[R-G] US creates local militias to fight Taliban

[Anthony Fenton]

from the April 13, 2009 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0413/p06s10-wosc.html
Lessons from Iraq? US creates local militias to fight Taliban
With echoes of the Anbar Awakening in Iraq, the US is arming,  
training, and paying Afghans to set up village militias.
By Anand Gopal | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

Maydan Shahr, Afghanistan

At first sight, Muhammad Nasim Gul and his men – in drab, olive- 
colored fatigues and baseball caps to match – look like Cuban  
guerrillas. They slowly patrol the muddy streets of Wardak Province,  
weapons drawn in a constant state of alert.

They stand sentry, night and day, on the watch for intruders and other  
enemies. At times they stop to talk to the townsfolk, to see if anyone  
has had any trouble recently.

Mr. Gul and his fellow tribesmen are part of an ambitious new American- 
backed program that started here two weeks ago to train, uniform, and  
arm locals against the Taliban. Officials turned to the idea following  
the success of a similar plan in Iraq, known as the Anbar Awakening,  
in which Sunni tribes were armed to fight Al Qaeda. They hope the  
program, dubbed the "Afghan Public Protection Force," can help stem  
the worsening violence here.

"My tribesmen joined this force to protect our village," says Mr. Gul,  
a former policeman who is now a commander in the protection force of  
the Jalrez district of Wardak, a 30-minute drive from Kabul.

Under the plan, members of each district shura (council) in Wardak  
nominate locals for the force who are then trained for three weeks by  
Afghans (with the involvement of American advisers). They then return  
to their home districts, receiving nearly $125 dollars a month in  
salary – more than the typical police income, which is usually less  
than $100 a month. If successful in Wardak, officials plan to expand  
the program to more than 40 other districts across the south and east.

Afghan and American officials stress that the force is not a tribal  
militia. "The shuras [which nominate the force] are not from one or  
two tribes, so they will bring people from all the villages," says  
Barna Karimi, director-general of the Independent Directorate of Local  
Governance, a government body that works with the local shuras.

Pitting one ethnic group against another?

But in practice, the force is shaping up along tribal and ethnic  
lines. In Jalrez, one of two districts where the program has started,  
only 38 of the 128 members of the force are Pashtuns. The rest belong  
to other ethnic minority groups. But the Taliban and its supporters  
are almost entirely Pashtun, as is the majority of Jalrez district.

"It is not wise to use members of one ethnicity to combat members of  
another ethnicity," says Waliullah Rahmani, a policy analyst with the  
Kabul Center for Strategic Studies.

Of the 38 Pashtuns in the Jalrez force, all belong to a single tribe,  
the Kharoti. Several locals say that other tribes in the area refused  
to join. "We are the only tribe that joined this program," says  
commander Gul. "All of the rest of the tribes are angry at us and  
think we are helping the infidels."

"Unfortunately, most of the tribes living in these areas are not  
supportive of the current government," says Mr. Rahmani, "and they are  
not likely to fight against the insurgents."

Critics of the program contend that arming specific tribes is  
dangerous in a country with a recent history of civil war.

But government officials defend the composition of the force, saying  
it can fight the insurgency only with those who are most willing,  
regardless of ethnicity or tribe.

Recruits don't want to fight Taliban

While in Iraq the Sunni tribes were asked to fight against outsiders –  
Al Qaeda – in Wardak the majority of insurgents are locals. "People in  
my district are pessimistic about the effectiveness of these forces,"  
says Roshanak Wardak, a parliamentarian from Saydabad district. "They  
say that if they joined, they would end up fighting their own  
brothers, because the Taliban in my district are locals; they are not  
from Pakistan or Kandahar."

Even those who neither have ties to insurgents nor support them say  
they fear reprisals if they join. "The Taliban in Wardak are very  
powerful," says one local from Jaghatu district, who asked not to be  
named for security reasons. "Even those against the Taliban are scared  
to join."

Some say that even if they do join, it might not be for the reasons  
that officials envisaged. "I would like to join and defend my  
community," says one local from Saydabad district, who also asked not  
to be identified, "but only against criminals. I don't want to fight  
against the Taliban."

Fazel Qazizai, from Chak district, says, "Most of us just want money  
for food and a weapon for security. Just think about it – one  
Kalashnikov is $600. Where could I ever get that kind of money? But in  
the protection force, we'll get one for free. And we'll get an ID card  
so that the police can no longer harass us."

But he adds, "We have no interest in going to war with the Taliban."

Moreover, some critics say the influx of weapons can exacerbate  
longstanding tribal and political rivalries. In Chak district, for  
example, residents say the main group promoting the protection force  
is Ittehad-e-Islami, a pro-government fundamentalist group accused of  
human rights violations in the 1990s. (No one from the party was  
available for comment.)

The potential for groups or individuals to take advantage of the  
protection force worries tribal elders, says Muhammad Hazrat Janaan, a  
member of the Wardak provincial government. "They are worried that the  
force can actually decrease security unless it's done very, very  
carefully."

A history of tribal militias

Although they are controversial, tribal militias and community guards  
have a long history in Afghanistan. In parts of some eastern  
provinces, a certain type of tribal militia, the arbakai, acts as a  
community guard. These arbakai act independently of the government and  
is formed fully on the initiative of the tribal members. The Afghan  
Public Protection Force is not an arbakai, since the latter is an  
indigenous volunteer force under the command of tribal leaders, while  
the protection force is created, paid for and controlled by the US and  
the Afghan Ministry of Interior.

In some cases, arbakai have successfully kept insurgents out of their  
territory. But it might be difficult to replicate such successes. "The  
arbakai are limited to the southeastern provinces," says Muhammad  
Osman Tariq, with the London-based Crisis States Research Center, who  
wrote a recent report on the subject. "The arbakai have existed there  
for hundreds of years, independent of the government, and will  
continue to exist for years more."

Conditions in provinces like Wardak, which do not have such a strong  
tradition of tribal militias, differ greatly from those in the eastern  
provinces, Mr. Tariq continues. The arbakai in the east are more  
motivated to defend their tribes, since they are created and organized  
by the tribes themselves.

Needed: guns, food, motivation

Analysts say that if the Afghan Public Protection Force is to work,  
officials will have to learn from past failed attempts at locally  
based security initiatives. For example, a previous NATO-backed  
initiative to arm locals in the southern provinces, dubbed the Afghan  
Auxiliary Police Force, ended in failure after Western countries  
deemed the force to be ineffective. Officials at the time said it was  
poorly trained and motivated. In some cases, they accused the force of  
favoring specific tribes or of engaging in criminal activity. In other  
cases, recruits simply absconded with their weapons, never to be seen  
again.

Gul, the commander of the Jalrez Public Protection Force, is convinced  
that the current plan will work – if his forces are well enough  
equipped. "We need more weapons, more clothes, more food. We lack  
everything," he says. "We lack everything."

"We are the only tribe that joined the force, so we need to protect  
ourselves," he adds. "If the other tribes get their hands on me, they  
will kill me."

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