KABUL, Afghanistan — The Afghan government appeared Monday to edge away from plans to ban all private security companies, announcing modifications that would allow most licensed firms to continue their work, but leaving important details in doubt, company representatives and Western officials said.
Under the modified policy, security firms with development company contracts, as well as those that work for NATO, foreign embassies and the United Nations, would be allowed to continue to work until their contracts expire, Abdul Manan Farahi, a senior adviser to the interior minister, said in a news conference. What would happen if a security contract expired before a development project was complete was not clear.
The exemption of development companies is new, and comes after strenuous objections from the many nonprofit companies that work with, among others, the United States and British governments, which complained that without security they would have to end development projects. These companies also work closely with the military, entering conflict areas shortly after fighting ends to work on projects that aim to create jobs and stability.
The debate about the role of private security firms began publicly in August when President Hamid Karzai issued a decree that banned the firms, with limited exceptions, and said that the Afghan police would take over the job. The aim was to put the government in charge of all armed groups and to rein in the increasing number of lightly regulated security firms.
But many important Western entities here depend on the private firms. Western development companies use them for protection. So do Western embassies and even NATO, which relies on them to guard its supply convoys. They said that the Afghan police were neither trained nor numerous enough to take on the work.
The government was reluctant to backtrack publicly, but it named two senior officials, the interior minister, Bismullah Khan, and the national security adviser, Rangin Dadfar Spanta, to oversee a committee that included the United States ambassador, Karl W. Eikenberry, to find a way to put the policy in place without undermining millions of dollars in development projects and the safety of military supply convoys.
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