Foreigners fuelling corruption: Karzai

KABUL (Reuters/AFP) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai scrapped on Sunday a March 2012 deadline he had set for the closure of private security firms, giving them until September 2013 to operate in the country.
Karzai, a frequent critic of private security companies, has previously set dates for the cessation of their work in Afghanistan, but each time the deadline has been extended.
He did not say why he was giving the firms an extra 18 months, but the second half of this year has seen some of the bloodiest attacks on civilians and soldiers in the past decade. We give permission for them (to carry on working) for one and a half years more, and one and a half years later (in September 2013) our minister ... will close them all, Karzai said. Karzai, speaking at an anti-corruption event in the capital Kabul, said the prevalence of security contractors weakened the state by providing many of the services that the public sector otherwise would. At a major international conference in Germany on the future of Afghanistan last week, Karzai pledged to step up fight against corruption in return for sustained international support.But speaking in the capital, Karzai said foreigners were adding to the problem by, for example, awarding contracts to high ranking govt officials.We have problems with both Afghans and foreigners... Our foreigner colleagues have not only been uncooperative but sometimes they have created obstacles, he told the anti-corruption conference.
One of the ways to curb corruption is that foreigners should stop giving out contracts to the relatives of the high-ranking government officials. We have to revise and reform the contract system.
We have lost our mutual trust: foreigners think we go corrupt for political reasons, and we think they are corrupt for the same reason.
In August 2010, Karzai said he wanted private security firms - with the exemption of firms whose guards work inside compounds used by foreign embassies, international businesses and aid and charitable organisations - to close by the end of that year. The deadline was later pushed back to March 2012.
His government tried unsuccessfully in 2009 to register the firms, find out the amount of arms they had and where they came from, and how much money the industry was worth, an Afghan security source said.
Foreign forces in Afghanistan are in the process of handing responsibility for security over to the Afghan army and police, and by the end of 2014, most foreign combat troops, currently numbering more than 100,000, will have gone home.
Though both Karzai and his international backers want Afghan forces to take control of security, Afghanistan has said that it will not be able to afford the army and police force it needs after 2014 without international help.
Even with the presence of Western forces in Afghanistan, violence is at its worst since the US invasion in 2001, and last weeks rare attacks on Shias during Ashura have stoked fears of a sectarian conflict on top of the raging Taliban insurgency.
Bomb attacks on the Shia mourners on Tuesday killed 80 people, Karzai also said on Sunday, far higher than the previously reported number, making Tuesday one of the deadliest days for civilians in ten years.