Maybe, just maybe this will work again
Jack Linthicum
wonders, this happened without the Agency creating something
"grassroots".
“What we are talking about is a local, spontaneous and indigenous
response to the Taliban,” said Hanif Atmar, the Afghan interior
minister. “The Afghans are saying, ‘We are willing and determined and
capable to defend our country; just give us the resources.’ ”
November 22, 2009
As Afghans Resist Taliban, U.S. Spurs Rise of Militias
By DEXTER FILKINS
ACHIN, Afghanistan — American and Afghan officials have begun helping
a number of anti-Taliban militias that have independently taken up
arms against insurgents in several parts of Afghanistan, prompting
hopes of a large-scale tribal rebellion against the Taliban.
The emergence of the militias, which took some leaders in Kabul by
surprise, has so encouraged the American and Afghan officials that
they are planning to spur the growth of similar armed groups across
the Taliban heartland in the southern and eastern parts of the
country.
The American and Afghan officials say they are hoping the plan, called
the Community Defense Initiative, will bring together thousands of
gunmen to protect their neighborhoods from Taliban insurgents. Already
there are hundreds of Afghans who are acting on their own against the
Taliban, officials say.
The endeavor represents one of the most ambitious — and one of the
riskiest — plans for regaining the initiative against the Taliban, who
are fighting more vigorously than at any time since 2001.
By harnessing the militias, American and Afghan officials hope to
rapidly increase the number of Afghans fighting the Taliban. That
could supplement the American and Afghan forces already here, and
whatever number of American troops President Obama might decide to
send. The militias could also help fill the gap while the Afghan Army
and police forces train and grow — a project that could take years to
bear fruit.
The Americans hope the militias will encourage an increasingly
demoralized Afghan population to take a stake in the war against the
Taliban.
“The idea is to get people to take responsibility for their own
security,” said a senior American military official in Kabul, who
spoke on the condition of anonymity. “In many places they are already
doing that.”
The growth of the anti-Taliban militias runs the risk that they could
turn on one another, or against the Afghan and American governments.
The Americans say they will keep the groups small and will limit the
scope of their activities to protecting villages and manning
checkpoints.
For now, they are not arming the groups because they already have
guns.
The Americans also say they will tie them directly to the Afghan
government.
These checks aim to avoid repeating mistakes of the past — either
creating more Afghan warlords, who have defied the government’s
authority for years, or arming Islamic militants, some of whom came
back to haunt the United States.
The American plan echoes a similar movement that unfolded in Iraq,
beginning in late 2006, in which Sunni tribes turned against Islamist
extremists.
That movement, called the Sunni Awakening, brought tens of thousands
of former insurgents into government-supervised militias and helped
substantially reduce the violence in Iraq. A rebellion on a similar
scale seems unlikely in Afghanistan, in large part because the tribes
here are so much weaker than those in Iraq.
The first phase of the Afghan plan, now being carried out by American
Special Forces soldiers, is to set up or expand the militias in areas
with a population of about a million people. Special Forces soldiers
have been fanning out across the countryside, descending from
helicopters into valleys where the residents have taken up arms
against the Taliban and offering their help.
“We are trying to reach out to these groups that have organized
themselves,” Col. Christopher Kolenda said in Kabul.
Afghan and American officials say they plan to use the militias as
tripwires for Taliban incursions, enabling them to call the army or
the police if things get out of hand.
The official assistance to the militias so far has been modest,
consisting mainly of ammunition and food, officials said. But American
and Afghan officials say they are also planning to train the fighters
and provide communication equipment.
“What we are talking about is a local, spontaneous and indigenous
response to the Taliban,” said Hanif Atmar, the Afghan interior
minister. “The Afghans are saying, ‘We are willing and determined and
capable to defend our country; just give us the resources.’ ”
In the Pashtun-dominated areas of the south and east, the anti-Taliban
militias are being led by elders from local tribes. The Pashtun
militias represent a reassertion of the country’s age-old tribal
system, which binds villages and regions under the leadership of
groups of elders.
