[NYTr] The Gunmen of Kabul

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Corporate Watch - Dec 21, 2007
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14863


The Gunmen of Kabul

by Fariba Nawa, Special to CorpWatch

In September, on a tree-lined street in the most expensive neighborhood
in Kabul, dozens of men rolled out of armored vehicles in front of a
little-known U.S. security company. Backed up by Blackwater guards,
Afghan authorities and Americans from the FBI and the U.S. State
Department quickly headed for the offices of United States Protection
and Investigations (USPI). Once inside, they arrested four of the
Texas-based company’s management team and confiscated 15 computers. The
two Americans arrested were later released, while the Afghan managers
remain in custody.

The September raid was one of the first attempts by President Karzai’s
government to crack down on private security contractors in
Afghanistan. Afghan police say they plan to shut down about 14
contractors, and so far, have closed 10 Afghan and foreign firms.

What made the USPI raid unusual was the U.S. government’s role. The
State Department and FBI spearheaded the operation and accused the
company of defrauding the United States, according to USPI guards in
Kabul and Afghan officials who did not want to be named because the
investigation is classified.

Ironically, the United States used private security guards from
Blackwater -- the same company under scrutiny for the September death
of 17 Iraqi civilians -- to carry out the USPI raid. It was
Blackwater’s actions and virtual impunity that had spurred the Afghan
and Iraqi governments to rein in Western security contractors in the
first place.

That impunity is of particular concern to Ali Shah Paktiawal, head of
criminal investigations with the Kabul police. A crusader against
private security companies, he charges that many contractors are
corrupt and are operating without an Afghan government license. Some,
he said, are using their guns and power to commit murder and other
crimes including drug dealing and bank robbery, and to extort money on
a daily basis, he said.

“We’re going to make sure these companies clean up because they’re
doing more harm than good in our country right now,” Paktiawal said
from his busy Kabul office.

One foreign private security contractor, who would only speak off the
record, counters that the police crackdown is really a witch-hunt to
extort money from Western companies. An Afghan journalist who is
researching the issue and cannot publicly comment, points to the fact
that many of the companies, such as Afghan-owned Khawar, are back in
business. If the right people in the government are bribed, he said,
the contractors have no problems re-opening.

According to a high-level contractor who worked for the U.S. embassy in
Kabul, the crackdown may be targeting legitimate companies along with
rogue and unlicensed operations. Some businesses may have been shut
down after high-powered government officials issued false charges
arising out of vendettas.

Barnett Rubin, an Afghanistan expert and head of New York University’s
Center for International Cooperation, said experienced international
officials working in Kabul told him that the latest crackdown on
security companies is an effort by one criminal group to eliminate its
competitors. Apparently, he said, foreign contracts are being offered
to “favored Afghan families.”

The foreign contractors say they want to be regulated without being
gouged. Doug Brooks, founder and president of the U.S.-based
International Peace Operations Association (IPOA), a trade group that
represents private security contractors, confirms that stance. These
companies are happy to register their weapons and obtain licenses from
the Afghan government, he says, because it raises their standards and
builds efficiency.

“They can handle high [license] fees as long as there’s fairness and
transparency. But they can’t pay bribes because it’s against U.S.
laws,” Brooks said.

Who are the security companies?

In the last six years, public security in Afghanistan has been on a
downward spiral. According to the Afghan government and NATO figures,
suicide bombings and other violence have killed hundreds of civilians
in 2007, with many more injured or driven into internal exile. Western
diplomats, NGOs and investors argue that the Afghan military is not
ready to protect those involved in the reconstruction effort in
Afghanistan. Without private security contractors, the insurgency --
including the Taliban, al Qaeda and other opposition groups -- would
win the war for control of the country.

The private forces filling this security gap are funded by some of the
nearly $20 billion in U.S. aid money that was allocated for Afghan
“reconstruction.” To date, there is little security or reconstruction
to show for the money spent. An undisclosed amount of the funds for
projects assigned to the U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID) and other donor nations appears to have simply gone to security
contractors, according to aid project contracts that detail security
costs. For almost every project, security is the highest expense.

