US-Backed Militias: New Strategy Against Taliban Will Face Same Old Challenges

A new multi-million dollar strategy, with the impressively bland title Afghan Social Outreach Program, has just been approved by Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai. ASOP, funded by the Pentagon and based on The Awakening program in Iraq, will deliver radios, phones, and large amounts of cash to tribal elders as a bribe to work with government officials and not with the Taliban. (Apparently, there is also a necessity to hand out even more weapons -- the country is lousy with them, but we always need another gun).

ASOP will work in Afghanistan's vast and rugged rural terrain, where most of the country's 31 million people live, usually in abject poverty and fear. The porous landscape, which can soak up and "disappear" insurgents quicker than you can turn over an APC engine, is one of the major enemies in the war against the Taliban -- a strategic nightmare for patrolling troops.

The aim of ASOP is to mobilize elected village officials into bases to ward off insurgents, creating solid blocs of law and order, and to send intelligence of Taliban activity directly to Kabul. Tribal chiefs and senior clerics will also select local men to form militias, which will be armed and trained.

With violence soaring -- the last 12 months has seen more Afghans and foreign troops killed and more suicide bombings and kidnapping than any other year since the start of the war -- senior NATO and Afghan officials defend the move. They cite growing rural despair and the entreaties of senior Taliban members who want to defect to the government, and who will be part of this new move to reconcile villages held by the Taliban.

David Lang

Mr. Jelani Popal, head of the Independent Directorate of Local Governance, which reports directly to President Karzai, will oversee ASOP. He knows what he's up against. In addition to the Taliban, he says, "there is a problem of corruption, warlords and the drug mafia." Mr. Popal wants to fight against the grinding poverty and lawlessness that characterizes most rural people's lives, and he acknowledges that such issues alienate people from their government -- and lead them into the arms of the Taliban.

Law and order is a major concern in Afghanistan -- and those who are charged with protecting it fail miserably almost 100% of the time. The Afghan National Police (ANP) force may not be the most corrupt in the world, but it is certainly tilting for the title. (I was in Mazar e Sharif recently working with a local journalist on a story about police taking bribes of one and two cents from local indigent beggars at the mosque.)

With few credentials needed to become a beat cop -- no formal education qualifications and just eight weeks training -- the police are a good landing ground for those desperate for work and desperate for cash.

It is not the police force's job to do counter-insurgency work. As the International Crisis Group said in the recent damning report on the Afghan police force: "Too much emphasis is still placed on using the police to fight the insurgency rather than crime. The ANP is ill equipped for this role and has been targeted by the Taliban, with 1,200 killed in 2007 and a similar toll expected in 2008. The goal of the Afghan government and the international community should be a national police force able to uphold the rule of law, and thereby help tackle the root causes of alienation that drive the insurgency."

But is a poorly trained militia, consisting of young men from high-unemployment areas with no official government role really the answer?

Comments

[blood1]

It is apalling that the US wants to continue to give any country tools for war. If Afganistan is suffering from poverty, unemployment, etc...and they are farmers, why not give them tools for their trade as priority item...and then "military"support as a secondary item (if needed).

The US warmongers have failed to learn anything from wars in the near past...the type of warfare the US military is "prepared" to fight is not the way the enemy is fighting...and as in Vietnam and Iraq...we cannot "WIN".

The ideal that they world would be "a better place" if all countries used OUR democratic system is invalid...in that the US cannot force other countries to change their entire political system in a heartbeat.

The US complains about Muslim countries for religious leaders running the government....as we are getting ready to send off GWB and his 8 years of intermingled Religion and Politics.

[SENATORCALLENBOWE]

THERE FIGHTING THERE OWN FEAR MACHINE :) HOW CUTE :)P

[CaptainStormfield]

Frontline has had some good reports on Afganistan. The thing that is not being addressed is opium production. The Taliban and the ISI use it for funding. At this point its going to be very difficult to peel the people away from the Taliban. Another failed attempt in Bush's Petro War's.

[truejustice444]

true

[Nonamnesiac]

The last time the US armed Afghan militias those militias included bin Laden, Mullah Omar and the Drug Pusher Liberation Army. The US armed them against secular Afghans who, though for the most part non-communist, were supported by the Soviet Union.

After the secular Afghans lost, primarily because of our weapons, the US pulled out of Afghanistan leaving its support with the Drug Pusher Liberation Army. The narco state that resulted was so horrible that the Afghan people, not particularly fundamentalist, turned to the Taliban because they brought law and order. The Taliban used arms they had obtained from the US to bring victory to the medieval subduers of women, whom the Taliban are. A by-product of the Taliban victory was a dramatic decline in the amount of drugs exported from Afghanistan.

