Private security Afghanistan — President Karzai wants foreign private security firms to hand over to national police Photograph: Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

US contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq

This article is more than 13 years old

Hamid Karzai is to remove private security contractors from Afghanistan. Find out how many US military contractors there are, and what they do
Get the data

Under plans announced by a spokesman for Afghan president Hamid Karzai today, private security firms in Afghanistan will be disbanded within four months, and replaced by the Afghan police force.

According to the most recent data from the US Department of Defense (DoD), there are around 112,000 contractors employed by the US military currently working in Afghanistan. Of those, 16,733 are private security contractors (PSCs), protecting personnel, convoys and bases. By contrast, 11,610 of the 95,000 DoD contractors in Iraq work in the private security field.

Those employed in Afghanistan are overwhelmingly Afghan nationals; 70% of all contractors and 93% of PSCs, compared to just 18% of all contractors and only 10% of PSCs working in Iraq who are Iraqi. Only 0.8% of contractors in Afghanistan who work in private security are American citizens (9% in Iraq).

The ratio of contractors to troops also differs between the two theatres of war. In Afghanistan, there are 1.42 contractors to every US soldier, while in Iraq the ratio is much lower at 1:1.

Download the spreadsheet for the full dataset, including a breakdown of the roles played by contractors in Iraq.