The Hindu : Afghanistan army and the warlords

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Feb 21, 2003

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Opinion - News Analysis

Afghanistan army and the warlords

By C. Raja Mohan

KABUL Feb. 20. As Afghan leaders struggle to reinvent the basic structures of state power, the creation of an effective national army is at the top of the agenda here.

Amidst great odds, the Afghan National Army is taking shape slowly. But few are willing to bet on its ability to restore in the near future the monopoly of state over the means of violence.

The plan of the Afghan Government is to build a force of 70,000 soldiers in five to seven years.

Nearly a year after the reconstruction of Afghanistan has begun, only about 1800 recruits have graduated from basic training in Kabul.

About 600 more are to be inducted shortly.

American military commanders here who have taken the principal responsibility to train the national army are confident about its eventual emergence as a force to reckon with. They are also pleased with the performance of some of the units on the field in recent weeks.

But there is no glossing over the many problems that confront the painful process of creating a national army after two and a half decades of internal conflict and political fragmentation in Afghanistan. The pay of $ 30 during training and $ 70 after graduation are not low in comparison to wages in this impoverished country.

After years of being part of ethnic militias owing allegiance to local warlords, few Afghans are willing to risk the comfort of these to the rigours of a national army and its uncertain future. Living conditions remain less than attractive and desertion rate is high. Most of the first two battalions created over the last year just melted away.

Although attempts are being made to create a national army composed of all ethnic groups, it has not been easy to get the warlords from different regions to encourage either to disband their own forces or promote recruitment to the national army.

After all, why should they seek to undermine their own current clout and reinforce central authority? Above all, they are not sure of the nature of future power-sharing in Afghanistan.

Mohammad Fahim, the powerful Defence Minister of Afghanistan, conceded to visiting Indian reporters that the "most important problem is the slowness of the demobilisation" of the current militias and "finding jobs to former combatants". "Afghan people have been away from a national military system for 25 years and it is not easy to get them back into a central force," Mr. Fahim added.

* * *

The Afghan Government and the international community have launched the programme of disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) across the nation.

Finding resources and creating political conditions for the building of a national army are the subjects of an international conference in Tokyo later this week.

The Afghanistan President, Hamid Karzai, is heading to the conference with a plan that seeks to accelerate the demobilisation of thousands of soldiers by offering incentives of education, training and jobs.

Some of them will be absorbed in the national army and others into civilian life.

About 30 countries, including India, are likely to be represented at the conference being hosted by Japan.

The Government of Japan unveiled this week an aid package of 4.16 billion Yen to support the DDR programme.

The international community is aware that without a commitment of substantive resources, the current militias cannot be disbanded and an effective national army cannot be created before the elections scheduled for mid to late 2004.

And without a national army, it is unlikely that peace and security in Afghanistan can be consolidated.

* * *

In the interim, the burden of countering the remnants of the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda out to undermine the authority of the interim Government in Afghanistan rests with the American forces in the country.

The law and order situation has vastly improved over the last one year, but it remains rather fragile.

Of particular concern have been the growing number of attacks by opposition forces that take shelter in both sides of the lawless border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In the last few weeks, fighting has intensified between the U.S. forces and opposition in southern and eastern parts of Afghanistan.

The U.S. military responses often create their own problems in terms of civilian deaths which are used by the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda to promote anti-American sentiment across the nation.

Pamphlets and other forms of propaganda against U.S. military presence is being carried out by the Taliban and its supporters. The U.S. forces have begun to recognise that they need to do more than maintaining security to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people.

They have initiated a new plan in which American and Afghan soldiers, along with civilian workers, will take up reconstruction projects all over the country.

The Coalition Joint Civil-Military Operations Task Force has already set up a centre in Gardez in the east and two others are coming up in Bamiyan and Kunduz. Many pilot projects have been conceived for this novel effort.

Many international aid groups are sceptical if the effort to combine security and reconstruction functions by a single group will succeed on the ground. But Western diplomatic sources here say the U.S. military plans for reconstruction "represent a transition from combat to stability operations" in Afghanistan.

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