If the US continues its mindless policy of escalation in Afghanistan, recognizing that since we drove the Taliban out drug exports have skyrocketted, we're going to see a Russian version of Charley Wilson's War, in which some "heroic" Russian will provide SAMs to secular Afghans to shoot down American planes. The Russians to this day believe the US supported the medieval barbarians against clearly progressive forces in Afghanistan and killed alot of Russians who were doing the right thing. And now that we've decided to place missiles right on their borders, they're looking for a way to get even.

[mergina]

These bearded scumbags must be dealt with, if for no other reason than to save the WOMEN AND CHILDREN of Afghanistan from their horrible abuses.

[mamacat]

Bin Laden is not a member of the Taliban, and the Taliban are not a part of Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda gained the loyalty of the Taliban by helping them gain and stay in power.

I would like us to try to interact with them, rather than exterminate them. They represent at least a third, and maybe more than half the people of that country.

Al Qaeda and bin Laden, on the other hand, I have no trouble seeing us fight. A really big problem seems to be that we here in America have forgotten that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are not the same thing. The Bush administration tried to negotiate with the Taliban to have them declare bin Laden persona non grata after 9/11. When the Taliban government were not satisfactorily obsequious, our glorious leader decided to have them ousted from power. It would have been better, I think, if he had simply decided to go after bin Laden. It's not as if the Taliban government was capable of stopping us from surrounding the Al Qaeda camp at Tora Bora. As in Iraq, Bush lost sight of the goal, and now we are paying the price. We are stuck with a policy that it is not easy to change or get away from, even though it has been costly and of questionable long term value.

We won the (wrong) war quite easily, but we are having trouble maintaining peace after the (wrong) war.

[Jesster]

Our capacity for ignorance and / or obliviousness seems to be boundless, endless... And to add insult to injury we seem to wear that badge / distinction with pride.

[Kache]

Strongly agree mamacat. BTW, I have a cat name mamacat :-)

Add to this the fact that today's Taliban is very different than the one we opposed in 2002. Back then it was heavily influenced by Arab and Chechnian expatriates. Most of those Arab and Chechnian fighters were not welcome among Pashtun tribes in Pakistan. Many died at Anaconda and most Chechnians were killed in battles with Pashtun tribes earlier this year in Pakistan. Today's Taliban is far more indigenous and Pashtun.

[nogimmicks]

Leave these people alone. Let them find their national unity, peace and happiness. Unfortunately Obama appears play the hand of the war profiteers by appointing Emanuel and Gates and going along with their "recommendations".

[1will]

National unity, peace and happiness has never been part of Afghan history or culture.

[TXfemmom]

They would be better off if they would furnish food, medicine, clothing, fuel, and assistance with crops, and not cash for these areas, and in seeing that all benefit from it, and in furnishing jobs for men and women. Old sewing machines, pedal operated, could be used to permit the women to earn money, and there are many widows, by sewing at home.

[One more Thing]

History has recorded that apparently the people of Afghanistan do not adjust well to western ideas and customs. They would likely convert your sewing machines into opium production, personal attack weapons or human torture devices.

For the last 100 years it has been a buffer state between world powers. As a consequence, many favors have been restored upon these people in every form imaginable which has benefited the tribal cheifs immeasurably with little or no consequence to the welfare or the peasants, but which has educated the tribal chiefs to the one of the highest level of shrewdness on earth.

Presently, the United States of America if distributing the popular sexual enhancement drug, Viagra, to tribal chiefs, especially elderly chiefs with as many as 4 wives, in our efforts to win support in our quest to find Osama Ben Laden. A recent press report claims the tribal chiefs are highly pleased with the results of this drug. The United States of America has not claimed any successful results from the distribution of this drug.

Osama Ben Laden remains at large.

[DaveinBrooklyn]

Getting "out of the way" by leaving the country and letting the government sort out the Afghanistans problems on their own is exactly what we (and the rest of the world) did in 1989. That worked out real well for everyone didn"t it?

Looking to a filmmaker to seek out solutions to tribal, political, social, religious and economical problems is hilarious if you didn"t sound so serious!
Let him entertain you and possibly inform you but not be your role model for a global citizen.

The entire world has been pouring money into Afghanistan by the billions for years. They ARE digging wells, they ARE building schools, they ARE de-mining. They are NOT rebuilding the infrastructure, they are NOT providing a viable alternative to Poppy cultivation, and they are NOT effectively battling the allure of the Taliban among the extremely poor, desperate and illiterate.

If we had stayed involved in the late 80's, we likely would have never heard of Bin Laden.

[katinpuyallup]

At this time, the poppies are the only income the farmers have. Instead of just destroring the fields, and leaving the farmers with less than nothing, buy the poppies then destroy them. Provide long term no interest loans for farm equipment and seeds so the farmers can grow something else. Buy those crops if necessary and get them to the people.

