Monday: Karzai Sets Exit Deadline for Contractors; Gulf Shrimp Season Opens

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is setting a four-month deadline for private security companies to cease operations in the country, a government spokesman said Monday.

The Associated Press reports that the Interior Ministry has 52 security firms licensed, but some older contracts are still being completed by unlicensed firms, according to the U.S. military. There are about 26,000 private security contractors working for the U.S. government in Afghanistan, 19,000 of them with the military.

In recent months, Karzai has repeatedly said that these companies undermine government security forces, creating a parallel security structure.

A spokesman for the U.S. military said the United States supports Karzai’s goal, but would not comment on whether it would be possible to meet the deadline.

Meantime, Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, spent the weekend talking with American journalists about the current state of affairs in the war.

The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder sums up the media blitz this way:

“Analysts in DC surmise that Petraeus has two goals: to convince the American people that the current Afghanistan strategy is working, and to soften expectations that the July, 2011 transition point will mark the month that significant numbers of troops return home.”

You can read about what Petraeus had to say in Monday’s “Morning Line” by NewsHour political editor David Chalian.

Shrimp Season Opens in Gulf

Shrimpers returned to the Gulf on Monday for the first commercial season since the BP oil disaster. According to the AP, many shrimpers are uncertain what crude may still be in the water and what price they’ll get for their catch.

On Friday’s NewsHour, Tom Bearden reported on the internal debate among fishermen on whether the time is right to begin selling seafood from Gulf waters.

And the White House is hosting a live chat at 2 p.m. EST with NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco on the safety of Gulf seafood.

Millions of Children at Risk for Disease in Flooded Pakistan

Up to 3.5 million children are at high risk from deadly water-borne diseases in Pakistan following the country’s floods, a United Nations spokesman said over the weekend. Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi also told the BBC that he feared the growing desperation of flood victims could play into the hands of extremists.

The floods have affected 20 million people and spread over 62,000 square miles of land — about one-fifth of the country.

In the hard-hit Sukkur area on Sunday, hundreds of victims blocked a major highway with stones and garbage, protesting the slow delivery of aid amd complaining they were being treated like animals, reports the AP.