The tribal networks have been alternately decimated and co-opted by
Taliban insurgents. Local tribal leaders, while still powerful, cannot
count on the allegiance of all of their tribes’ members.
Militias have begun taking up arms against the Taliban in several
places where insurgents have gained a foothold, including the
provinces of Nangarhar and Paktia.
So far, there appears to be some divergence in the American and Afghan
efforts. While American Special Forces units have focused on helping
smaller militias, Afghan officials have been channeling assistance to
larger armed groups, including those around the northern city of
Kunduz. In that city, several armed groups, led by ethnic Uzbek
commanders as well as Pashtuns, are confronting the Taliban.
“In Kunduz, after they defeated the Taliban in their villages, they
became the power and they took money and taxes from the people,” Mr.
Atmar, the interior minister, said. “This is not legal, and this is
warlordism.”
Colonel Kolenda said, “In the long run, that is destabilizing.”
One of the most striking examples of a local militia rising up on its
own is here in Achin, a predominantly Pashtun district in Nangarhar
Province that straddles the border with Pakistan.
In July, a long-running dispute between local Taliban fighters and
elders from the Shinwari tribe flared up. When a local Taliban warlord
named Khona brought a more senior commander from Pakistan to help in
the confrontation, the elders in the Shinwari tribe rallied villagers
from up and down the valley where they live, killed the commander and
chased Khona away.
The elders had insisted that the Taliban stay away from a group of
Afghans building a dike in the valley. When Khona’s men kidnapped two
Afghan engineers, the Shinwari elders decided they had had enough.
“The whole tribe was with me,” one of the elders said in an interview.
“The Taliban came to kill me, and instead we killed them.”
The two tribal elders in Achin who led the rebellion spoke at length
with The New York Times about their activities. At the request of
American commanders in Kabul, who feared that the elders would be
killed by the Taliban, the identities of the men are being withheld.
Since the fight, the Taliban have been kept away from a string of
villages in Achin District that stretch for about six miles. The
elders said they were able to do so by forming a group of more than
100 fighters and posting them at each end of the valley.
The elders said they had been marked for death by Taliban commanders
on both sides of the border.
“Every day people call me and tell me the Taliban is trying to kill
me,” one of the Shinwari elders said. “They call me and tell me:
‘Don’t take this road. Take a different one.’ I am worried about
suicide bombers.”
The feud between the Taliban and the Shinwari elders caught the
attention of American officers, who sent a team of Special Forces
soldiers to the valley. This reporter was unable to reach the interior
of the valley where the men live, so it was difficult to verify all of
the elders’ claims.
Both the Shinwari elders said that “Americans with beards” had flown
into the valley twice in recent weeks and had given them flour and
boxes of ammunition. (Unlike other American troops, Special Forces
soldiers are allowed to wear beards.)
American officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said they
intended to help organize and train the Shinwari militia. They said
they would give them communication gear that would enable them to call
the Afghan police if they needed help.
But that, as well as other aspects of the plan, seems problematic, at
least for now. There are only about 50 Afghan police officers in
Achin, the district center, and none in the valley. There are no
Afghan Army soldiers in the area, and the nearest American base is
many miles away.
The hope, of course, is that the revolt led by the Shinwari elders
spreads. Each of the elders interviewed leads a branch of the 12
Shinwari tribes. If they survive, both elders said, they believe that
others will join them.
“The Taliban are not popular here, not educated,” another Shinwari
elder said. “They are stray dogs.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/world/asia/22militias.html?hp
Mark Test
to read the "Small Wars Manual".....America has fought and won
dozens of counter-insurgency wars...(Manual was not followed
in Vietnam)
Mark
"Jack Linthicum" <jackli...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:5375dceb-c4ea-47da...@p8g2000yqb.googlegroups.com...
William Black
> I wonder who tickled these anti-Taliban militias or if, wonder of
> wonders, this happened without the Agency creating something
> "grassroots".
>
Reading between the lines the 'maliks' (rich Afghans who live in
villages and occupy informal positions of authority by being both rich
and old) have called a jurga (tribal assembly) are calling out the
tribal 'lashkar' (The tribal war band) in defence of their own position,
assets and authority.
