Afghanistan's president is setting a four-month deadline for private security companies to cease operations in the country, a spokesman said Monday.
A presidential decree expected to be issued later Monday will detail the process through which the companies should cease operations, spokesman Waheed Omar told reporters in Kabul.
President Hamid Karzai has said repeatedly in recent months that these companies undermine government security forces, creating a parallel security structure. Contractors perform duties ranging from guarding supply convoys to personal security details for diplomats and businessmen.
The imminent decree expedites action that Karzai had promised in his inauguration speech in November, when he said he wanted to close down both foreign and domestic security contractors within two years.
"Within four months, all private security companies will be disbanded," Omar said, but declined to go into detail before the decree is released.
The Interior Ministry has 52 security firms licensed, but some older contracts are still being completed by unlicensed firms, according to the U.S. military. There are about 26,000 private security contractors working for the U.S. government in Afghanistan, 19,000 of them with the military, officials said.
As in Iraq, the conduct of security contractors in Afghanistan — particularly those working with U.S. forces — has been a source of tension, with complaints that they are poorly regulated and effectively operate outside local law.
A spokesman for the U.S. military said the United States supports Karzai's goal of eliminating private security firms but would not comment on whether it would be possible to meet the deadline.
"We are in total support of the president of Afghanistan's intent to do away with private security companies and to do away with the need for private security companies," Maj. Joel Harper said. "This should be done in a logical and sequential manner, and as conditions permit."
The U.S. military set up a task force in June to tighten regulation and oversight of its security contractors, but its top official has stayed away from talk of deadlines.
"Since the Afghan army and the Afghan police are not quite at the stages of capability and capacity to provide all the security that is needed, private security companies are filling a gap," Brig. Gen. Margaret Boor said Monday before the announcement.
Boor said private security contractors can only be phased out as the security situation improves — a hard target given worsening security in recent months in areas of northern and central Afghanistan that had previously been relatively safe.
The majority of U.S. military contractors provide base security, though some also protect convoys, Harper said. He had previously said that the majority were involved in convoy protection.
Karzai has said such responsibilities should fall to either soldiers or police.
Though the U.S. task force is new, Boor said it is already taking steps to improve oversight of security firms, including registering all contractors and ensuring they have the necessary qualifications and receive training on appropriate use of force.
NATO troops operate under firm rules spelling out conditions under which they can use deadly force.
Private security contractors in Afghanistan are subject to Afghan law, unlike the situation that persisted through most of the war in Iraq, where those working for the U.S. military were immune from prosecution by Iraqi authorities.
Contractors in Iraq lost their immunity when a U.S.-Iraqi security pact took effect Jan. 1, 2009. The move to tighten oversight followed Iraqi outrage over a Sept. 16, 2007 shooting in which 17 Iraq civilians were killed in a Baghdad square.
Blackwater said its guards were protecting diplomats under attack before they opened fire, but Iraqi investigators concluded the shooting was unprovoked.
Contractors have been in the spotlight on several occasions in Afghanistan.
In 2009, a private security contractor hired to protect the U.S. Embassy in Kabul was exposed for holding lurid parties flowing with alcohol, with guards and supervisors photographed in various stages of nudity. A U.S. government investigation also found Amorgroup employees frequented Kabul brothels.
In February, U.S. Senate investigators said the contractor formerly known as Blackwater hired violent drug users to help train the Afghan army and declared "sidearms for everyone" — even though employees weren't authorized to carry weapons. The allegations came as part of an investigation into the 2009 shooting deaths of two Afghan civilians by employees of the company, now known as Xe.
Last month police a crowd of angry Afghans shouted "Death to America" after an SUV driven by U.S. contract employees from DynCorp International was involved in a traffic accident that killed four Afghans.
Task Force Spotlight, which Boor heads, is taking steps to improve oversight of security firms, including registering all contractors and ensuring they have the necessary qualifications and receive training on appropriate use of force.
The first Guantanamo trials under President Barack Obama have drawn sharp criticism after disputed evidence was allowed in one and a secret plea-deal was reached in another.
