STRATFOR E-Mail #19: Re: [alpha] INSIGHT - GERMANY/AFGHANIST

Re: [alpha] INSIGHT - GERMANY/AFGHANISTAN - German security company in Afghanistan
Email-ID 	5008523
Date 	2011-08-04 22:20:06
From 	bokhari@stratfor.com
To 	alpha@stratfor.com
List-Name 	alpha@stratfor.com
Good work, Hoor.

On 8/4/11 4:10 PM, Hoor Jangda wrote:

Kunduz isn't part of phase 1 of the handover so there are foreign forces
still in the province.

On Thursday, 8/4/11 3:10 PM, Kristen Cooper wrote:

Is Kunduz among the initial areas where they are trying to hand over
security to the Afghan forces?

On 8/4/11 3:50 PM, Michael Wilson wrote:

PUBLICATION: Check with Hoor first
SOURCE: New source, DE1000
ATTRIBUTION: Stratfor source
SOURCE DESCRIPTION: Former intelligence analyst in Afghanistan.
SOURCE Reliability : (new source not sure yet)
ITEM CREDIBILITY: (not sure yet)
DISTRIBUTION: Alpha
SPECIAL HANDLING:
SOURCE HANDLER: Hoor

This is someone that I spoke to post the Kunduz attack (August 2) at
the German security office. These are the main questions I asked
after the attack: There is quite a bit here. If you have any
questions you want asked let me know.

Questions I asked:
What do you think will happen with Kunduz? does it appear that the
security situation will get worse? Any idea what the Taliban
structure in Kunduz is currently looking like?

His response :
Dear Hoor,

Many thanks for your reply. It's great to discuss analytical
intricacies with someone at Stratfor, which I've been reading and
greatly appreciating as a subscriber for some 9 years now.

The company, LANTdefence, actually belongs to EXOP GmbH, a small
German security and intelligence firm. The main client base
consisted of humanitarian organisations active in Afghanistan and
Pakistan, particularly German ones. I traveled a lot to and within
Pakistan for a corporate client, building up an intelligence and
early warning infrastructure for their project sites. I still have a
number of good contacts in the humanitarian and security environment
in Afghanistan. Later this year I might actually go back to
Afghanistan for a few weeks on a consulting assignment.

Re. the situation in Kunduz: I visited Kunduz several times in 2009
and 2010, and even back then, the security situation was decidedly
worse than in Mazar and even Kabul. International aid workers could
only move around the city with local escort. Whether the escorts
were armed or not pretty much depended on the approach of the
respective humanitarian organisation/company: The Germans (GIZ) were
generally travelling without armed escort, while the UN and actors
like DAI (contractor of USAID) had different approaches. The main
character of Kunduz City has long been the fact that it is basically
surrounded by Taliban or Taliban-friendly insurgents, who have also
been known to have a permanent if somewhat subtle presence in the
city. Insurgent influence on the city was always palpable - e.g.
when I spent a few days there in May 2010 it was a fact of life that
cell phones didn't work between 6pm and 5am because the Taliban
forced the providers to switch off networks during the night.
Western nationals working with aid agencies could generally not be
present beyond city limits. Even locals working for Western
organisations were increasingly threatened.

The current situation in Kunduz has further deteriorated, compared
to 2010, according to my contacts in Kunduz and Kabul. The German
Bundeswehr which is based near Kunduz airport has dramatically
failed in their stabilisation efforts, largely due to not
understanding the concept of COIN. (I have talked to many German
officers every time I was in Kunduz, and have researched the German
COIN approach in my 2008 dissertation at King's College London.)
This does not bode well for the future security situation in Kunduz.
US forces are largely dictating the pace and degree of pressure on
the insurgents, but NATO forces in the area are on the backfoot as
everyone is well aware that NATO will leave within the next 2-3
years. Local power brokers (Taliban, arbaki, corrupt police, ANA,
etc.) are preparing to fight for the power gap that NATO forces will
leave behind when they will eventually draw back.

