The U.S. is planning to disperse half of 20 billion in aid through the Afghan govt. rather than direct to contractors. However, to do this will require more confidence in the anti-corruption practices of the government. There was a huge but mostly unreported spat when Saleh the aide was arrested. Guess what? He has been released by an order from the attorney general’s office.
Concerns have been raised about whether the two anti-corruption agencies are in accord with the constitution and humanitarian principles. The U.S. was obviously attempting to do an end run around the government and has been caught out. Now Karzai has promised a new decree governing the two organizations and has meanwhile put the Commission he set up in charge of them. Will the U.S. go along or will it continue to hold up funds until Karzai caves?
A subsequent statement from the president’s office on Thursday night said concerns had been raised about whether the two organizations were in accord with Afghanistan’s Constitution, its “national sovereignty” and humanitarian principles. Mr. Karzai will issue a new decree governing the two organizations, the statement said, and until then the commission will be in charge of overseeing them.
Story here.