Details Few on US Assistance to Afghan Militias

by Una M. · 2009-11-24 07:05:00 UTC
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Last week, I wrote that the United States is arming and paying Afghan militias to fight the Taliban under something called the Community Defense Initiative (CDI). According to the Guardian, I was wrong about the arms part. The US military is not arming the militias, it is only rewarding them with development projects in their communities.

Or not.

Dexter Filkins in the New York Times paints a slightly different picture. According to Filkins, the US military is quietly dropping US Special Forces soldiers into communities where these militias have sprung up independently, and supplying food and ammunition to anti-Taliban fighters. In the future, Special Forces will be giving them training and communications equipment as well.  So, bullets and food, but no guns --because the militiamen already have those.

The problem is, no one in the media seems entirely sure of what the CDI is, or what the US military foresees it becoming. The scheme is reportedly controlled by a new Special Forces group that reports directly to Gen. McChrystal, the top US military official in Afghanistan, but falls outside the authority of the NATO mission. The CDI has already begun in 14 areas in the south, east and west, and is expected to expand rapidly to other areas over the next year.

Beyond that, who knows? Available details about the plan are frustratingly few.

[Photo:http://www.flickr.com/photos/foreignoffice/ / CC BY-ND 2.0 ]

Una M.
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