The Foreign Service Journal, February 2013

28 FEBRUARY 2013 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL after all, that the host country doesn’t mind being overrun by a multinational crew of hired guns. But increasingly, they do mind—and for legitimate reasons. The presence of private security firms presents difficult challenges for any post-conflict state trying to build capacity to manage its own affairs and security. Among other effects, it dis- torts the local labor market, furthering dependence on foreign assistance to provide jobs and secure its territory. In Afghanistan, for example, establishing a professional army and police force has proved exceedingly difficult because there was more money to be made as a contractor than as a representative of the Afghan state. In addition, it is all too easy for locally sourced private security companies to become de facto militias. These are two of the reasons Afghan President Hamid Karzai cited when he issued a decree in August 2010 ordering all pri- vate security contractors, both foreign and domestic, to cease operations by the close of the year. He ended up backpedaling, however, making exceptions for embassies and NGOs, and settling for a new licensing scheme, because ending the use of private security in Afghanistan would have effectively meant the end of the U.S. mission there. It would also have meant a dramatic loss of decent-paying jobs for the Afghan people. (In late 2011, the World Bank reported that foreign aid for Afghani- stan was roughly equivalent to the country’s nominal gross domestic product.) But the very fact that he made such a threat underscores the importance of the issue. In December 2012, Karzai went still further, blaming Wash- ington and its contractors for the disturbing levels of corrup- tion in Afghanistan. He told NBC News, “We have to wait for 2014 for the withdrawal of international forces, for the reduc- tion in the amount of contracts. Then you will see that Afghani- stan will definitely be a lot less corrupt government and country.” Tragedy in Benghazi The Sept. 11 deaths of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Ste- vens and three other Americans were also very much bound up with the private security contracting dilemma, though not in the ways that many Americans assumed. Initial media reports mistakenly identified the two Navy Seals who perished in Beng- hazi as security contractors for the State Department, which they were not. In early 2012 Libya’s new government had expressly banned the use of foreign or domestic armed security contractors on Libyan soil. This put State in a real bind, since its Bureau of