PRIVATE MILITARY AND SECURITY COMPANIES (PMSCS) IN ARMED CONFLICTS: LESSON FROM AFGHANISTAN

Abstract

The armed conflict in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2021 has, once again, raised several important issues related to the role of PMSCs in contemporary international conflicts, which have invariably become protracted and complex in nature with blurring distinction between internal and external dimensions, state and non-state actors, combat and non-combats, and advancements in weapon and communication technologies in an increasingly interdependent international order. PMSCs played an important role in Afghan conflict, providing a range of security, intelligence, logistics and allied services to US led coalition forces and Afghan government. PMSCs outnumbered the US troops in the field and their contractors were also more than the regular US troops. They had significant impact during the conflict and its final outcome with collapse of Afghan forces and the establishment of Islamic Emirate by the Taliban. At the same time, expanding scope of their role in Afghanistan has also underlined issues related to jurisdiction, accountability and lack of an effective framework to regulate their activities in armed conflicts to ensure they adhere to objectives of their employer states. In this backdrop, this paper makes an attempt to understand evolution of PMSCs in armed conflicts and their implication of growing privatization of war, earlier seen as an exclusive domain of states. The paper also analyses challenges associated with outsourcing of war to private companies and lessons learned from Afghanistan for existing structures and practices governing armed conflicts.