March 24, 2003	Monday	Muharram 20, 1424

KHOST: Wearing donated uniforms and armed with guns given by former Soviet bloc countries, Afghanistan’s fledgling army has begun its march against history.

One of the cornerstones needed to bring stability to the country after more than two decades of war, the Afghan National Army (ANA) is taking its first tentative steps into areas outside government control.

It is a tall order.

Much of the country remains under the sway of warlords and is split by ethnic differences that have fuelled fights for decades and raised doubts about the viability of a national army in a country where tribal loyalty far outweighs loyalty to the state.

“The major challenge is to create a military loyal to the state,” Ali Ahmad Jalai, chief of the Pushto-language service of Voice of America radio and a former colonel in the Afghan Army, wrote in a recent research paper on the ANA.

Parts of the new army’s third battalion have set up camp in the restive Khost area close to Pakistan with a clear message to the public: the post-Taliban era will be different.

SOVIET WRECKS: “We will try to find anyone against the government or the new army. We will not relax in this,” said Colonel Dadan Lawang, commander of the battalion’s 1st Company.

Lawang’s men carry out their physical training on an abandoned runway beside a US base near Khost, dressed in brown and green uniforms from foreign donors and carrying AK-47s provided by former Soviet Bloc nations as they jog past a graveyard of Soviet-made planes.

First Company is now going through villages explaining what the new army is and gathering intelligence on supporters of the Taliban, which was ousted by a US-led coalition in late 2001.

A more urgent task for the Afghan army is to disarm more than 200,000 fighters in private armies ahead of elections next year.

Ten months after training began, seven battalions — called Banas, for battalion ANA — have passed out, although the seventh will probably be used to bring the other six up to their full strength of 600 men each.

The pay is not great, starting at $30 a month and moving up to $70 when fully trained. But some say they joined because they were sick of war.—Reuters