Karzai lashes out at security firms

KABUL, Afghanistan, Aug. 9 (UPI) -- The Afghan government won't be successful while foreign contractors are undermining national sovereignty, the Afghan president said.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai during a weekend briefing to civil servant said Afghans have the ability to run and govern the country themselves.

"No Afghan administration will be successful unless it lays off its foreign advisers and replaces them with Afghans," The Wall Street Journal quoted him as saying.

Karzai added he would ban foreign security contractors because they were nothing more than thugs.

"They are thieves during the day and terrorists during the night," he said. "If they want to serve Afghanistan they have to join the Afghan police."

Scrutiny over the work of foreign contractors in Afghanistan reached a boiling point last week when a convoy of security guards from DynCorp International crashed, killing an Afghan civilian.

U.S. Air Force Maj. Joel Harper, a spokesman for U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, told the Journal that the coalition was working with Kabul to build an independent security force "so that private security companies are no longer required."

The newspaper notes that several of the Afghan-owned security contractors have close ties to Karzai's family. Washington has expressed frustration recently with the ability of Karzai to address corruption in his government.

Security contractors in Afghanistan provide protection for foreign dignitaries and aid agencies. The aid workers killed last week didn't have such protection, the Journal adds.