"The government met its burden. The defense motion for suppression is denied," military judge Patrick Parrish ruled Monday allowing confessions made under duress by Canadian Omar Khadr, captured in Afghanistan when he was 15.
Charged with throwing a grenade that killed a US sergeant during a 2002 attack in Afghanistan, Khadr was interrogated by a military official who told Parrish he had threatened the teenager with rape and murder to make him talk.
Parrish's "decision does nothing to help the credibly of the (military) commissions," Loyola University Los Angeles law professor David Glazier told AFP.
"Decisions which err on the side of allowing disputed evidence into the trials will only serve to fuel that criticism and undermine public confidence in trial verdicts," he added.
"The suppression that the lawyers are arguing are what we call the fruit of the poisonous tree," said law professor Gary Solis, who is covering the Guantanamo trials for the National Institute of Military Justice.
"In my view... you cannot separate subsequent statements from the first statement no matter how clean the secondary questioners may be," he told AFP, referring to subsequent statements Khadr made free of harassment.
"The commissions are likely to face intense scrutiny and criticism at each step along the way," said Matthew Waxman, a former deputy defense secretary under ex-president George W. Bush.
"Because many opponents have long associated military commissions with abusive interrogation techniques, rulings like this are especially likely to attract criticism," he added -- the military commissions were created by Bush.
Khadr's trial was postponed for 30 days so his lawyer can seek medical treatment in the United States, after he collapsed at the end of court proceedings Thursday.
In the case against Osama bin Laden's cook, Ibrahim al-Qosi, presiding military judge Nancy Paul announced Monday that the terms of a pre-trial plea deal with prosecutors would remain secret.
A 10-member jury deliberated for just over an hour before handing down a 14-year prison sentence Wednesday against the 51-year-old Qosi, who pled guilty in July to material support to terrorism.
The secret plea deal opens the possibility that he could serve a much shorter sentence, or be repatriated to Sudan.
"The secret pretrial agreement... is shocking. We are supposed to have open trials and open dockets, and the (US) administration has said it is committed to transparency. This is the polar opposite," said Yale University military law professor Eugen Fidell.
"I hope the ruling on secrecy will be appealed to a higher court," he told AFP.
Human Rights Watch official Andrea Prasow concurred. "The fact that the actual plea agreement is secret calls into question how open and transparent these proceedings are," she told reporters in Guantanamo.
In another court anomaly in the al-Qosi case, judge Paul was noticeably irritated when she discovered there were no written instructions on his conditions of imprisonment.
The plea agreement reportedly stipulates that Qosi can serve out his eventual sentence in Guantanamo's Camp 4, where inmates live communally, but prison rules require convicted detainees to be isolated from other prisoners.
The proceedings were suspended for a day, after which the judge called the discrepancy "troubling," and pointed out that the Pentagon official responsible for overseeing the trials is supposed to coordinate the conditions of a plea deal with prison authorities.
She gave everybody involved in the case 60 days to come up with a solution.
"It's a new system and it's bound to have teething problem at the beginning," said Solis.
"Violation of human rights by the USA in the name of countering terrorism," Amnesty international in a statement.
Despite undergoing reforms since Obama came to power in 2001, the Guantanamo military commissions are still the center of controversy.
"It is widely believed that the government is using Khadr as a test case to judge the feasibility of trying 'high value'" suspects in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, said Glazier.
"If it finds that the commissions will admit evidence more freely than a federal judge would, and the public backlash is not too strong, it will likely lead to more commission trials," the law professor added.
Washington (CNN) -- Two major civil liberties groups filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging the government's asserted authority to kill U.S. citizens living abroad who are designated as terrorists.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights announced they represent the father of influential Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, believed to be living in Yemen, who may be targeted by U.S. government drones.
U.S. officials believe al-Awlaki, a Yemeni-American, influenced Maj. Nidal Hasan, the man accused of killing 13 people in the 2009 Fort Hood shootings, and played a more active role in Umar Farouk Abdul-Mutallab's attempted bombing of a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day 2009.
