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UK arming Afghan tribes will not work, warns US commander

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

London, Jan 3, IRNA
UK Arms-Afghan Tribes
British plans to equip tribes to defend their villages against the Taliban will not work in the region of Afghanistan in which UK forces are responsible, according to the top US general commanding NATO forces in the country.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said last month the UK, responsible for the southern Helmand province, would increase its support for "community defence initiatives, where local volunteers are recruited to defend homes and families modelled on traditional Afghan arbakai".

But US General Dan McNeill, commander of the International Security and Assistance Force, said the model would be effective only in the south-east, and not in Helmand.

"My information, from studying Afghan history, is that arbakai works only in Paktia, Khost and the southern portion of Paktika and it's not likely to work beyond those geographic locations," McNeill said in an interview published in the Financial Times (FT) Thursday.

"What we should not do is take actions that will reintroduce militias of the former power brokers. There has been some good work here to get those things back in the box and we shouldn't seek to go back there," he warned.

With overstretched international and Afghan security forces struggling to contain the country's insurgency, some countries, including the UK and Denmark, are pushing for greater use of tribal militias to strengthen efforts against Taliban and al-Qaeda forces.

The US commander said although there was a role for "local security solutions", care had to be taken not to fuel inter-tribal fighting.

Ehsan Zahine, director of the Tribal Liaison Office in Kabul, was also quoted saying that it was unlikely that a 200-year-old arbakai system would be effective even in the three south-eastern provinces where it has traditionally held sway.

"In a place like Khost it will be very hard to persuade villages to fight for a government which they regard as abusive," Zahine said, pointing out that a proposal to use arbakai in the south-east was rejected two years ago.

The FT said that British interest in community defence initiatives has been prompted by the difficulty of quelling the insurgency in Helmand and by frustration with the quality of Afghanistan's police force, which is being retrained.

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