Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010

Hollow Forces Adv. – Link – Afghan Retention

And, contractors are 95% made up of locals- takes away from possible army

Tierney 10 (John, Chair of National Security of foreign affairs in US House of reps, US Congress, june 10, P.2) ET

According to the Afghan Ministry of Interior, there are currently 52 licensed private security companies with a total of roughly 25,000 registered armed guards in Afghanistan.42 There are also hundreds of additional unregistered private security providers and some estimate up to 70,000 total private armed guards.43 Given perilous security conditions in Afghanistan, U.S. and allied contractors in Afghanistan have little choice but to employ private security companies. Whether securing truck convoys, guarding a road project, or providing personal security details, private security services are widely used. The U.S. military increasingly relies on private security contractors in Afghanistan for a variety of significant security needs, from transportation to static protection of U.S. bases.44 Unlike in Iraq where a majority of the armed guards are third-country nationals (e.g., Peruvians, Ugandans, Nepalese), 95 percent of the private armed guards used by the Department of Defense in Afghanistan are local nationals. Indeed, the Department’s “Afghan First” campaign directs contractors to hire at least half of all workers from nearby towns or villages.

Afghan can’t recruit because of the contractors

Stokes 10 (Jacob, Business week journalist, Feb 25, Democracy Arsenal) ET

Security, which is the Afghan and foreign governments’ primary objective, is seriously struggling. Afghan army and police remain ill equipped not because Afghans are indifferent about their country’s security. In fact, Afghans are quite entrepreneurial and industrious. A primary reason why the security sector is struggling is because the attrition rate is dangerously high due to poor wages, soaring casualty rates, insufficient training, and the fact that the soldiers and police are deployed away from their homes to other provinces, where they are viewed as outsiders. The low recruitment rates for Pashtuns in the south and southeast hardly helps either. Additionally, some 2,000 U.S. trainer positions for the Afghan army and police have remained unfilled for the second year running. The persistence of these obstacles, along with the inefficiency of military spending, where the cost of one American soldier, at $1 million annually, could provide salaries for several hundred Afghan soldiers, makes it difficult to help Afghans stand up. Afghans remain convinced that the conflict cannot be solved through military means, which is why we are losing the goodwill of the Afghan people with continued night raids, dog attacks and detentions. Transitioning security responsibilities to Afghans sooner than later is critical, but without a political solution that is inclusive and Afghan-led, involving the insurgency’s top leadership, stability will remain elusive.

Hollow Forces Adv. – Link – Afghan Readiness

The use of contractors destroys readiness of militias in Afghanistan

Jora 8 (Ulrike, PHD Economic Geography @ U of Aachen, Swisspiece, pg 31) ET

The fears expressed were two-fold. Firstly, interviewees wondered about the readiness of militias embedded in PSCs to engage in another civil war. Secondly, some civil society representatives saw the proliferation of local PSCs (especially those owned by family members of high ranking government officials) and their links to militias as an uneasy reminder of the last days of the former communist government under Najibullah who enlisted pro-government militia to kill opponents.136 The ownership of some PSCs by family members of high-ranking Afghan government officials was also potentially seen as a way to undermine accountability and using government connections to obtain big international contracts. An operations manager for USPI said their rationale for working with commanders is that “We’d like to think that we know who’s in control and, whereby knowing who’s in control, we’d like to set lines at what point to use which kind of commander.”137 Even if such behaviour is an expedient way to receive protection, it is not without risk for security firms. PSCs are essentially paying those individuals for protection that might be the main source of insecurity in the region to begin with. A western diplomat suggested, for example, that USPI hired Zabet Jalil in Farah even though there were allegations that he had killed a USPI advisor and three of his security guards in early 2006.138 Some respondents felt that this practice sent a message to the militia that by remaining a threat (and also increasing the feeling of insecurity within the general population in those regions where these practices are used) they are likely to be hired in the future.139

PMC’s deliberately don’t train the army destroying Afghanistan’s military forces

Charlier 10 (Marie- political adviser to the commander of ISAF, 2-16, Middle East Online) ET

“General” Gulbahar, in charge of doctrine at the Afghan National Army Training Command’s doctrine office, says he has been given no target date for the handover of the drafting of ANA military doctrine to Afghan control. Gulbahar is not unhappy to be supervised: He is in fact a colonel serving in a position normally occupied by a general and has everything to lose by questioning the status quo. MPRI, therefore, has what amounts to a monopoly on the drafting of Afghan army doctrine, which allows it to justify the prolongation of its assisting role. But MPRI also shows solidarity with other PMC’s: The ANA’s logistical doctrine, drafted by MPRI, names DynCorp as the organization responsible for providing logistics support to the ANA’s air corps, without specifying any restrictions or limitations on the duration of this role. The “training” element is highly profitable. The PMC’s are recruiting and training 800 instructors as part of a program to combat illiteracy in the ANA, but their determination to secure the greatest possible return on investment has encouraged them to extend the duration of the training provided. It would seem that fostering the ANA’s own training capabilities is not a priority. The same applies to logistics (currently provided by RM Asia), another key element of the PMC monopoly: no deadlines have been set for the training of Afghan technicians. Here again, the financial interests of the PMC’s, which employ several thousand contract staff, differ from the military interests of ISAF: But they do not wish to see operational systems change too rapidly any more than they hope for a swift victory. They need to be able to influence events and, if necessary, to steer policy at the operational and strategic levels.
Most of the PSC’s are locals

Barakat 8 (Dep of politics, NYU, University of New York, Nov 8 P. 24) ET

The influx of international civilian organizations in Afghanistan in the wake of the Taliban’s fall coupled with the persistence of high levels of insecurity—a result of general criminality, terrorism and the anti-government insurgency—generated a sustained demand for private security providers. It is difficult to determine the number of private security companies (PSCs) or individual contractors working in Afghanistan given that, until the recent promulgation of the Private Security Company Law, no regulatory framework existed to monitor and govern their activities. PSCs tend to eschew transparency, augmenting suspicion of their activities by local and international actors. Almost every category of international actor employs PSCs in Afghanistan, including the United Nations, donor governments, private sector companies and NGOs. They have become an omnipresent feature of the Afghan security landscape. Estimates of the number of international private security contractors working in Afghanistan range from 3,000 to 4,000. Contractors are generally divided into two groups: Western expatriates, consisting primarily of nationals from Britain, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, Zimbabwe and the United States; and third party nationals, predominantly comprising Ghurkhas who previously served in the Indian, British and Nepalese militaries. The Ghurkhas play a crucial role for the PSCs, serving, as one UN official puts it, as a ‘middle link between the Afghans and the internationals.’ While the core staff of the PSCs are international, they rely heavily on locally engaged staff. The bulk of man-guarding or static guarding - safeguarding fixed locations or facilities - is undertaken by Afghan staff. It is even more difficult to provide a precise figure regarding the number of Afghan staff employed by PSCs, as several PSCs sub-contract to regional warlords or small Afghan PSCs.