The Realist

Part of the military plan for the stabilization of Afghanistan – and a good part – is to recruit local militias similiar to the 103,000 Sunni fighters – many former insurgents – who signed onto the U.S. payroll in Iraq. The gunmen are put through a three week training programme and then employed to provide security against the Taliban, something they can do much more cheaply than army or police units who require more extensive training. Empowering locals is also deemed useful because of their knowledge of the local terrain and the population – they can identify Taliban infilitrators more easily than troops sent in from outside.

The programme is currently being trialled in Wardak Province.  But, as a New York Times article details, it is running into problems.

At first, everything went well in Jalrez, the mountainous area where the program is based. Young men from two of Jalrez’s main ethnic groups, the Tajiks and the Hazaras, enthusiastically came forward; both have largely supported the American presence. Several dozen Pashtuns from other villages showed up as well. Two hundred forty-three volunteers were selected, each vetted by the police, the elders and the local religious leaders. The first crop of recruits went through the three-week course — presided over by American Special Forces officers — and graduated three weeks ago. They are now patrolling the dirt roads of Jalrez.

The trouble came from the Pashtun enclave of Zayawalat, one of five large villages in Jalrez.

The Americans setting up the guard force waited patiently, hoping to bring Zayawalat’s elders along. They agreed to a meeting with the elders, and then another and another. At a meeting last week, the fourth, the Pashtun elders said they would make a final decision and report back this week.

But when they showed up Monday morning, the elders said they still were not ready to give up their sons. “It’s not that the people in Zayawalat don’t support the government — they do,” said Hajii Janan, the leader of the Wardak provincial council, who presided over the meeting. “But, as you can see, people are under pressure.”

Mr. Janan was not exaggerating. Last month, a local Taliban commander, Abdul Jameel, based in Maidan Shahr, came forward with 10 of his fighters and declared that he would fight no more. Wardak’s governor, Halim Fidai, accepted his surrender and told him to go home. The governor offered Mr. Jameel no protection for this act of defiance of the Taliban. Two weeks ago, Taliban gunmen entered Mr. Jameel’s home and killed him, his wife, his uncle, his brother and his daughter.

In Iraq, the programme to recruit Sunni militias worked for two reasons.  The first was that it came at roughly the same time as the U.S. surge, meaning that there were more Americans to provide security and protect those who turned against the insurgents.  The second was that the Sunni tribes were so fed up with being brutalized by al-Qaeda in Iraq that they were willing to endure significant hardships to fight them.  Neither of these conditions exist in Afghanistan.

Before the programme can work properly, the Pashtun tribes who the U.S. is hoping to turn need to see clearly what is in it for them, and to see that their choice will provide them with a sustainable future.  The Pashtuns are the focal point of the effort because they come from the same ethnic group as the Taliban, and they straddle the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan – they will have to live with whatever is left of the Taliban long after the U.S. withdraw.  In this war of limited resources, it’s going to be hard to convince them of the urgency of helping the Americans – but Washington’s strategy arguably depends upon it.