Afghan govt to arm community police to fight Taliban
KABUL, June 11: The Afghan government said on Sunday it would arm civilians to serve as community police in the Taliban-infested south as President Hamid Karzai rejected concerns the move would create militias.
The new force to be established in the southern and eastern provinces, along the Pakistani border where the Taliban are most active, would be under government control, presidential spokesman Karim Rahimi told reporters.
“They’ll be community police,” Rahimi said. “We do want to strengthen our security forces and they’ll be under a government set-up.”
The president dismissed criticism that this would in effect create armed militias, going against an internationally backed programme to disarm scores of illegal armed factions that once held considerable power.
“No, we don’t want militia forces,” he told a meeting of tribal elders.
Karzai said he had to strengthen the country’s understaffed police force particularly in the border regions, which suffer the worst violence of an insurgency launched by the Taliban after they were ousted in late 2001.
For example, some communities of 60,000 people were served by only 45 policemen, the president said, leaving those areas open to the influence of the Taliban as well as drug lords and other criminals.
A government official said tribal elders and communities in areas where the police lacked staff would be asked to put forward people who could serve in the community police force under the command of the ministry of the interior (MOI).
“They will join the police at the local level... They will be hired through the MOI and trained by the MOI,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
The community police would also be paid, he said, although the details appeared not to have been finalised. There was no danger of factional or other loyalties developing, he said: “In no way that will happen... they will be under the MOI.”
But Western officials are concerned the move could undo Afghanistan’s efforts to disarm and rid itself of the scores of illegal private armies that developed during the chaos of 25 years of war.
The plan could be “unhelpful and go against” the Disbandment of Illegal Armed Groups programme, warned project spokeswoman Ariane Quentier.
Karzai’s government launched the UN-backed programme, a follow-on to an earlier disarmament initiative started in 2003, to disband militias so that it could establish its authority and assert the rule of law.
But vast swathes of the country still lack a convincing government presence.
And the internationally trained police force that began forming after the Taliban were ousted lacks capability and equipment, with reports of some being overwhelmed by bands of insurgents in the south and deserting their posts.
The government is increasingly desperate in the face of the Taliban insurgency which flared in mid-May with the militants’ traditional “spring offensive” more fierce than ever.
Karzai’s decision to establish a community police force was an “understandable response”, said a senior official with the Nato force helping to stabilise Afghanistan.
“But any such activity must be centrally controlled. These people must be properly trained and properly controlled,” he said. When asked how possible this was, he responded: “I hear you.”
US ambassador Ronald Neumann said recently that “overall what we favour is that any development in the direction of using auxiliary forces be clearly tied to government and chain of command.”
There is also the risk a new force in the south could alarm the rest of the country.—AFP
