Blackwater founder resurfaces selling Afghan plan

WASHINGTON: Nearly 16 years after US forces entered Afghanistan, a shadowy figure from the past is making the rounds in Washington with a plan to end America’s longest war.

Erik Prince, founder of the private security company Blackwater, has resurfaced as President Donald Trump mulls over what to do about a conflict that bedeviled his two predecessors in the White House.

Prince’s plan for Afghanistan would start with the naming of an all-powerful American "viceroy" who would report to the president and play a role like that of General Douglas MacArthur in post-World War II Japan.

American troops, aside from a handful of special forces, would be replaced by a private army of around 5,500 contractors who would train Afghan soldiers and join them in the fight against the Taliban.

They would be backed by a 90-aircraft private air force.

And all at a cost of less than $10 billion dollars a year, as opposed to the $45 billion the United States is expected to spend in 2017 on its military presence in Afghanistan.

Prince, a 48-year-old former US Navy SEAL, has kept a low profile since selling Blackwater in 2010 -- three years after some of his employees hired to protect US diplomats killed 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians in Baghdad and wounded another 17.

He first outlined his Afghan proposal in an article for The Wall Street Journal in May. Since then, Prince, who currently heads Frontier Services Group, a Hong Kong-based security company, has met with US officials here and made television appearances promoting his plan.

Prince, whose sister Betsy DeVos is Trump’s education secretary, says he has received a sympathetic hearing from the president’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, and some members of Congress but a chilly reception from the Pentagon.

After taking office in January, Trump ordered a strategic review of the situation in Afghanistan, where some 8,400 US soldiers and 5,000 Nato troops are assisting the Afghan security forces in battling an emboldened Taliban.