They'll be spending their own money to feed and equip the lashkar so any
food and ammunition will be welcome.
Looks like someone in the US hierarchy has finally been reading up on
Afghanistan...
--
William Black
"Any number under six"
The answer given by Englishman Richard Peeke when asked by the Duke of
Medina Sidonia how many Spanish sword and buckler men he could beat
single handed with a quarterstaff.
La N
> I wonder if this batch of current military leaders have bothered
> to read the "Small Wars Manual".....America has fought and won
> dozens of counter-insurgency wars...(Manual was not followed
> in Vietnam)
>
Good question. Are military leaders provided with homework prior to taking
up their positions? :)
btw, haven't seen you for awhile Mark. Have you been at sea?
- nililta
deem...@aol.com
wrote:
> Jack Linthicum wrote:
> > I wonder who tickled these anti-Taliban militias or if, wonder of
> > wonders, this happened without the Agency creating something
> > "grassroots".
>
> Reading between the lines the 'maliks' (rich Afghans who live in
> villages and occupy informal positions of authority by being both rich
> and old) have called a jurga (tribal assembly) are calling out the
> tribal 'lashkar' (The tribal war band) in defence of their own position,
> assets and authority.
>
> They'll be spending their own money to feed and equip the lashkar so any
> food and ammunition will be welcome.
>
> Looks like someone in the US hierarchy has finally been reading up on
> Afghanistan...
Hopefully. We have been here before and sort of inherited the
Taliban. (Aren't some of these guys those mean and nasty drug lords
we've been having "disagreements" with?)
William Black
> On Nov 22, 10:20 am, William Black <william.bl...@hotmail.co.uk>
> wrote:
>> Jack Linthicum wrote:
>>> I wonder who tickled these anti-Taliban militias or if, wonder of
>>> wonders, this happened without the Agency creating something
>>> "grassroots".
>> Reading between the lines the 'maliks' (rich Afghans who live in
>> villages and occupy informal positions of authority by being both rich
>> and old) have called a jurga (tribal assembly) are calling out the
>> tribal 'lashkar' (The tribal war band) in defence of their own position,
>> assets and authority.
>>
>> They'll be spending their own money to feed and equip the lashkar so any
>> food and ammunition will be welcome.
>>
>> Looks like someone in the US hierarchy has finally been reading up on
>> Afghanistan...
>
>
> Hopefully. We have been here before and sort of inherited the
> Taliban. (Aren't some of these guys those mean and nasty drug lords
> we've been having "disagreements" with?)
Rural Afghan society isn't like ours.
There is no formal government system, law courts or organised anything
much.
Loyalty is first to the family, then to the 'sept', then to the clan.
A village will have several families living in it, probably all from
one or two septs of the same clan.
The village will have several maliks, rich men of power and influence.
But every man sits in the village jurga, and every man's voice is heard
at equal volume, and decisions made are not binding on anyone, they
just reflect general opinion.
So even if the village decides to raise a laskar to defend against the
Taliban a couple of men could dissent and go and join the Taliban
that's their privilege and nobody will do anything about it.
Now lay some reasonably strict Sunni Islam doctrine over that. (There
are a couple of Shia clans, but they're usually far too busy shooting
back at the Sunni clans to be much help to anyone else...)
The big drug/war lords are just maliks who outgrew their local village,
but will still have a power base there and if they, or anyone else,
go back home and settle down nobody will bother them.
At one point Muller Omar went back to his village and was quiet and
nobody was prepared to give him up to the US because nobody was prepared
to get into a blood feud with his clan.
Nobody in this system is going to go after the Taliban or the big
drug/war lords, but they'll resist their influence and will accept
fuel, ammunition, arms and food.
Just don't turn up and try to train them unless you can travel 30 miles
a day over some the roughest terrain in the world and fight a battle at
the end of it...
Dennis
> Reading between the lines the 'maliks' (rich Afghans who live in
> villages and occupy informal positions of authority by being both rich
> and old) have called a jurga (tribal assembly) are calling out the
> tribal 'lashkar' (The tribal war band) in defence of their own position,
> assets and authority.
