Karzai Gives Private Security a Reprieve
The Washington Post reports:
KABUL - Under intense diplomatic pressure, President Hamid Karzai offered a reprieve Wednesday to private security companies guarding foreign-funded development projects in Afghanistan, heading off at least for the moment the imminent shutdown of billions of dollars' worth of programs.
The decision to extend the deadline by at least two months was met with some relief among foreign diplomats in Kabul, who had voiced concern in recent days that large development firms might withdraw from the country en masse, undercutting a key component of Gen. David H. Petraeus's strategy in the war against the Taliban. If Karzai had not changed his mind, U.S. officials and company representatives said, firms would have soon begun a widespread shutdown.
"We were on the ropes," said one U.S. Agency for International Development official in Kabul. "It would have devastated us."
Some diplomats and development officials, however, said Karzai's decision merely postponed the problem rather than resolving it.
"They've just given themselves another two months to cobble together some sort of compromise," said one official at a development company that works in Afghanistan. "It doesn't solve the fundamental issue and the issue of principle, which is the need to provide the maximum possible security and safety for your employees on the ground."
After initially standing firm on the Dec. 17 deadline to disband private security firms, Karzai has now decided that by Nov. 15, a new committee will prepare a timetable for the disbandment of companies that guard development projects, and that once each organization is given its new dissolution date, it will have 90 days to prepare. He made this change, according to a statement, in recognition of "the importance of maintaining the continuous delivery of critical development projects and programs funded by the international community."
