From: senaey fethi (senaeyfethi@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu Sep 03 2009 - 05:09:45 EDT
Move by US secretary of state comes after group sent dossier claming guards engaged in unruly behaviour
Ewen MacAskill in Washington
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 2 September 2009
The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has ordered an investigation into allegations that private contractors employed to protect the American embassy in Afghanistan were engaged in "deviant and lewd" parties that have been compared to Lord of the Flies.
The decision to launch the inquiry came after an independent group sent her a 10-page dossier yesterday claiming that the security guards at the embassy had been engaged in drunken parties involving prostitutes and the kind of ritual humiliation associated with gang initiation. Pictures and video footage were attached to the dossier.
The dossier, compiled by the independent investigative group Project on Government Insight, includes an email allegedly from a guard currently serving in Kabul describing scenes in which guards and supervisors are "peeing on people, eating potato chips out of [buttock] cracks, vodka shots out of [buttock] cracks (there is video of that one), broken doors after drnken [sic] brawls, threats and intimidation from those leaders participating in this activity".
The allegations are an embarrassment at a time when the Obama administration is struggling to win hearts and minds in Afghanistan and the Muslim world in general. It comes against the backdrop of the continuing controversy over the widespread use by the US of private contractors in war zones, of which the most notorious was Blackwater, now named Xe.
The group at the centre of the new allegations are the ArmorGroup, part of the Florida-based Wackenhut group, one of the biggest private security organisations in the US. The organisation did not respond immediately today to the allegations.
The Project on Government Insight, which was established in 1981 to track military procurement and bring to light evidence of any corruption, described the environment at Camp Sullivan, where the guards were housed outside Kabul, as comparable to the anarchy in William Golding's Lord of the Flies.
It said about 300 of the 450 ArmorGroup guards are Gurkhas and the rest are a mix of Australians, South Africans and Americans.
In the dossier, it said that guards were "engaging in near-weekly deviant hazing and humiliation of subordinates" . It claimed that some guards had barricaded themselves in their rooms out of fear that the alleged hazing might harm them physically.
It further claims that guard force supervisors "made no secret that, to celebrate a birthday, they brought prostitutes into Camp Sullivan, which maintains a sign-in log."
According to the report, Afghan nationals, as Muslims, were humiliated by the behaviour and the apparently free-flowing use of alcohol.
The pictures could be picked up by the Taliban and used as propaganda against the US and its allies. But the Project on Government Insight stressed that comparisons should not be made with the pictures of abuse at the Iraqi prison, Abu Ghraib, because no allegations of torture are being made. The report says that the general breakdown in discipline poses a threat to the security of the embassy.
Ian Kelly, the state department spokesman, said of the reports of wild, anarchic partying: "These are very serious allegations, and we are treating them that way." Clinton has "zero tolerance" for the behaviour described and has directed a "review of the whole system" for farming out security to private contractors that may have threatened the safety of embassy personnel, Kelly said.
The embassy said today: "Nothing is more important to us than the safety and security of all embassy personnel - Americans and Afghan - and respect for the cultural and religious values of all Afghans."
It added: "We have taken immediate steps to review all local guard force policies and procedures and have taken all possible measures to ensure our security is sound."
Senator Claire McCaskill, a Democrat who heads a subcommittee on contractor oversight, wrote to the state department calling for the inquiry in the light of the report. McCaskill's committee earlier this year conducted its own hearings on the involvement of ArmorGroup in Afghanistan.
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