UNITED NATIONS: Fear of being linked to US-backed regimes that lack authority has inhibited potential recruits in violence- prone Iraq and Afghanistan from heeding calls to join nascent or rebuilding national armies , say US academics and political and military analysts.
"The challenge of creating national armies in both countries is fundamentally linked to the challenge of legitimacy for the new (US-installed) governments," says Margaret Karns, who lectures on international organizations, foreign policy and diplomacy at the University of Dayton in Ohio State.
"Low legitimacy" for the governments of President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan and Prime Minister Iyad Allawi of Iraq "translates into limited willingness of individuals to sign up for the military, knowing that they might become targets of groups opposed to either government," Karns told IPS.
Since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Washington has been struggling to create a 40,000-strong military force to take over security in the war-torn country. But according to Brigadier General James Schwitters, who is part of the US command responsible for training Iraq's new army, only 3,000 of the soldiers could be regarded as having been militarily trained, as of early August.
"Despite over a year and billions of dollars in spending, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and those he appointed for the mission in Iraq have largely failed to reconstitute meaningful security forces and police," says Erik K. Gustafson, a veteran of the 1991 Gulf War and director of the Washington-based Education for Peace in Iraq Centre (EPIC).
Gustafson also argues that the US- run Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which administered Iraq until June, failed to treat the Iraqi interim government as a full partner or to provide Iraqi police and army forces with the equipment, training, oversight and funding they need to operate effectively.
"The legacy of that failure remains and Iraqis are paying dearly in lost oil revenues, crime, terrorism and other violence," Gustafson told IPS. "Given the scale of failure and loss of lives and property, Rumsfeld should be investigated for criminal negligence," he added.
According to a report released by the CPA on the eve of its hasty retreat from Baghdad, Iraqi forces have 40 per cent of the weapons, less than one-third of the vehicles and about 25 per cent of the body armour they need to operate as an effective military force.
"I have more hope that Iraq may succeed in spite of the United States," Karns said, because it is not only a more developed country than Afghanistan but it also had a strong national army long before the US-led invasion.
But the new (Iraqi) government, she said, has to stop the slide toward "Lebanonization," which has resulted in ethnic and religious feuds.
On Monday, the 'New York Times' reported that US Ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte is urging the White House to reallocate resources from infrastructure building in the occupied country and into improved security and job opportunities for Iraqis. -Dawn/The Inter Press News Service.