13 June 2006
International
Kabul arming militia against Taliban
- By arrangement with AKI
Kabul, June 12: The Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai is providing arms to private militias led by local warlords in order to combat the resurgent Taliban movement in the south of the country. In a detailed investigation over several days along the Durand Line, which serves as the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, Adnkronos International (AKI) has found that Karzai administration is adopting this solution as the Taliban increasingly calls the shots in southern Afghanistan and neither the Afghan police nor Afghan National Army are able to contain the Taliban militants. The surge in fighting has killed more than 500 people, mostly militants, since mid-May and raised fears of a Taliban resurgence.
Speaking to a group of tribal elders in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, Mr Karzai said that while his government would give weapons to local tribesmen to fight the upsurge in Taliban violence, he did not want to form militias that could clash with rival tribes.
However, sources have confirmed to AKI that armed militias have already been formed in the troubled districts and provinces of southern Afghanistan to contain the Taliban's threat.
A peace force comprising various tribes and people who oppose the Taliban because of ideological reasons or tribal feuds has already been formed in the troubled eastern province of Kunar.
In the latest assessment of the area of the south-western Durand Line, AKI has learnt of significant developments both in Helmand and in Zabul province concerning the government's sponsorship of private militias.
The Taliban fighters' spring offensive appears to be turning into a mass mutiny against the Karzai administration. Thousands of Afghan policemen and members of the Afghan National Army are ineffectual in fighting the Taliban militants. In many cases, the policemen even left their job, took their weapons with them, and merged with the Taliban.
In the last six months, the Karzai administration transferred 10,000 locals from the various provinces of southern Afghanistan to the police academy in Kabul for training. They police officers were to be deployed to the restive provinces of Zabul, Helmand, Kandahar and Uuzgan. However, a tribal elder from the Zabul province said that 6000 of them eventually fled away after or during the training course.
It is this dire situation in the law and order of the volatile regions that has prompted the Karzai administration to use tribal warlords against the Taliban.
Mullah Sher Mohammed Akhundzada was installed as the governor of Helmand province after the fall of Taliban in 2001. He was later removed but recently was given large sums of cash, weapons and powerful vehicles to arm his tribesmen against Taliban in Helmand and Zabul provinces.
This is believed to be the last hope for Kabul against the Taliban who appear to be gaining strength by the day. The insurgency in southern Afghanistan has been winning grassroots and mainstream support, in what is a serious blow to the credibility of Kabul administration.
Analysts believe that situation has gone back to square one. When the Soviets attacked Afghanistan, the all powerful segments of Afghan society including the Mullahs (Muslim religious clerics), Syeds (an honorific title given to descendants of the Prophet Mohammed) and tribal elders put their support behind the mujahideen and alienated the Soviets and their local communist comrades all over Afghanistan.
A similar situation is reemerging. For example, in February 2006 a powerful religious figure in Kandahar, Maulana Abdullah Zakiri, issued a fatwa or religious decree against the Karzai administration and the Allied Forces. He called on Afghans to rise up against the foreign occupation. Zakiri also wrote letters to the heads of powerful Syed families of Afghanistan, like Syed Ahmed Gailani and spritiual personalities like Pir Sibghatullah Mujadidi, urging them to sever their ties with the Karzai administration. Mr Zakiri's activities were in fact a blow to the Karzai administration and has brought about a domino effect on other segments of Afghan life.
Mr Zakiri did not simply sit on his religious decree but he moved forward and summoned a council of religious clerics throughout Afghanistan and generated wide debate concerning the role of the Allied Forces and the Karzai government. The religious council has been holding meetings every other day in Zabul, Kandahar and Uruzgan provinces as well as across the border in Pakistan's south-west Balochistan province's capital of Quetta. Those meetings have generated negative signals for the Karzai adminstration and its interests. In this context of growing hostility, the option of using private militias appears to be the only available solution for the Karzai government to put a stop to the Taliban's activities which has now reached right up to Afghanistan's eastern Nangarhar province.