>
> They'll be spending their own money to feed and equip the lashkar so any
> food and ammunition will be welcome.
>
> Looks like someone in the US hierarchy has finally been reading up on
> Afghanistan...
Makes sense.
Remember that in Iraq there were pro-government militias, which the
US military called "pop-ups," and supported. Seems analogous in some ways.
Dennis
Jack Linthicum
wrote:
Another version, another Brit. The Afghans are not receptive to the
idea of British military in their country, they seem to remember
something back in the past.
"British Lt. Gen. Graeme Lamb, who arrived in Afghanistan at the end
of August to help develop the plan, said a crucial element would be
acknowledging that many insurgents believe that the West plans an open-
ended occupation of Afghanistan."
"Lt. Col. William McCollough, commander of a Marine battalion in Nawa,
said some captured foot soldiers were being released into the custody
of tribal elders if they promised not to rejoin the Taliban, with the
elders providing a guarantee of their good behavior."
latimes.com
In Afghanistan, a drive to lure Taliban with jobs, security
The aim is to persuade Taliban foot soldiers to put down arms in
exchange for jobs and protection from militants. The drive will be
modeled on the 'Sons of Iraq' initiative that helped calm Iraq.
By Laura King
November 23, 2009
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan
The Afghan government and the U.S. military have begun a fledgling
drive to lure Taliban foot soldiers away from the battlefield by
offering them job opportunities and protection, diplomats and military
personnel familiar with the initiative say.
Officials hope the plan, which is loosely modeled on the "Sons of
Iraq" program that lured Sunni Muslims away from the Iraqi insurgency,
could help pave the way for an eventual Western exit from Afghanistan.
Envisioned as a potential centerpiece of the new Karzai
administration, the re-integration initiative is conceived as a bottom-
up, grass-roots effort, similar to the Iraqi program, which was widely
credited with reducing the level of violence there.
At a time when relations between the West and President Hamid Karzai
have been soured by public wrangling over corruption, the new program
marks a rare instance of high-level cooperation between the Afghan
leader and his foreign patrons. The program is to be Afghan-led, with
the broad support of the United States, Britain and NATO's military
force, which had been cool to such efforts.
In Iraq, the U.S.-funded Sons of Iraq program got as many as 100,000
Sunni insurgents to stop fighting the U.S., or even take up arms
against the group Al Qaeda in Iraq, by forming paramilitary groups.
Efforts are underway to move them into state security forces or
provide other jobs. U.S. military officers deployed in Afghanistan's
south, the Taliban heartland, say they are being encouraged to test
similar ideas in the field.
Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, head of U.S. and Western forces in
Afghanistan, personally wooed a key architect of the Iraq program out
of planned retirement to help craft the drive, which is to be aimed
initially at low-level Taliban fighters.
British Lt. Gen. Graeme Lamb, who arrived in Afghanistan at the end of
August to help develop the plan, said a crucial element would be
acknowledging that many insurgents believe that the West plans an open-
ended occupation of Afghanistan.
Other fighters, he said, are acting on personal grievances related to
powerful clan and tribal loyalties, such as a home destroyed or a
relative killed, rather than subscribing to the overarching
ideological agenda of Taliban leaders.
"We have an opportunity to reset the conditions," Lamb, former deputy
commander of the Multi-National Force in Iraq, said in an interview at
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization force headquarters. The vast
majority of Taliban foot soldiers, he said, are "misguided -- they
have fought well for a bad cause."
Karzai referred to the effort in last week’s inaugural address as he
was sworn in for a second five-year term, attaching the specific
condition that fighters renounce any link to groups such as Al Qaeda.
"We invite all disenchanted brothers who are not directly linked to
international terrorism to again embrace their homeland," he said. "We
welcome those . . . who are willing to return to their homes, live
peacefully and accept the constitution."
The Obama administration has made it clear that it intends to hold
Karzai to such pledges, in order to establish conditions in which
American troops can eventually draw down. Secretary of State Hillary
Rodham Clinton, who attended Karzai's swearing-in, said Washington
would closely monitor the Afghan government and made pointed public
references to the fact that the United States and its allies have no
ambitions to remain in Afghanistan indefinitely as a military force.
