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Afghanistan
Afghan Militia Wins Uneasy Peace
2012-05-31
[Tolo News] Tribal elders competed in offering praises to militia chieftain Nabi Gechi as they gathered last week in the remote Afghan village of Qala e Zal, which until a year ago teemed with Taliban fighters.

"We are so confident of our security that I no longer even lock my door at night," gray-bearded Ghulam Sarwar said.

"If Commander Nabi were to leave, the Taliban would be back here in no time," echoed Hajji Walid Mohammed.

As US-led coalition forces withdraw from Afghanistan and transition to an advisory mission next year, they hold up the successes of Gechi's militia and others like it in the northern Kunduz province as a model to secure the country.

"So far, this works pretty well," said German Army Lt. Col. Heiko Bohnsack, commander of the coalition's Task Force Kunduz, which helps oversee the militias.

"If you look into Afghanistan's past, there have always been gunnies providing security -- and seldom have the Afghans accepted the central power to provide this," he added.

This is what worries the government of President Hamid Maybe I'll join the Taliban Karzai
... 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 Pashtun face 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...
. Wary of how warlord militias plunged Afghanistan into a civil war after the Soviet-backed regime collapsed in 1992, Karzai has ordered the dissolution of independent village militias that, though funded by the US, operate outside Kabul's control.

A 50-year-old former owner of a fish and kebab restaurant, Gechi has emerged as the only real authority in Qala e Zal, a district of rolling wheat fields and orchards nestled along the Tajikistan border.

"Whenever any Taliban are sighted here," he said as he held court last week, "the people and the elders come right away to inform me, and we take care of them."

Gechi's militia counts 240 gunnies -- some of them former Islamic fascisti -- in a district with fewer than 20 regular coppers. Dozens of commanders have raised militias elsewhere in Kunduz since late 2010, chasing the Taliban away from much of this strategic province, which straddles the coalition's main supply routes.

Some irregulars in Kunduz belong to the Afghan Local Police, a village-self defense program established by US Special Forces, whose men receive three weeks of training and are paid through the Afghan government.

Karzai reluctantly acquiesced to the ALP initiative in 2010, after receiving guarantees of government control.
Posted by:Fred

#1  DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > REVEALED: BRITAIN TO SET UP, TRAIN OWN AFGHAN MILITIA AFTER [2014] TROOP WITHDRAWAL, as separate from the US andor other NATO Members.

Artic is actually from a couple of years ago, but Pak Bloggers think the Brit plan is still a go???
Posted by: JosephMendiola   2012-05-31 00:28  

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