Afghanistan To Arm Tribesmen Against Taliban

(AP) KABUL, Afghanistan Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Sunday his government will give weapons to local tribesmen so they can help fight the biggest surge in Taliban violence in years.

Two soldiers in the U.S.-led coalition and seven Afghan civilians were killed in the latest violence in the country's south, which has been hardest hit by the pickup in insurgent attacks.

Speaking to a group of tribal elders from eastern Afghanistan, Karzai said he did not want to form militias that could clash with rival tribes.

"We just want to strengthen the districts to safeguard them from terrorist attack," he said.

Although they would not speak for attribution because of the sensitivity of the topic, Western diplomats briefed on the plan said they worried it could fuel factional fighting by giving weapons to forces loyal to warlords with long histories of factional disputes.

. . .

The president did not say how many tribal fighters would be recruited. But he said there would be a dramatic increase in the ranks of security forces in some areas.

http://wfrv.com/topstories/topstories_story_162194019.html

Somehow, arming tribesmen doesn't seem, historically, to work in our favor...

Talk about not learning from history.

During the Russian invasion the US supplied arms to local Afghanistan fighters which has served us well - as in the Northern Alliance.

The Mujajadeem were foriegn fighters, holy warriors come to fight a jihad. That was the group that included Usama Bin Ladden. Not all Mujahadeem became al Qaida or terrorists.


Don't forget, we armed the southern US states. They then used those arms in the Civil War. We have armed them again.

It secretly made fewer people more rich than anything the USA had ever done up until we invaded Iraq to set them free. Serial criminals all!

The Afghan Arabs were certainly among them (and, if truth be told, are still, in part, among them). The non-Pashtun tribesman were also trained, but they were less militant than the Pashtu.

The Disciple Movement was Pashtun. (Talib, of course, is just 'student' or 'disciple'.)

I don't know if this is a good idea or not. It rather depends on how the locals feel: are they pro- or anti-Taliban?

...of warlords versus Taliban in no time.

Did these guys get along very well before the Taliban

Definition of insane. Doing the same stupid thing and expecting different results.

of "Orientalism." Why is it that only Native Americans, Asians and Africans have tribes, while everyone in Euro-America has an "ethnic" identity? Does that mean that the people of Paris are members of the "Frank" tribe and those in Bordeaux are members of the "Gascon" tribe? Are the native of the Vasconia members of the "Basque tribe?"
Are people in Truro member of the Cornish tribe?
"Tribalism" in Afghanistan is very complicated. The Pashtun dominate. But there are very large and significant minorities of various language/cultural groups, some do not even speak Indo-European languages! There has never been a truly functional unitary government for all of Afghanistan. Therefore, people have looked to "their own kind" as a support unit, when there is not much of a concept of being an Afghani, then people naturally fall back on their own indigenous institutions.
The linguistic fragmentation of France and Spain and the unifications of the various groups, both cultural and political in those countries has been a long story with the minority groups often being taken as backward or not really part of the nation state, viz., the Basque, the Catalans, those of Langue d'Oc, Brittany and other parts.
National unity is an ongoing process for many in Europe, now imagine how difficult it is in Afghanistan? Eugen Weber's Peasants into Frenchmen is a great example of how the 3rd Republic in France completed the process in France. Now the work has some flaws, but the basic premise is sound in my opinion, i.e., the long going process of French identity vs. regional identity, in which modern mass communication, army conscription and a common enemy completed the process. Note what Afghanistan lack: modern transport and mass communication adn a national conscript army to which unite behind a common enemy.

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Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,1796393,00.html

The Blood will really flow now