Officials also believe al-Awlaki inspired Faisal Shahzad, who has pleaded guilty to federal terrorism charges in the attempted car bomb attack in Times Square in May, as well as several others.
The ACLU and CCR announced the challenge to the government's plan to use lethal force against U.S. citizens "located far from any battlefield without charge, trial, or judicial process of any kind," a statement from the groups said.
"President Obama is claiming the power to act as judge, jury, and executioner while suspending any semblance of due process," said Vince Warren, executive director of the CCR.
The two groups and al-Awlaki's father, Nasser al-Awlaki, are particularly concerned about the use of drones to target civilian al-Qaeda supporters. Unmanned drones are frequently used in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where Taliban and other insurgents are believed to be operating.
The suit specifically challenges the law that prohibits attorneys from providing representation for al-Awlaki without first seeking a license from the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Control.
The office, which labeled al-Awlaki a "specially designated global terrorist," has so far not granted the groups a license.
"The government is targeting an American citizen for death without any legal process whatsoever, while at the same time impeding lawyers from challenging that death sentence," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero.
The Justice Department, which is expected to defend the administration against the lawsuit, had no immediate comment.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon said on Monday it was launching a manhunt to find whoever leaked tens of thousands of classified documents on the war in Afghanistan, one of the largest security breaches in U.S. military history.
U.S. defense officials said the person behind the release of some 91,000 classified documents appeared to have "secret" clearance and access to sensitive documents on the Afghan war.
More leaks were possible, officials acknowledged.
"We will do what is necessary to try to determine who is responsible for the leaking of this information," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said.
"Until we know who's responsible, you have to hold out the possibility that there could be more information that has yet to be disclosed. And that's obviously a concern."
The Pentagon said its review of the documents being made public by the organization WikiLeaks would take "days if not weeks" and that it was too soon to assess any damage to national security.
Still, U.S. military officials played down any revelations within the documents revealed so far, saying they appeared to be low-level assessments that largely confirm the military's publicly stated concerns about the Afghan war.
The military's warnings of potential mission failure last year helped lead to President Barack Obama's decision in December to deploy 30,000 more troops.
"The scale of (the leak), the scope of it, is clearly alarming. I don't think the content of it is very illuminating," Morrell said.
Among the documents were reports that U.S. officials in Afghanistan strongly suspected Pakistan was secretly supporting Taliban insurgents while taking massive amounts of American aid. The documents could fuel growing doubts in Congress about Obama's war strategy as the U.S. death toll rises.
The Pentagon has declined to name any suspects over the leak but also has refused to rule out potential involvement of an Army specialist already awaiting trial on charges of leaking information related to the Iraq war to WikiLeaks.
Army Specialist Bradley Manning was charged earlier this month in connection with the leak of a classified video showing a 2007 helicopter attack that killed a dozen people in Iraq, including two Reuters journalists. He is also accused of downloading State Department cables to his personal computer.
Asked whether WikiLeaks also might come under scrutiny, Pentagon officials have said that historically the leakers have been the ones targeted for criminal prosecution -- not those who merely publish the information.
"I don't know what's going to happen here. This is a whole new world that we are entering into where an organization without any editorial judgment, beholden to nobody, is soliciting classified information from people all over the world and then publishing it," Morrell said.
"I don't know. I'm not a lawyer but people are going to have to make judgments about whether there are legal ramifications for soliciting a criminal act."
The shocking rates of infant mortality and cancer in Iraqi city raise new questions about battle
By Patrick Cockburn
Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.
Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have complained since 2005 of being overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They said they were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the battle for Fallujah between US troops and insurgents.
Their claims have been supported by a survey showing a four-fold increase in all cancers and a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s. Infant mortality in the city is more than four times higher than in neighbouring Jordan and eight times higher than in Kuwait.
Dr Chris Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster and one of the authors of the survey of 4,800 individuals in Fallujah, said it is difficult to pin down the exact cause of the cancers and birth defects. He added that "to produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the attacks happened".
