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| Afghanistan |
| Stretched Afghan army seeks help from militias to defend Kunduz |
| 2015-05-23 |
| [DAWN] The Afghan government has enlisted hundreds of militia fighters controlled by local commanders to battle Talibs near the northern city of Kunduz, officials said, underlining how the armed forces are struggling to tackle the insurgency alone. The recruitment of unofficial gangs in Kunduz is on a larger scale than previous attempts by the government and NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A cautionary tale of cost-benefit analysis.... forces to recruit militias in the fight against the Taliban. It may also signal a compromise of sorts for President Ashraf Ghani ...former chancellor of Kabul University, now president of Afghanistan. Before returning to Afghanistan in 2002 he was a scholar of political science and anthropology. He worked at the World Bank working on international development assistance. As Finance Minister of Afghanistan between July 2002 and December 2004, he led Afghanistan's attempted economic recovery until the Karzais stole all the money. .. 's administration, which had been trying to curb the influence of so-called "mujahideen" strongmen who held key positions in former President Hamid Maybe I'll join the TalibanKarzai ... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtunface on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use... 's government. Ghani's front man, Ajmal Abidy, denied that the Kunduz recruitment amounted to re-arming mujahideen militias. "What is being considered is selective voluntary citizens' participation in the defence of the country against terrorists," he said in a statement. The Taliban's weeks-long siege of Kunduz has involved thousands of faceless myrmidons and brought the Lions of Islam closer to capturing a major city than at any time in years. The scale of the assault and the inability of Afghan forces to repel it is particularly worrying, because it comes just a few months after NATO ended its combat mission in Afghanistan. |
| Posted by:Fred |