I am not too sure about the insurgent structure in Kunduz at the
moment - at least I don't have a complete picture. However, I know
from conversations with local police and foreign intel people there
that apart from the local Taliban structure, foreign fighters have
always posed a particular problem in Kunduz. There has always been
talk about 'the Uzbeks', referring to Islamist militants from
Uzbekistan who have been known to live in local safehouses in the
city. Also, Kunduz police chief Aqtash told me in a 90-min meeting
last year that there is a hotspot village about 20km northwest of
Kunduz City where according to his estimates around 100 Haqqani
militants or sympathisers are based. Furthermore, recent information
from German authorities (and Youtube videos) show that there is a
small but seemingly constant stream of jihadi fighters with German
passports who join the insurgents in the Kunduz area. From what I
know these are German militants who first take the usual route
Turkey-Zahedan (Iran)-Pakistani tribal areas and are then moved on
to Northern Afghanistan via Kunar/Nuristan and Badakhshan.

Lastly, a few words on the 02 Aug attack in Kunduz. I agree with you
in considering this a particularly interesting event. While it is
not unheard of that local guards employed by international orgs get
injured or killed in attacks, direct attacks on Western security
companies are quite rare in Afghanistan according to my reading. The
January 2011 attack on the 'Finest' supermarket in Kabul was such an
attack, but in that case an individual XE employee had been tracked
and assaulted while shopping at the supermarket. The attack now on
LANTdefence (and their local partner Kabora) is therefore a
significant thing in my view. Such a suicide attack after just one
year of presence in Kunduz is certainly a setback - other Western
security companies have operated in Kunduz for years without getting
hit. The fact that the Taliban have hightlighted the attack in their
claim of responsibility as being against a 'German intelligence
centre' leaves no doubt that it was LANTdefence/EXOP that was the
intended target. The problem for LANTdefence/EXOP were always the,
let's say, close ties to German intelligence that did certainly not
go unnoticed among local house staff, local guards and drivers etc.
Plenty of opportunities for the Taliban to gather target intel, if
the right sort of pressure is put on the families of local staff,
for example. On the other side, almost all foreign security
companies are rumoured to have intelligence ties, so the Taliban
could very well have only done some guess-work.

The attack was apparently meant to be a strong warning against the
company, but was not actually designed to annihilate it completely.
(The main LANTdefence office is in Kabul anyway.) I know the
compound in Kunduz pretty well, and any attacker could have expected
to run into resistance from anything between 6 and 10 armed guards
and their German ex-army supervisors. Still, only two insurgent
gunmen stormed the house after the initial blast that opened the
main gate. They were not killed by responding police, but detonated
their explosives belts themselves after 1-2 hours of firefight.

The attack will certainly have implications for the security of
foreign aid workers, especially Germans in the area and probably
country-wide. As I said before, LANTdefence, partnering with Kabora,
is responsible for all GIZ physical security all over Afghanistan.
Now that LANTdefence themselves have become the target of an attack
and have been singled out by Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid as
'German intelligence', the company will be forced to drastically
step up their own security measures, which leaves less bandwidth for
protecting their clients. Also, if for example the Kabul HQ of the
company would be attacked, the neighbouring GIZ building on one
side, and the other neighbours, the French NGO ACF, would be
severely affected as well. It is surely a problem when a security
provider becomes a security risk themselves.

Anyway - I could go on forever but have to cut short now. I hope my
info is useful for you to even better understand the local context.
As I said in my initial message, if you plan to incorporate some of
the more sensitive info into your analyses, such as the background
on LANTdefence/EXOP, that's fine, but please do not hint at whom you
have it from. If you have questions on the above or on anything
else, don't hesitate to get back in touch.

Thanks and all best,

--
Hoor Jangda
Tactical Analyst
Mobile: 281 639 1225
Email: hoor.jangda@stratfor.com
STRATFOR, Austin

--
Michael Wilson
Director of Watch Officer Group, STRATFOR
Office: (512) 744 4300 ex. 4112
michael.wilson@stratfor.com


--
Hoor Jangda
Tactical Analyst
Mobile: 281 639 1225
Email: hoor.jangda@stratfor.com
STRATFOR, Austin