There has also been little progress in efforts to control the expense
of or to monitor the private security industry. Two years ago, the
Afghan government hired a Canadian consulting company to help formulate
legislation to regulate the companies, but the effort has not generated
effective laws. This December the U.S. Congress passed a bi-partisan
bill requiring contractors to provide more information on how they are
spending aid money. The legislation creates the post of a special
inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR) to monitor
American assistance to Afghanistan. President Bush has yet to sign it.

Legislation or no, dependence on private security is a basic fact of
life in Afghanistan. There are about 10,000 private security guards --
Afghan and foreign -- in Kabul alone right now, according to figures
provided by the Afghan Ministry of Interior. Afghan officials say only
59 companies are registered and licensed, but perhaps 25 more operate
illegally. These numbers are estimates, since part of the problem is
that no system is in place that accurately counts the companies or
publicly verifies their legal status.

Many of the private security companies, including USPI, have hired
Afghan guards who fought in previous wars and were supposed to be
disarmed. According to the joint United Nations and Afghan disarmament
group, there are still 2,000 private militias in the country employing
some 120,000 men, many of whom work for private security contractors.
The largest companies are either U.S. or British, and include DynCorp,
USPI, Armour Group, Saladin and Global Risk Strategy.

USPI in Afghanistan

USPI has risen quickly into the top ranks of Afghanistan’s private
security contractors. It was founded in 1987 by a husband and wife
team:  Barbara Spier was a restaurant inspector and her husband Del was
a private investigator specializing in insurance fraud in Dallas,
Texas. They started with small contracts around the world, but when the
Taliban were ousted and the new Western-backed government seized power
in 2002, USPI planted itself in Afghanistan and collaborated with
former Mujahideen commander Din Mohammed Jorat.

Jorat, a notorious warlord accused of killing the aviation minister in
2002, was head of security in the Ministry of Interior and headed a
militia that became part of the Afghan police. His officers were paid a
low salary, $70 a month, but offered the opportunity to boost it by
working as guards for USPI. They remained Afghan government employees
and received a  $3 to $5 per diem for USPI’s on-the-job training. By
claiming to train, rather than actually employing the moonlighting
police, the U.S. contractor was able to provide the cheapest security
option for its clients in Afghanistan. The scheme effectively turned a
large sector of the Afghan police into a private quasi-militia.

In a matter of months, USPI became USAID’s second biggest security
contractor in Afghanistan (after Virginia-based Dyncorp). USAID awarded
the company $36 million for four and a half years to protect
infrastructure projects, such as a road-building project awarded to
Louis Berger, a New Jersey engineering company. USPI also made money
from contracts with other foreign companies and NGOs to protect their
offices and staff in Kabul and the provinces. At its peak, the company
employed some 4,000 Afghans.

By September 2007, according to one USPI Afghan guard in Kabul, the
company’s guards no longer worked for the government, and had become
direct employees of USPI, which pays their salaries. Jorat, who is no
longer head of security at the interior ministry, had opened his own
security company, Khawar, and no longer collaborates with USPI,
according to the guard.

Meanwhile opposition to the government is growing and the insurgency is
targeting foreigners inside the country as well as Afghans who work for
the government or foreign military and aid projects.

As both the opposition and USPI operations grew, the company began to
assume a lower public profile. Until two years ago, when security in
Afghanistan plummeted, USPI signs were omnipresent at booths staffed by
their Afghan employees who guarded big Kabul houses filled with
expatriate staff. Now the signs are gone but the guards remain.

By mid-December the security situation in Afghanistan had deteriorated
so drastically that the Taliban were able to kill 15 USPI Afghan guards
on the highway in western Afghanistan where they were protecting Louis
Berger engineers.

