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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
AFGHANISTAN: Focus on disarmament in the north
MAZAR-E SHARIF, 3 September 2003 (IRIN) - Sitting under a tree, Mohammad Taher toys with his old Russian AK-47 assault rifle as he reluctantly lets a British Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) soldier register his weapon as part of a local disarmament programme. "You have to keep a gun to be safe from all these rival commanders," the father of nine told IRIN in Bagh-e Pahlavan village in Sholgara (also known as Balkh) District of the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif.
According to local officials, Sholgara District with its population of 40,000 to 50,000 is one of the most vulnerable areas in northern Afghanistan, where simmering feuds between local strongmen have often erupted into conflict. "The district has been the site of ongoing factional tensions for over a year; these tensions have periodically erupted into localised fighting with a lot of causalities," Taher said.
"We have always fallen victim to warring factions' enmities here," Habibollah, a resident of Chemtal village in Sholgara, told IRIN, adding that his brother had been killed just recently while on a hunting trip by armed men under a local commander. "He was killed only because he lived in the area controlled by an opponent commander," Habibollah said. "Even local people living in one's opposition area are treated as the enemy."
Though local residents are happy about the disarmament programme, many, like Taher, are reluctant to be the first to hand in their guns. The scheme must be comprehensive and record or confiscate everbody's weapons, they say.
"They [armed men] usually ambush cattle and forcibly take away dozens of sheep or goats any time they want," Hosayn Ali, a local livestock farmer, told IRIN. He added that two armed men had made off with his three goats just one day after the launch of disarmament in the district. "So I just sold my cow and bought another Kalashnikov [AK-47] for US $180 to protect my property," he said.
Local disarmament in Shogara started on 18 August and, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA), 112 weapons, including mortars and heavy machine guns, have been collected so far. The weapons will be taken to Mazar-e Sharif for storage in the depots of the factions.
The UN refers to these initiatives in the north as "voluntary disarmament exercises" by the key factions. "They have no connection to the national Disarmament Demobilisation and Reintegration Programme that is due to start in the coming weeks," Michele Lipner, the head of UNAMA's regional office in Mazar-e Sharif, told IRIN.
UNAMA said an agreement signed by the three main factional leaders was being used as a basis to commence disarmament, carried out by multi-factional representatives with support and facilitation being provided by UNAMA and the PRTs. In the course of a year, this is the third time a disarmament exercise has taken place in Sholgara. Many people do not trust the sustainability of the current exercise as it has been seen to have failed in the past.
"Every time they collected 200 and 300 weapons, but again the same weapons and arms reappeared," Qalamoddin, a local shopkeeper, told IRIN. He added that storing collected weapons in the area was a mistake. "They collect them [weapons] from doors and they leave through the windows," he said, asserting that the weapons thus collected would be back on the streets once the regional security commission and the PRTs had left the area.
But Col Dickie Davis, the commander of the 72-man British PRT stationed in Mazar-e-Sharif, believes that this time the current disarmament process has a better chance of success. "We have maintained a record by serial number of collected arms, and the PRT will check the weapons have been handed over to the authorities to ensure they have not gone back into circulation," he told IRIN. He added that the PRTs would patrol the valley on a regular basis and stay in close contact with police and local people.
Davis said if any unregistered weapons were discovered the PRT would confiscate them in accordance with the security commission's decree. "If the commanders obstruct, we will ask them to be permanently removed from the valley," the colonel asserted. He said his PRT expected to collect 400 to 500 weapons in the current exercise. "We will go back in about three months' time once there has been confidence in the process, and will do another disarmament and registration," he added.
As all aid agencies had left the district following continuous fighting, Gen Sabur, the representative of the Jami'at-e Eslami faction on the disarmament supervising group, told IRIN that the rehabilitation of Sholgara was the key to a sustainable peace in the valley. "We should try to give confidence to aid agencies so that they should come back and start serious rehabilitation after the disarmament exercise," the general said, noting that unemployment and poverty were rife in the area.
Likewise, Gen Majid Ruzi, the representative of the Jonbesh-e Melli-ye Eslami faction, also believes that long-term rehabilitation work and international security support like the PRTs will create an atmosphere of confidence in this volatile part of the country. "They will even hand over their private guns if sustainable security is created by trained police supported by PRTs," he told IRIN, pointing out that the current 20-strong local police force in Sholgara was grossly under-manned and powerless to maintain law and order.
But the current disarmament process does have real limitations, relying as it does solely on the goodwill of the many armed groups and their leaders. Observers say that until the country's national army is expanded to the north and a neutral and trained police force is created, all that can be done is to seek the consent of different factions that they will act peacefully. "We use the goodwill of all parties and verbal commitment of the factions to foster peace and stability," Lipner said.
The reality is that United Nations and NGO work in the north remains largely hostage to the whims of the armed factions. "The international community does not feel directly targeted by these tensions, although our collective work in these locations suffers as a result of the need to suspend activities until tension levels are reduced," Lipner observed.
She said the most affected was the civilian population living in trouble spots plagued by insecurity and human rights abuses. Forcible recruitment, manipulation of natural resources such as land and water for personal or factional gain, and family displacement as a result of fighting were all ongoing problems in parts of the north, she added.
UNAMA hopes that the Sholgara disarmament exercise will succeed where other such moves have failed, intending to achieve this by putting in place a number of checks and balances to maximise sustainability. These will include the confiscation by the police of unregistered private weapons after the disarmament exercise is completed, and periodic patrols by the PRTs to verify compliance with the terms of the disarmament agreement.
Themes: (IRIN) Conflict, (IRIN) Governance, (IRIN) Human Rights
[ENDS]
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