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<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/29/hamid-karzais-brother-onl_n_338573.html">
Hamid Karzai's Brother Only Tip Of Iceberg Of US Dependence On Afghan
Warlords</a></u></b></font></h1><font size=3>First Posted: 10-29-09 12:12
PM | Updated: 10-29-09 12:26 PM <br><br>
By Gareth Porter<br><br>
WASHINGTON, Oct 29 (IPS) - The revelation by the New York Times Wednesday
that Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, has
long been on the payroll of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is only
the tip of a much bigger iceberg of heavy dependence by U.S. and NATO
counterinsurgency forces on Afghan warlords for security, according to a
recently published report and investigations by Australian and Canadian
journalists.<br><br>
U.S. and other NATO military contingents operating in the provinces of
Afghanistan's predominantly Pashtun south and east have been hiring
private militias controlled by Afghan warlords, according to these
sources, to provide security for their forward operating bases and other
bases and to guard convoys.<br><br>
Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal has acknowledged that U.S. and NATO ties with
warlords have been a cause of popular Afghan alienation from foreign
military forces. But the policy is not likely to be reversed anytime
soon, because U.S. and NATO officials still have no alternative to the
security services the warlords provide.<br><br>
A report published by the Center on International Cooperation at New York
University in September notes that U.S. and NATO contingents have
frequently hired security providers that are covertly owned by warlords
who have "ready-made" private militias which compete with state
institutions for power.<br><br>
The report cites examples of major warlords or their relatives or allies
who have been contracted for security services in four
provinces.<br><br>
In Uruzgan province, both U.S. and Australian Special Forces have
contracted with a private army commanded by Col. Matiullah Khan, called
Kandak Amniante Uruzgan, with 2,000 armed men, to provide security
services on which their bases there depend. That case was reported in
detail in April 2008 by two reporters for The Australian, Mark Dodd and
Jeremy Kelly.<br>
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Col. Khan's security force protects NATO's International Security
Assistance Force (ISAF) convoys on the main road from Kandahar to Tarin
Kowt, where more than 1,000 Australian troops are based at Camp Holland,
according to the The Australian in April 2008.<br><br>
Col. Khan gets 340,000 dollars per month - nearly 4.1 million dollars
annually - for getting two convoys from Kandahar to Tarin Kowt safely
each month. Khan, now police chief in Uruzgan province, evidently got his
private army from his uncle Jan Mohammad Khan, a commander who helped
defeat the Taliban in Kandahar in 2001 and was then rewarded by President
Karzai by being named governor of Uruzgan in 2002.<br><br>
The Australian Defence Force claimed to The Australian that Col. Khan is
paid by the Afghan Ministry of Interior to provide security on the main
highways of Uruzgan province. The Australian military had previously
refused to confirm or deny Australian payments to Col. Khan.<br><br>
CanWest News Service's Mike Blanchfield and Andrew Mayeda reported in
November 2007 that the Canadian military had hired a "General
Gulalai" to provide security for an undisclosed forward operating
base. Gulalai is a warlord in southern Afghanistan who drove the Taliban
out of Kandahar in 2001.<br><br>
The same reporters revealed that Col. Haji Toorjan, a local warlord
allied with Kandahar governor and major warlord Gul Agha Sherzai, was
hired to provide security for Camp Nathan Smith in Kandahar City, where
Canada's provincial construction team is located.<br><br>
Blanchfeld and Mayeda found that the Canadian military had given 29
contracts worth 1.14 million dollars to a company identified as
"Sherzai", suggesting strongly that the former governor of
Kandahar, who had become governor of Nangarhar province, was the
owner.<br><br>
The Canadian military refused to confirm whether Gul Agha Sherzai is
indeed the owner.<br><br>
In Badakhshan province, Gen. Nazri Mahmed, a warlord who is said to
"control a significant portion of the province's lucrative opium
industry", has the contract to provide security for the German
Provincial Reconstruction Team, according to the NYU report.<br><br>
The report suggests that the U.S. and NATO contingents are spending
hundreds of millions of dollars annually on contracts with Afghan
security providers, most of which are local power brokers guilty of human
rights abuses.<br><br>
In addition to Ahmed Wali Karzai, it names Hashmat Karzai, another
brother of President Karzai, and Hamid Wardak, the son of Defence
Minister Rahim Wardak, as powerful figures who control private security
firms that have gotten security contracts without registering with the
government.<br><br>
Two anonymous United Nations sources cited in the report estimate that
1,000 to 1,500 unregistered armed security groups have been
"employed, trained, and armed by ISAF" and "Coalition
Forces" for security services. As many as 120,000 armed individuals
are estimated by the U.N. sources to belong to about 5,000 private
militias in Afghanistan.<br><br>
Most Afghan warlords are widely reviled, mainly because the private
armies they continue to control carry out theft and violence against
civilians without any accountability.<br><br>
In his initial assessment last August, Gen. McChrystal referred to
"public anger and alienation" toward ISAF, of which he is
commander, as a result of the perception that ISAF is
"complicit" in "widespread corruption and abuse of
power".<br><br>
That remark suggests that McChrystal, who had carried out the Special
Forces' policy of relying on Afghan warlords for security in the past,
was now expressing concern about its political consequences.<br><br>
Jake Sherman, a co-author of the NYU report, was a United Nations
political officer involved in the effort to disarm warlords from 2003 to
2005. He is sceptical that U.S. policy ties with the warlords will be
ended.<br><br>
"I don't see how U.S. and other contingents could sustain forward
operating bases without paying these guys," said Sherman in an
interview with IPS.<br><br>
Beyond their continuing dependence on the warlords for security services,
Sherman sees another reason for keeping them on the payroll. If the U.S.
and NATO military commanders tried to cut their ties with the private
militias, Sherman said the warlords "would actually become a
security threat".<br><br>
Sherman recalled that during his period working for the United Nations in
northern Afghanistan, local police were hired to guard a World Food
Programme warehouse in Badakhshan. After a rocket attack on the
warehouse, an investigation quickly turned up the fact that the police
themselves had carried out the attack to pressure the U.N. to hire more
guards.<br><br>
The present U.S. and NATO dependence on warlord armies is rooted in the
policy of the George W. Bush administration in the early years after the
ouster of the Taliban regime in late 2001.<br><br>
The Central Intelligence Agency put the commanders of the forces who had
defeated the Taliban on the payroll and gave them weapons and
communications equipment to help U.S. counterterrorism squads locate any
al Qaeda remnants in Afghanistan.<br><br>
The commanders used the U.S. support to consolidate their political
control over different provinces or sub-provincial areas. Human Rights
Watch observed in a June 2002 report on the new relationships forged
between the United States and the warlords, "While the U.S.
government does not view this policy as actively supporting local
warlords, the distinction is often lost on Afghan civilians who see
coalition forces openly interacting with the warlords."<br><br>
Larry Goodson of the National War College, who participated in the 2002
process called the Loya Jirga under which the first post-Taliban Afghan
government was established, told IPS he had recommended from the
beginning a "de-warlordisation" process, in which "we took
nasty, sleazy characters and turn them into less nasty, sleazy
bosses."<br><br>
But the warlords were kept on the payroll, Goodson recalls, mainly
because the troops controlled by the former commanders were seen as
"force multipliers", in a situation where foreign troops were
in short supply.<br><br>
*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising
in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest
book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War
in Vietnam", was published in 2006.<br><br>
<br>
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