Saturday, October 9, 2010
Karzai Closes Down U.S. Contractors
KABUL, Afghanistan — The Afghan government said yesterday it has started dissolving private security businesses in the country by taking steps to end the operations of eight companies, including the one formerly known as Blackwater and three other international contractors.
“We have very good news for the Afghan people today,’’ presidential spokesman Waheed Omar told reporters in the capital. “The disbanding of eight private security firms has started.’’
Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced in August that private security contractors would have to cease operations by the end of the year — wiping out an industry with tens of thousands of guards who protect military convoys, government officials, and businesspeople.
Some security contractors have been criticized for operating more like private militias, and the government said it could not have armed groups that were independent of the police or military forces.
The eight companies include Xe Services, the North Carolina-based contractor formerly called Blackwater, and NCL Holdings LLC of Virginia, Four Horsemen International of New Mexico, and Compass International of London, Omar said....
Xe, at least, has been the subject of investigations. In February, US Senate investigators said Xe hired violent drug users to help train the Afghan army and declared “sidearms for everyone’’
Related: Blackwater/Xe Terrorist Cells Conducting False Flag Terrorist Attacks in Pakistan
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Karzai’s original decree on private security companies gave an exemption to companies that guard the compounds of international embassies or organizations. It was unclear what this means for companies on the list that also have contracts to guard US government installations or other diplomatic missions.
Omar said the government was focused on security companies that are providing protection for highways or convoys, not those training Afghan forces or guarding embassies....
In other words, NO REAL CHANGES!
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Related: The Boston Globe's Invisible Ink: False Flags Flying High in Afghanistan
Who is guarding those convoys again?
"Report faults US reliance on Afghan security contractors" by Anne Flaherty, Associated Press | October 8, 2010
WASHINGTON — Heavy US reliance on private security in Afghanistan has helped to line the pockets of the Taliban because contractors often do not vet local recruits and wind up hiring warlords and thugs, Senate investigators said yesterday.
The British had the Hessians and AmeriKa has Blackwater.
And what with warlords and thugs running my country they should feel right at ease with their new hires.
Related: Ghani's Gift
Yeah, but he is one of ours!
The finding, in a report by the Senate Armed Services Committee, follows a separate congressional inquiry in June that concluded trucking contractors pay tens of millions of dollars a year to local warlords for convoy protection.
Translation: It is just a REHASH of what EVERYONE ALREADY KNEW -- as the OPERATIONS CONTINUE!
Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate panel, said he is worried the United States is unknowingly fostering the growth of Taliban-linked militias at a time when Kabul is struggling to recruit its own soldiers and police officers.
And what if we knew, Carl?
"The U.S. government was well aware of the Taliban's reactionary program, yet it chose to back their rise to power in the mid-1990s. The creation of the Taliban was "actively encouraged by the ISI and the CIA," according to Selig Harrison, an expert on U.S. relations with Asia. "The United States encouraged Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to support the Taliban, certainly right up to their advance on Kabul," adds respected journalist Ahmed Rashid. When the Taliban took power, State Department spokesperson Glyn Davies said that he saw "nothing objectionable" in the Taliban's plans to impose strict Islamic law, and Senator Hank Brown, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Near East and South Asia, welcomed the new regime: "The good part of what has happened is that one of the factions at last seems capable of developing a new government in Afghanistan." "The Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis. There will be Aramco [the consortium of oil companies that controlled Saudi oil], pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with that," said another U.S. diplomat in 1997."
I can if the KILLING STOPS and WE LEAVE!
“Almost all are Afghans. Almost all are armed,’’ Levin, a Michigan Democrat, said of the army of young men working under US contracts.
Yeah, and you can't have citizens armed against its government, sig heil!
“We need to shut off the spigot of US dollars flowing into the pockets of warlords and power brokers who act contrary to our interests and contribute to the corruption that weakens the support of the Afghan people for their government,’’ he said....
Have you TAKEN a LOOK at FOREIGN AID to ISRAEL lately?
You know, the country that SPIES ON US?!!
You know, the one applying pressure to your balls to make those words come out your mouth.
The Defense Department does not necessarily disagree but warns that firing the estimated 26,000 private security personnel operating in Afghanistan in the near future is not practical....
Again, we have ANOTHER NOTHING piece of "news."
Levin is not suggesting the United States stop using private security contractors altogether....
Then WTF?
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Related: Karzai Kicks Out U.S. Contractors
Slow Saturday Special: Kerry Convinces Karzai to Keep Contractors
I kinda get sick of the newspaper kabuki theater, don't you?