US Marines first besieged and bombarded Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, in April 2004 after four employees of the American security company Blackwater were killed and their bodies burned. After an eight-month stand-off, the Marines stormed the city in November using artillery and aerial bombing against rebel positions. US forces later admitted that they had employed white phosphorus as well as other munitions.
In the assault US commanders largely treated Fallujah as a free-fire zone to try to reduce casualties among their own troops. British officers were appalled by the lack of concern for civilian casualties. "During preparatory operations in the November 2004 Fallujah clearance operation, on one night over 40 155mm artillery rounds were fired into a small sector of the city," recalled Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, a British commander serving with the American forces in Baghdad.
He added that the US commander who ordered this devastating use of firepower did not consider it significant enough to mention it in his daily report to the US general in command. Dr Busby says that while he cannot identify the type of armaments used by the Marines, the extent of genetic damage suffered by inhabitants suggests the use of uranium in some form. He said: "My guess is that they used a new weapon against buildings to break through walls and kill those inside."
The survey was carried out by a team of 11 researchers in January and February this year who visited 711 houses in Fallujah. A questionnaire was filled in by householders giving details of cancers, birth outcomes and infant mortality. Hitherto the Iraqi government has been loath to respond to complaints from civilians about damage to their health during military operations.
Researchers were initially regarded with some suspicion by locals, particularly after a Baghdad television station broadcast a report saying a survey was being carried out by terrorists and anybody conducting it or answering questions would be arrested. Those organising the survey subsequently arranged to be accompanied by a person of standing in the community to allay suspicions.
The study, entitled "Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009", is by Dr Busby, Malak Hamdan and Entesar Ariabi, and concludes that anecdotal evidence of a sharp rise in cancer and congenital birth defects is correct. Infant mortality was found to be 80 per 1,000 births compared to 19 in Egypt, 17 in Jordan and 9.7 in Kuwait. The report says that the types of cancer are "similar to that in the Hiroshima survivors who were exposed to ionising radiation from the bomb and uranium in the fallout".
Researchers found a 38-fold increase in leukaemia, a ten-fold increase in female breast cancer and significant increases in lymphoma and brain tumours in adults. At Hiroshima survivors showed a 17-fold increase in leukaemia, but in Fallujah Dr Busby says what is striking is not only the greater prevalence of cancer but the speed with which it was affecting people.
Of particular significance was the finding that the sex ratio between newborn boys and girls had changed. In a normal population this is 1,050 boys born to 1,000 girls, but for those born from 2005 there was an 18 per cent drop in male births, so the ratio was 850 males to 1,000 females. The sex-ratio is an indicator of genetic damage that affects boys more than girls. A similar change in the sex-ratio was discovered after Hiroshima.
The US cut back on its use of firepower in Iraq from 2007 because of the anger it provoked among civilians. But at the same time there has been a decline in healthcare and sanitary conditions in Iraq since 2003. The impact of war on civilians was more severe in Fallujah than anywhere else in Iraq because the city continued to be blockaded and cut off from the rest of the country long after 2004. War damage was only slowly repaired and people from the city were frightened to go to hospitals in Baghdad because of military checkpoints on the road into the capital.
A federal judge has ordered the release of another Yemeni captive at Guantanamo, the 37th time a war on terror captive in southeast Cuba has won his unlawful detention suit against the U.S. government.
Judge Paul Friedman's order in the case of Hussein Almerfedi at the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., instructs the Obama administration to "take all necessary and appropriate steps to facilitate the release of petitioner forthwith.''
His reasoning on why the U.S. had unlawfully detained Almerfedi, 33, held at Guantanamo since May 2003, was still under seal.
But as far back as 2005, Almerfedi had argued before a military panel at the Navy base in southeast Cuba that he fled his native Aden, Yemen, with plans to settle in Europe, not to join a jihad. Instead, he said, his journey took him to Pakistan and then Tehran where Iranian forces turned him over to Afghan forces, who in turn handed over to the United States.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates rejected suggestions Sunday that US forces will move out of Afghanistan in large numbers in July of next year under a deadline set by President Barack Obama.
"That absolutely has not been decided," Gates said in an interview with Fox News Sunday.
