Re-arming Afghanistan's Militias

In an attempt to recreate the movement that peeled Iraqi Sunnis away from the insurgency in the most embattled areas that country, the United States is arming and paying local militias in Afghanistan in the hope these groups will keep the Taliban at bay where Afghan security forces cannot. No one is sure exactly how many militias have formed or regenerated over the last year, but the number is at least in the hundreds. The official name for the support-the-militias program is the Community Defense Initiative, and it is being touted by NATO as a way to, "assist the local population to provide their own security with defensive 'neighborhood watch'-type programs."  You know, just with fewer nosy grandmothers and more bossy guys with Kalashnikovs.

Militias have a long and bloody history in Afghanistan, and were responsible for tens of thousands of deaths during the long-running civil war. A major survey conducted in 2004, ahead of the first parliamentary elections, showed that a large majority of Afghans wanted local militias disarmed and local commanders sidelined politically.

The Community Defense Initiative  is setting off alarm bells in many circles of the international community and Afghan civil society. UN officials and Afghan civic leaders, especially those involved in human rights protection work, have complained bitterly that Afghanistan's Disbandment of Illegal Armed Groups (DIAG) and Demobilization, Disarmament and Reintegration (DDR) processes failed because they were not carried out evenly or widely enough, and were undersupported financially and politically by both the Afghan government and its foreign backers. In this sense, the Community Defense Initiative is just a continuation of the same policies the United States has supported in Afghanistan all along.

"For the past eight years, the U.S. has done business with known drug lords, held high-level meetings with notorious war criminals, and employed unregistered armed militias to guard their bases," writes Rachel Reid, an Afghanistan specialist for Human Rights Watch. "Afghans desperately want to see a change. They are disgusted by the venality of their leaders, sickened by the killings, rapes and abductions that go unpunished."

Militias have been responsible for killing numerous human rights activists, journalists and aidworkers in recent years. After the fall of the Taliban regime, thousands of ethnic Pashtuns were driven from their homes in Northern Afghanistan by Northern Alliance militias. The ranks of the insurgency later swelled with young men from the displaced communities, and the mistreatment of Pashtuns at the hands of non-Pashtun militias became a common refrain in Taliban recruiting propaganda.

"With a raging insurgency and a discredited government, the 'security before justice' argument no longer holds up to scrutiny," writes Reid. With American tax dollars paying for the re-arming of old militias and the creation of new ones, it's clear that message is not getting through to Washington.

11/22/2009: Update: the Guardian reports that the United States is not supplying arms to the militias presently, only money.

11/22/2009: Update: Dexter Filkins in the NYT reports: "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."

[Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/luodanli/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.]