Washington, March 07: Amid fresh allegations of serious misconduct in Afghanistan by the American ‘security’ firm formerly known as Blackwater, Pentagon pledges a Senate review.
“He is looking into it and he takes it seriously,” Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters after US Defense Secretary Robert Gates promised lawmakers to look into the issue ‘with concern’.
The pledge by Gates comes after Senator Carl Levin, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, urged the defense secretary to reconsider allocating one billion dollar to the firm, now known as Xe, for “highly sensitive work” to train the Afghan national police.
The committee noted that the Blackwater record in Iraq is controversial and there are fresh allegations of misconduct in Afghanistan.
“The inadequacies in Blackwater’s performance appear to have contributed to a shooting incident that has undermined our mission in Afghanistan,” Levin wrote to Gates, referring to a 2007 shooting, where guards have been accused of murdering Iraqi civilians in cold blood.
Levin went on to say that Blackwater may have hired unqualified personnel with backgrounds that included drug and alcohol abuse, as well as misappropriated government weapons and arms possession without authorization.
In January, two US security contractors working for Paravant LLC, a unit of Xe, were arrested in Afghanistan on charges of murdering two Afghans in Kabul and wounding a third.
The Pentagon has so far ruled out any prohibitions regarding the company’s ability to compete for US contracts.
US media have also widely reported that despite the controversial performance of Blackwater in Iraq, the Obama Administration has granted even more ‘security’ contracts to the firm in Afghanistan and elsewhere than the former Bush Administration.
——-Agencies