The rising number of attacks has raised questions about the training,
dedication and competence of private security operatives. A high-level
security contractor who worked for the U.S. embassy in Kabul said that
members of the small team of foreign advisers are paid up to $200,000 a
year to work with the Afghan employees, but that most of the local
officers received little training and were infamous for collaborating
with local warlords and participating in the extortion and harassment
of Afghans.

“[They] made deals with the devil and their guys could do anything they
want: shakedowns, drug dealing. [They were] thugs who liked mafia-type
operation,” said the U.S. embassy security contractor. He said USAID
was not happy with USPI, but it had spent too much money mobilizing the
company to let it go.

“People got killed because of the incompetence of their guys,” he
added. “Taliban would attack road crews and USPI guys would run and
throw away their weapons, and it happened on numerous occasions.” The
consequence was that civilian construction workers ended up dead and
kidnapped, and engineering contractors stopped construction simply
because USPI could not protect them.

September Raid

By the time of the September raid on USPI offices, the company’s
operations were raising red flags. USPI has a notorious history in
Afghanistan of operating with a cowboy mentality and collaborating with
shady local strongmen. In 2005, a U.S. supervisor for USPI allegedly
shot dead his Afghan interpreter and was flown out of the country the
next day, according to Afghan officials.

Despite these issues, USPI continued to get contracts because it
underbid its competitors for projects and remained the cheapest option,
the American contractor said.

Paktiawal, the policeman in charge of criminal investigations in Kabul,
was present during the USPI raid and told CorpWatch that the FBI and
USAID are both investigating the company. Until the investigation is
complete, he said he could not release more details about the charges.

USPI could not be reached for comment, but in October, the Associated
Press reported:

“USPI faces accusations of overcharging USAID by billing for employees
and vehicles that did not exist, said a U.S. security official with
close ties to the company who wasn’t authorized to release the
information. The overbilling could run into the millions of dollars …
Blackwater held U.S. and Canadian citizens at gunpoint during the raid,
said the U.S. official. Blackwater ... helps provide security for the
U.S. Embassy.”

After the raid, one of USPI’s uniformed guards, armed with a knife and
an AK-47, patrolled in front of foreign offices in a quiet neighborhood
in Kabul. He did not want to be named, but confirmed that there were
issues of fraud involved at USPI and that none of the lower-ranking
guards were aware of management’s dealings.

“We were discouraged from asking anything and so we keep our mouths
shut and heads down,” he said.

The guard said he supports a big family with the $150 a month that he
receives, and was afraid that if the firm were shut down, he would lose
his job.

More Crackdowns

Paktiawal says that the Afghan police are only after the corrupt
companies and that the recent law enforcement efforts will impose
accountability and control over contractors. He cited USPI as an
example of one corrupt foreign company that the crackdown is
restraining.        

But USPI is hardly alone. A senior security contractor working in Kabul
told CorpWatch that the Pentagon is investigating criminal misconduct
in regard to $6 billion worth of equipment and service contracts to
many companies in Afghanistan and Iraq. He said that 72 FBI
investigators are probing mostly Pentagon and State Department security
contracts in Afghanistan, but the details are highly classified.

Other companies the government has raided include: the British firm
Olympic Security Group for operating without a license; the joint
Afghan-British contractor, Witan Risk Management; and Afghan companies
Watan and Caps, Khawar and Mellat International Security. It is not
clear whether these companies remain closed or have re-opened for
business.

Meanwhile, the Afghan people face a variety of men with guns on their
streets and blame most of the violence on the private security
contractors.

Susanne Schmeidl, co-author of a recent report on private security
companies in Angola and Afghanistan for Swisspeace, writes that the
expatriate guards are often confused with foreign troops by the local
populations. “While there is a positive argument to be made that
private security company employment keeps former strongmen and their
militia off the streets,” she told a news conference in Kabul, “the
dilemma as to what will happen to these militias when the contract
ends needs to be addressed.”