Afghan President Will Disband Private Guards

Afghan President Hamid Karzai listens during a press conference in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Oct....

Afghan President Hamid Karzai listens during a press conference in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Oct. 25, 2010. Karzai told reporters that once or twice a year Iran gives his office $700,000 to $975,000 for official presidential expenses. He said the U.S. has known about the Iranian assistance for years and that Washington also gives the palace "bags of money." (AP Photo/Allauddin Khan)

(AP)

Afghanistan's president on Monday brushed aside appeals from international officials, including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, to reverse plans to close private security companies.

If President Hamid Karzai moves ahead with the plan to replace private guards with 30,000 to 40,000 Afghan troops by the end of the year, it could result in the shutdown of hundreds of millions of dollars in development projects because international organizations don't trust Afghan forces to protect their workers.

A shift to using Afghan troops could also detract from a NATO strategy to have Afghan forces assume more responsibility for protecting areas cleared of Taliban fighters.

Karzai has wanted to close down the security companies for years. He said they lure away Afghan soldiers and policemen by offering higher salaries and he also charges they pay money to warlords and drug traffickers and enter houses and illegally seize property by force.

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The president didn't mention any plans to exempt NATO convoys, also protected by private guards, from the ban. Some of the private security companies previously used to protect NATO convoys were believed to be paying off insurgent groups for protection.

"Having these private security companies, there is no hope that the Afghan security forces are going to develop," Karzai said. "The salary of these private security guards is paid by the foreigners, so their salary is much higher than the police."

Karzai said the international community should be supporting his efforts but had failed to wean themselves of their reliance on private gunmen.

"Instead of disbanding them, they expanded them," he said. "Not only did they try to expand security companies, they even tried to involve relatives of the high-ranking officials — their brothers, their sons. They even involved jihadi commanders in the private security companies, trying to put pressure on us that way."