| UN program to disarm soldiers in Afghanistan "big failure" The Globe and Mail
06/05/2000
By Hamida Ghafour
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KABUL - Taj Mohammed picked up a gun when he was 18. First he fought Soviet troops, then the Taliban, in the Panjshir Valley -- the heart of Afghan resistance against foreign occupation. He killed enemies for 21 years. But he was also known as "doctor" because he became skilled at treating his comrades' wounds. "We took the patients and wounded by donkey," said Mr. Mohammed, who now commands a militia division in Kabul. "I amputated legs, hands and I was even sawing the legs with a piece of wood, because there was nothing else. . . . "There was bombing by Russians overhead and they were launching rockets. We received medicine from Pakistan once a year and that was only in the summer because in the winter the valleys were blocked by snow." Mr. Mohammed is among 100,000 soldiers and commanders who have been told to hand in their weapons and return to civilian life under a $225-million United Nations plan to disarm and demobilize former fighters and reintegrate them into the civilian world. But the project, which began last fall and includes $14-million in assistance from the Canadian government, has faltered badly. Powerful warlords are reluctant to co-operate, soldiers feel betrayed, and the probability is receding that Afghanistan will be secure by September, when voting is to occur. "It's a big failure," said Andrew Wilder, head of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit think-tank, adding that there is little hope of rebuilding Afghanistan when the rule of the gun prevails beyond Kabul, the capital. Under the three-year program, regional commanders give the UN a list of candidates for disarmament. The fighters hand over a functioning weapon, usually a Kalashnikov automatic rifle, in exchange for $200 (U.S.) in cash and a bag of food. This is meant to tide them over while they are interviewed for jobs such as ditch digging and mine removal, or taught the skills of farming or small business. The UN plan envisioned that 40,000 fighters would have disarmed by now, but the figure is only 6,000. Two decades of civil war have left Afghanistan in a state akin to medieval Europe, where regional warlords provide arms, food and wives to townsmen in exchange for allegiance. The most powerful -- men such as Abdul Rashid Dostum, Atta Mohammed, Mohammed Daoud and Ismael Khan -- are reluctant to surrender weapons or fighters, fearing a serious loss of power. "This was not well understood," said Noel Cossins, an adviser to the government's UN-funded disarmament and reintegration commission. Some commanders demanded that their disarmed followers turn their $200 payments over to them, and the UN withdrew some offers of payment. "Now the big commanders are saying, 'See? You can't trust the UN,' " Mr. Cossins said. At the same time, the United States appears unwilling to challenge the warlords, who support it in the fight against Taliban and al-Qaeda forces in southern and eastern Afghanistan. That leaves them free to dabble in the drug trade or urban crime. Afghan's deputy defence minister, General Rahim Wardak, called on the U.S. government to crack down on regional commanders. "They were created by the United States after [Sept. 11, 2001] and it is their responsibility to deal with them," he said. Mr. Wilder said the commanders have become bolder in recent months. "In the first six months after November, 2001, the warlords wouldn't have thumbed their noses," he said. "But now they know the United States has problems in Iraq and feel they don't have to listen." The program has also had trouble finding jobs for soldiers who know little other than warfare and are illiterate or too ill-disciplined to join the Afghan National Army. Mr. Mohammed, the resistance commander, has handed over 200 of his soldiers and about 50 heavy weapons. He said he supports the project but is reluctant to go further because his fighters' prospects as civilians are unclear. "The mujahedeen who were disarmed last year have not been given professions -- they have been walking around without anything to do," he said. "When my soldiers leave, there should be [the] possibility of jobs in the private sector, or the Afghan police or army. They haven't offered us an alternative." The country's continuing political instability also makes it hard to disarm, he said. "If mujahedeen [are] disarmed in the south and [the] Taliban came again, who will be there to stand against them?" he asked. "Who can say the United States will stay for a long time?" Meanwhile, some observers say those awaiting demobilization are not exactly on their best behaviour. "Many of them have been . . . involved in factional fighting, which is a continuing cause of instability -- and of suffering for the communities affected by it," Jean Arnault, the UN's special envoy to Afghanistan, said last month.
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