Just months after Hamid Karzai launched a crackdown against a private security company in Afghanistan, the Army's given the same firm a massive, multi-year contract to guard U.S. reconstruction projects there.
Global Integrated Security, an armed subsidiary of Britain's Global Strategies Group, just won an eye-opening $480 million contract with the Army Corps of Engineers for unspecified "reconstruction security support services." That means Global now holds a merc contract worth much more than the State Department will pay to guard the U.S. Embassy in Kabul -- and more than State will pay Global to guard a U.S. consulate in Iraq.
It's quite a reversal for Global, and one that can't make the Afghan president very happy. In December, Karzai's forces arrested one of Global's consultants in Kabul, ostensibly because the firm stored 11 unregistered firearms. The firm, which holds an unrelated contract to protect the Kabul airport, maintained that the guns were going to be broken down for spare parts. Some suspected the arrest was a demagogic move to cover Karzai politically while he backed off his promise to kick merc firms out of Afghanistan.
It's surely a coincidence that Global won the reconstruction-protection contract right after Karzai said he'd support Pakistan if his neighbor ever went to war with his American patrons. But it still looks like a rebuke.
Global already holds a Corps of Engineers contract to guard its Afghan reconstruction projects. The Corps must like the firm, because its last re-up with Global, in 2009, was worth a mere $21 million. (.PDF)
But Global won't just be a big player in Afghanistan. It holds a piece of State's $10 billion contract to protect diplomats, which will earn it up to $401 million over five years to guard a consulate in Basra. Last month, it announced another big deal with an unnamed oil firm to guard development at the Rumaila oil field in Iraq, one of the world's largest.
Global's new deal runs through October 19, 2015, well after U.S. troops are supposed to end combat duties in Afghanistan. Karzai's got to put up with them at least through then.
Photo: ISAF
