U.S. delays setting up more anti-Taliban militias . . . they'd become 'stronger than the government'

[bigtree]

January 22, 2010

KABUL, Afghanistan — An ambitious plan to increase the number of anti-Taliban militias in villages across the country has been put on hold until worries about creating warlords can be assuaged, an American officer in Kabul said Friday.

The program, known as the Local Defense Initiative, is designed to help Afghans resist the Taliban in their villages. Many such groups have already sprung up on their own in parts of the country, and teams of American Special Forces soldiers have been going into these villages to help them. The Afghan government has also been helping local groups in northern Afghanistan that are fighting the Taliban there.

American and Afghan officials have expressed hopes that tens of thousands of Afghans could ultimately join these local militias, which they hope could serve as a tripwire for the Afghan Army and the police. But some officials, especially in the Afghan government, have raised concerns that the program could promote the emergence of warlords — one of the scourges that this country has endured in the past 30 years of nearly uninterrupted fighting.

In an interview in November, the Afghan interior minister, Hanif Atmar, said that while some of the militias had been effective in combating the Taliban, some had gotten out of control. The militia commanders, he said, had become stronger than the government.

“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 said. “This is not legal, and this is warlordism.”


read: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/world/asia/23afghan.html?pagewanted=print