In 2010 Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, had signed a decree giving private security forces four months to hand over to a new government controlled force, who would shoulder all armed security needs in the central-Asian nation.

But now sixteen months later in 2012, only 4,000 of the Afghan Public Protection Force's officers are ready to serve.

That leaves the bulk of the work guarding the thousands of Afghan and foreign businesses and NGOs to the over 40,000 estimated private security forces still in  the country.

Al Jazeera's Bernard Smith reports from Kabul.