(MENAFN – Afghanistan Times) Afghan diplomats lambast Erik Prince over his proposal on privatization of Afghan war
AT News Report
KABUL: Erik Prince, the founder and former CEO of Blackwater, has a plan to privatise the war in Afghanistan, but he faced harsh criticism from an Afghan diplomat who was audience at the Oxford Union in London.
Countering Erike Prince’s proposal on privatization on war in Afghanistan through mercenaries of death, Naveed Noormal an Afghan diplomat said the world must know that this is for us (Afghans) to decide our future.’How do you justify that you the mercenaries of death will ever want the war to concluded given you make money out of it,’ the youngest Afghan diplomat said, while hard for Prince to answer it.
Prince also said that he doesn’t think President Asrhaf Ghani will win the reelection, but yet again he was lambasted for his irrelevant remarks by many Afghans through social media.
Indeed it is totally up to the people of Afghanistan to decided who is their next president.
Afghanistan ambassador to Sri Lanka Ashraf Haidari, also reacted to the his remark backed Noomral stance, and have totally rejected Prince’s proposal on Afghan war.
‘We just don’t have some of the world’s best forces defending Afghanistan against aggression but also articulate, dedicated diplomats like First Secretary Naveed Noormal, who rejects Prince’s proposal for a mercenary force to operate in Afghanistan,’ he wrote in his twitter message.He furthered; ‘In my article on how ‘Privatization of Security Can Derail US-Led Stabilization of Afghanistan.” Prince pipedreams big bucks, which would’ve been possible in the old days, but not in the new Afghanistan anymore.’
Speaking to Mehdi Hasan in front of an audience at the Oxford Union, Prince said that while he supports US President Donald Trump’s campaign promises to stop “endless wars”, he doesn’t necessarily support the rapid withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.
‘Here’s the thing,” said Prince: “if we, if the United States leaves Afghanistan, withdraws any of the troops support or monetary support, you will have a moment like Saigon in 1975 with helicopters having to lift people off the roof of the US Embassy. It will be that bad.”
Instead, he’d like to have a hand in running the war. Prince has suggested replacing almost 50,000 NATO troops and private contractors with 2,000 US special operators and 6,000 contractors, cutting spending on the war by 30 billion dollars a year.
Prince said: “I do want to end the war by giving the Afghan forces the means to survive and to be much more offence. If you provide mentors and you provide air supports, and logistic support to those units, they can actually get out and get after the enemy.”
During the early years of the Bush administration’s so-called “war on terror”, Blackwater grew into one of the most profitable private military contractors in the US. Over the years, it received over a billion dollars worth of government contracts to provide security to top US officials, train members of the Iraqi army and police, and support the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and Department of Defense’s counternarcotics programme in Afghanistan.
But following the 2007 Nisour Square incident, whereinBlackwater employees killed 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians at a traffic circle, the firm and its founder shot to international notoriety, highlighting the clear dangers of using armed military contractors on the battlefield.
Prince, a former US Navy SEAL, has since been channelling his efforts to train security personnel abroad, including most recently in China, where he launched the Hong Kong-based Frontier Services Group, a security and logistics company.
He has also offered a proposal to end the costly, ongoing US-led war in Afghanistan – the longest in the US history – by privatising the bulk of it: replacing thousands of US troops with private contractors and sending NATO forces home. But is he really the man to bring peace to the war-torn country?
