| | Britain Sees Role for Afghan Tribes Wall Street Journal
01/10/2008
By Yochi J. Dreazen
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Militias Would Help Fight Taliban, but U.S. Reaction Is Split
British military commanders in Afghanistan are pushing for the creation of armed tribal militias to aid in the fight against the Taliban, underscoring Western concern about deteriorating security in the country.
The British proposal takes a page from the U.S. military playbook in Iraq, where American forces persuaded many Sunni Arab tribes to join the fight against religious-extremist groups, including al Qaeda.
But this time, the proposal has drawn a mixed reaction from American officials, who debated and rejected a similar idea in 2004, saying their aim was to build national forces. Afghanistan, unlike Iraq, has a long history of militias falling under the sway of local warlords.
Instead, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last month that the U.S. might be forced to send fresh combat troops to Afghanistan if matters continue to worsen. Pentagon officials said yesterday they are considering plans to send several thousand additional U.S. troops.
For now, with the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan facing manpower shortages, British officials said the militias would be helpful in expanding the number of Afghans willing to fight the Taliban. The plan calls for creating new forces modeled on arbakai, the centuries-old village militias.
"They'd be focused solely on defensive activity, not to replace the national forces, but to assist and help them," said Nick Allan, a spokesman for the British Embassy in Washington.
The British proposal, still in planning, comes as fear grows in both Washington and London that early success in Afghanistan may be slipping away.
Last year was the deadliest for U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. Suicide bombings and civilian casualties also rose sharply, steadily eroding the popularity of President Hamid Karzai's central government.
Many senior American commanders attribute security problems to a shortage of foreign troops. NATO, which commands a 41,000-person force, has struggled to find nations willing to contribute more. The U.S. has 15,000 soldiers and Marines in the NATO force, and about 11,000 others under separate American command. That compares with 155,000 deployed to Iraq.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown first raised the arbakai idea publicly in mid-December, telling Parliament that his government would be increasing its "support for community defense initiatives, where local volunteers are recruited to defend homes and families modeled on traditional Afghan arbakai." The British envision using the forces to improve conditions in the southern province of Helmand, a longtime Taliban stronghold.
The arbakai system has been a mainstay of remote regions of eastern Afghanistan for centuries. Clans from the region's tribes take turns providing small numbers of fighters to each village. In times of emergency, the tribesmen pound drums to summon hundreds of additional fighters.
British officials said they would like to recruit small numbers of tribal fighters in a handful of villages to evaluate how well the forces perform in defending their communities from the Taliban. The fighters would use their existing firearms and wouldn't receive any new weapons, British officials said.
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