[soupson52]

Excellent idea. Why would we not just buy the crop? I bet we could pay more than they get from the drug lords AND I read somewhere (can't remember where. sorry) that we could actually use the poppies in the pharma industry.

[SurrealPumpkin]

We were supporting Bin Laden and the Taliban in the late '80's.

[ThinkCreeps]

But then the Soviets left, and interest waned.

A reconstruction effort in Afghanistan then would probably have prevented the rise of the Taliban.

Remember that the Taliban were reluctantly welcomed by many Afghans as they imposed order: while it was a pretty arbitrary, repressive and discriminatory order, it did clamp down on the rule of the armed warlord gangs. The rise of the Taliban caused the warlord gangs to co-operate to form the northern alliance, which brings us to about where we are now.

Mutli-party demcracy in Afghanistan's not going so well, so distributing bribes to warlords from a stronger national government might be the most practical and stable option.

[RJII]

we also supported Saddam at one time.

[motoGpifupleez]

We didn't "get out of the way" back then, we ABANDONED them. No one is "looking to a filmmaker", we are simply saying that he has a good idea. Get over your hate of the man. Where are all these mythical wells, schools and hospitals of which you speak? You are right in reference to the lack of infrastructure, alternative crops, and the draw of the Taliban. I apologize for my empathy toward the Afghanis and it's upsetting effect upon your delicate sensibilities.

[zakwouldhave]

At least we are calling it what it is ......a bribe. And we know how well those work out.
Seriously, who makes these decisions? More weapons, more militia, more bribes??? Why not create an Afghan ARMY? Are there are too many factions, tribes, sects, etc? Sickening to be sending more weapons that will never be accounted for into this lawless land.
Obama must take a completely FRESH look into this mess before escalating. What is the hurry? Get more troops there possibly but just to contain things (the taliban) for a while. Get our allies involved and start concentrating diplomatically on Pakistan to make sure it stays somewhat stable.

[motoGpifupleez]

I am sympathetic to the plight of the Afghanis, but I don't see what we can do beyond getting out of their way and letting them sort this out for themselves. The only Western projects that will do that country any good will be the removal of all the mines and cluster ammunition deposited there by Russia and the U.S., a hospital program and Michael Moore's idea of drilling wells to provide clean drinking and sanitation water for as large a segment of the population as possible. I am disturbed by President-Elect Obamas desire to not only continue, but escalate our military involvement there. the maximum involvement for the U.S. military in Afghanistan should be to promise to rain down misery on those who would violate their borders. Afghanistan has had enough "help" from the rest of the world. They are a hearty people uniquely adapted environment. We should leave them to their own path with our assurance they have nothing more to fear from outsiders.

[One more Thing]

I too am disturbed by President-Elect Obama's desire to not only continue, but escalate our military involvement there.

Thanks for putting the words in my mouth!

[Chopin]

Michael Moore is right in his commonsense advice like building wells to provide clean drinking water to improve people's lives. He's not only a thoughtful excellent documentary movie maker, his heart and intellect are in the right place. Those quacks in CIA who thought up schemes to bribe warlords with viagras have let power and unlimited and unaccountable taxpayers' money get to their heads. Their obscene notions cannot match Moore's commonsense approach.

It's extremely troubling that president-elect, for all his brilliant intelligence and principles, appears to be taking advice from some dead-end crowd. Commonsense tells one that basic commonsense works better than violence and elaborate tricks to fool people and expensive bribes to appeal to their baser instincts. -- They DO NOT WORK in the long run. Chasing Bin Laden down a rabbit hole with violence and tricks is just not as effective as taking sound advice from citizen Moore. Change the paradigm, and the results will change. Mr. President-Elect, are you listening from the people, like you promised?

[raddick]

Elect Michael Moore

[Kache]

Not to detract from Moore's commonsense approach - but he's hardly the only one advocating it!

For a decade before becoming Sect of DOD Robert Gates advocated a dramatic change to out military to one which does this kind of work. In fact, a brigade of Army troops are already getting experience in 2 countries in Africa doing this sort of thing. Gates was NOT kept for continuity, he was kept to make changes.

When David Petraeus wrote Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency in 2006 he consulted with many people outside of the military, including one of the top experts in rebuilding failed nations, Susan Rice. Ms. Rice is Obama's pick for Ambassador to the UN. THat Field Manual focuses on such "common sense" approaches far beyond what Moore envisions.

[SurrealPumpkin]

I hope I'm understanding PE Obama correctly. I hear him saying increased military, most of which will be counter-terrorism, doing the stuff we didn't do in Iraq. The best way to eliminate terrorism is to eliminate the cause - hopelessness and despair. Everyone wants food, shelter and clothing for their families and will do whatever it takes to get them.

Time will tell.