'U.S., NATO Forces Rely on Warlords for Security'"
For IPS, Gareth Porter writes:
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.
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.
[Porter throws in some interesting, prior Canadian context, recalling also that Wali Karzai himself has said, "I work with the Americans, the Canadians, the British, anyone who asks for my help," although he denies being in the direct pay of the CIA]:
"CanWest News Service's Mike Blanchfield and Andrew
Mayeda reported in November 2007 [also see related, and here] 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. 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 [re-] construction team is located. 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. The Canadian military refused to confirm whether Gul Agha Sherzai is indeed the owner." [IPS]