QANOONI SIDETRACKS VOTE ON PRIVATE SECURITY

C O N F I D E N T I A L KABUL 001322 SENSITIVE SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/26/2019 TAGS: PGOV PREL ASEC EIND EAID AF SUBJECT: QANOONI SIDETRACKS VOTE ON PRIVATE SECURITY COMPANIES LAW REF: A. KABUL 1141 ¶B. KABUL 918 ¶C. KABUL 463 ¶D. KABUL 1230 Classified By: Acting DCM Alan Yu for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d). ¶1. (SBU) Lower House Speaker Yunus Qanooni has cut off action on a version of the Private Security Companies (PSC) Law that would have placed restrictions limiting the number of armed personnel allowed for each PSC (refs A-C). Over the objections of many MPs, Qanooni tabled debate on the law, referring it to a Commission on the Implementation and Oversight of the Constitution. Qanooni has recently referred several bills to this commission, which does not yet exist due to a constitutional disagreement between the Lower House and President Karzai (ref D). Qanooni has effectively killed parliamentary action on the PSC Law for the time being and has allowed Interior Minister Hanif Atmar to proceed with his plans to address PSC issues through executive branch regulations. ¶2. (C) Before the Lower House's May 25 session, Deputy Ambassador Ricciardone urged Qanooni to avoid putting in place a restrictive law that prevented the US and other international donors from providing security for their development programs. Ricciardone pointed to an approach in which Parliament could instruct the executive branch to set regulations, rather than issue an overly restrictive law. Qanooni agreed that the issue was best addressed by "regulations," and hinted he would push a final decision off to an "investigative committee," which is now presumably the non-existent constitutional commission. ¶3. (C) Atmar had asked us on May 24 to engage Qanooni directly, otherwise he believed the Lower House would pass the overly restrictive legislation. Atmar had pushed consistently for the authority to exempt certain PSCs from the personnel cap and to equalize the differentiated fee structure in Parliament's draft legislation. Qanooni appears to have given Atmar the opening that both Atmar and we requested, as no legislation referred to this non-existent commission has yet to resurface for a parliamentary vote. ¶4. (C) This is a fairly positive outcome for us, for the moment. It enables us to concentrate now with Atmar on developing executive branch regulations suitable to our security requirements. Once again showing that he is Parliament's most adept manipulator of the legislative process, Qanooni stepped in to stop a bad bill from taking another step closer to becoming law. Less positive, Qanooni's frequent referral of controversial legislation to a non-existent commission upsets rank-and-file MPs, who are frustrated that Parliament has once again failed to resolve internal disagreement on a bill and instead re-framed the debate as a constitutional dilemma for another body to answer. MPs, always sensitive to foreign involvement in Parliament's affairs, will assume our intervention with Qanooni prompted this particular solution. EIKENBERRY