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband showed strong support for a
pacification effort in a speech in Edinburgh, Scotland, before
attending the inauguration.
"Some Afghan Taliban may be committed to global jihad. But the vast
majority are not. Their primary commitment is to tribe and to
locality," he said. "Our goal is not a fight to the death. It is to
demonstrate clearly that they cannot win, and to provide a way back
into their communities for those who are prepared to live peacefully."
Afghanistan has long had a program in place to accept Taliban fighters
who lay down their arms, but it is widely regarded as ineffective to
the point of being something of a sham.
"Lots of Taliban surrender," a Western diplomat said wryly, when asked
about the work of an Afghan reconciliation commission that claims to
have "turned" more than 8,000 fighters. "And lots of them then un-
surrender."
Last week, officials of the commission summoned TV cameras to their
Kabul headquarters for the purported defection of 30 Taliban fighters
from Ghazni province, south of the capital. Well-worn Kalashnikov
assault rifles were piled theatrically on a colorful carpet at the
commission's headquarters, and then everyone tucked into a large,
companionable lunch.
One of the commanders, who identified himself as Noor Mohammed, gave
contradictory and rambling replies when asked about his reasons for
turning himself in. He lightly dismissed other queries, such as
whether his defection had placed his family in danger.
"It's not a problem at all; no one will hurt them," he said.
Afghan and Western officials suggested that the reconciliation
commission might continue, but only with a drastic revamping. Mohammed
Masoom Stanikzai, Karzai's advisor on re-integration, said he hoped to
develop a wide-ranging plan in the next month.
The new initiative will not include an immediate effort to forge some
kind of accord with the senior leadership, although that could be an
eventual element.
Over the last 18 months, efforts to draw Taliban leaders into indirect
talks have largely foundered, in part because the insurgents believe
their military prospects have been looking up.
Although they have been unable to capture any major towns, militants
have rendered much of the country unsafe and have inflicted greater
losses on Western forces this year than at any time since the start of
the conflict.
In addition, the Taliban leadership generally dismisses Karzai as a
corrupt and unpopular figure, seizing on the summer's election debacle
as proof. The Karzai camp was accused of massive vote-rigging in the
Aug. 20 balloting, and the Afghan president won reelection by default
after his main opponent dropped out of a scheduled runoff contest.
"There can be no trust in this government; it is weak and lacks
authority," said Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, who served as the Taliban
foreign minister before the movement was toppled in the 2001 U.S.-led
invasion.
Karzai has expressed willingness to negotiate even with the Taliban's
supreme commander, Mullah Mohammed Omar, but the Americans have said
that blacklisted leaders such as Omar would not be allowed to be part
of any talks.
Now, however, there are signs of greater Western flexibility in
dealing with lower-ranking figures, even those who are known to have
taken part in attacks against coalition troops.
The day after Karzai's inauguration, a State Department representative
traveled to the Nawa district in Helmand province for talks with local
officials about using jobs and development as a means of luring
Taliban soldiers away from the fight.
Nawa's district chief, Haji Abdul Manaf, said he was in favor of it,
as long as fighters were willing to lay down their arms for good. "We
can re-integrate them, but only if they accept the rule of law," he
said.
Areas such as Nawa, which had been under Taliban control for years
until a U.S.-led offensive in midsummer, could be a proving ground for
the new efforts.
Lt. Col. William McCollough, commander of a Marine battalion in Nawa,
said some captured foot soldiers were being released into the custody
of tribal elders if they promised not to rejoin the Taliban, with the
elders providing a guarantee of their good behavior.
"I do re-integration every day," McCollough said.
Lamb, like others involved in the initiative, believe it is not so
much a question of splitting the Taliban movement as a matter of
exploiting fissures that already exist in a far-from-monolithic
insurgency: "They'll split themselves."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-afghan-taliban23-2009nov23,0,2892908.story
Mark Test
news:UkfOm.54574$PH1.17040@edtnps82...
Arabian gulf.....
Mark