Afghans arrest private security firm contractors

Police hold four men for illegally transporting arms

KABUL // Afghan police arrested two British private security contractors and two Afghan colleagues and ordered their company to close after finding a cache of weapons in their vehicle.

They are being held for investigation into illegal arms transport.

Their detention spells the latest trouble for Afghanistan’s dozens of private security companies that guard supply convoys, development projects and private businesses. President Hamid Karzai has ordered all the protection companies to be shut down by March and replaced by a unified government-run protection force.

Police who stopped the contractors’ vehicle at a Kabul checkpoint

They have to pay all the dues they owe to the government of Afghanistan, and they cannot operate any more after that Sediq Sediqi ministry of interior spokesman

on Tuesday found more than two dozen AK-47 rifles in a metal box covered by a blanket, the ministry of interior spokesman Sediq Sediqi told a press briefing.

All 30 weapons had their serial numbers scratched off, and the men had no permits for them, so police arrested all four men on suspicion of illegal arms transport, Mr Sediqi said. He said the case has been sent to Afghanistan’s attorney general for investigation.

Authorities ordered the immediate shutdown of Afghanistan operations of their company, the international security consulting firm Gardaworld, and are questioning other company employees.

“They have to pay all the dues they owe to the government of Afghanistan, and they cannot operate any more after that,” Mr Sediqi said.

Gardaworld specialises in highrisk areas, with offices in Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen and Haiti. It provided security for Afghanistan’s 2005 National Assembly elections.

The firm said yesterday that it was co-operating with the Afghan investigation. A statement indicated it did not own the AK-47S but was in the process of buying them through legal channels.

A spokesman for the British Embassy said it was monitoring the case and providing consular services to the two British citizens.

Afghanistan has been scrambling to train guards for its own government security service – called the Afghan Public Protection Force – since Mr Karzai late last year ordered all 103 private security companies to be closed by March.

Mr Karzai has said the private security firms undermine the Afghan police and army forces, creating effective militias that often flout Afghan laws and regulations.

Controversies caused by some contractors’ behaviour, ranging from violence to cultural insensitivity, has given the industry a bad name among many Afghans.

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