Eight security guards at the US embassy in Afghanistan were fired and two resigned following allegations of lewd behavior and sexual misconduct at their living quarters.
The Kabul senior management team of ArmorGroup North America, the private contractor that provides guards for the State Department, was also “being replaced immediately,” an embassy statement said on Friday.
The terminated guards, who left Afghanistan on Friday, all appeared in photographs depicting guards and supervisors in various stages of nudity at parties flowing with alcohol, the embassy said.
Their names and nationalities were not released.
The scandal surfaced this week when an independent watchdog said the embassy guards were subjected to abuse and hazing by supervisors. The Project on Government Oversight contended the situation had led to a breakdown in morale and leadership that compromised security at the embassy in Kabul, where nearly 1,000 US diplomats, staff and Afghan nationals work.
Nearly two-thirds of the 450 embassy guards are Gurkhas from Nepal and northern India who speak little English, a situation that creates communication breakdowns, the Project on Government Oversight said. Pantomime is often used to convey orders and instructions.
In at least one case, supervisors brought prostitutes into the quarters where the guards live, a serious breach of security and discipline, the watchdog said. In other instances, members of the guard force drew Afghans into activities forbidden by Muslims, such as drinking alcohol, it said.
On Thursday, the embassy said alcohol had been prohibited at Camp Sullivan — the offsite location where ArmorGroup guards live — and diplomatic security staff were assigned to the camp.
A team from the State Department inspector general arrived in Afghanistan and interviewed 50 people on Friday in its investigation, spokesman Ian Kelly said in Washington.
Kelly said he didn’t know whether ArmorGroup would continue to employ the guards elsewhere. But he said Washington made it clear to ArmorGroup the guards in the photographs must go.
The State Department also insisted ArmorGroup replace its management team on the ground, Kelly said.
He did not rule out the termination of ArmorGroup’s embassy contract.
“That may be the end result of this, but as I say, we have an investigation going on right now,” he said.
Meanwhile, NATO investigators sought to determine yesterday if any of the scores of people killed in a US airstrike on two tanker trucks hijacked by the Taliban were civilians trying to siphon fuel, while a bomb blast targeted German troops in the same northern Afghan province.
The 10-member investigative team flew over the site on the Kunduz River where a US jet hit the tankers before dawn on Friday with two 225kg bombs, triggering a fireball that killed up to 70 people.
Later, the team led by US Rear Admiral Gregory J. Smith, NATO’s director of communications in Kabul, spoke to two injured villagers in the Kunduz hospital, including a boy and a farmer with shrapnel wounds. Both said they were not at the river with the tanker trucks when the bombs fell but were standing a long distance away.
“We don’t yet know how many civilians” were at the site of the blast, Smith said. “Unfortunately, we can’t get to every village.”
A bomb blast, meanwhile, hit a German military convoy yesterday, damaging at least one vehicle and injuring four soldiers.
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