His comment was the latest indication that the magnitude of the drawdown, if not the deadline itself, is the subject of an intensifying internal debate at a time when a NATO-led campaign against the Taliban is going slower than expected.
Vice President Joe Biden, an early skeptic of the US military buildup in Afghanistan, was quoted as telling author Jonathan Alter recently: "In July of 2011, you're going to see a whole lot of people moving out. Bet on it."
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel did not deny the Biden quote when asked about it, but, like Gates, said that the size of the drawdown would depend on conditions on the ground.
"Everybody knows there's a firm date. And that firm date is a date (that) deals with the troops that are part of the surge, the additional 30,000," he said in an interview with ABC "This Week."
"What will be determined at that date or going into that date will be the scale and scope of that reduction," he said.
General David Petraeus, the commander of US forces in the Middle East, said last week that in setting the deadline for the surge last year, Obama's message was "one of urgency -- not that July 2011 is when we race for the exits, reach for the light switch and flip it off."
Petraeus told lawmakers he would be duty-bound to recommend delaying the redeployment of forces if he thought it necessary.
In the same hearing, the Pentagon's policy chief, Michelle Flournoy, said a responsible, conditions-based drawdown would depend on there being provinces ready to be transferred to Afghan control, and that there be Afghan combat forces capable of taking the lead.
Officials have said that training of Afghan security forces has gone slower than expected, in part because there are not enough trainers.
Gates said he had not personally heard Biden's comments so would not take them at face value.
"The pace... with which we draw down and how many we draw down is going to be conditions-based," he said.
He said there was "general agreement" that those conditions would be determined by the US commander, General Stanley McChrystal, the senior NATO representative in Kabul and the Afghan government.
McChrystal has said that even though a key campaign in Kandahar was taking longer than expected, it will be clear by December whether the surge and his counter-insurgency strategy were working.
Gates complained that "there's a rush to judgment, frankly, that loses sight of the fact we are still in the middle of getting all of the right components into place and giving us a little time to have this work."
But lawmakers from both parties have voiced increasing concern about the situation in Afghanistan.
Diane Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Sunday that 40 percent of the country is controlled or contested by the Taliban, and the conflict is "metastasizing" with insurgent groups joining forces and sharing money.
"There is one, I think, irreversible truth: The Taliban is on a march," she said.
"If you lose Afghanistan, Pakistan is the next step. And so what that bodes is nothing but ill because Pakistan is a nuclear (state)."
Senator Richard Lugar, an influential Republican, said saying "goodbye" to Afghanistan was not the solution.
"I think the president is going to have to redefine the plan, and when the proper time comes for that, he will have to make a decision," he said.
The Department of Defense said Monday that it will send 2,700 members of the 116th into Iraq as part of "Operation New Dawn," a new name given to the conflict by the Obama administration to reflect the reduced role U.S. troops will play.
About 1,500 of the soldiers are from Idaho. Others are from Montana and Oregon.
The 116th leaves Sept. 17 and will spend about two months training at Mississippi's Camp Shelby, followed by about 10 months on the ground in Iraq, said Col. Guy Thomas, commander of the 116th.
The brigade's mission includes operations like convoy security, force protection and entry-point security in different areas around Iraq, Thomas said.
"It's because of the support our soldiers get from their employers and families they are able to do what they do," Col. Guy Thomas, commander of the 116th Cavalry Brigade Combat Team said. "I'd just like to thank them."
By Daniel Tencer
Thursday, March 4th, 2010 -- 1:26 pm
Birth defects in the Iraqi city of Fallujah have soared in recent years, with doctors saying advanced US weaponry such as white phosphorous and depleted uranium shells may have caused a "massive, unprecedented number" of congenital health problems.
A BBC investigative report has found that the incidence of birth defects in Fallujah has reached a rate 13 times higher than that found in Europe. One doctor at a US-built hospital in the city says the number of birth defects has spiked from one or two per month prior to the Iraq war to two or three per day today.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates rejected suggestions Sunday that US forces will move out of Afghanistan in large numbers in July of next year under a deadline set by President Barack Obama.
