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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D. Long who wrote (59798)	12/4/2002 2:56:31 AM
From: D. Long	Respond to of 281500

Let's see if Karzai can get this off the ground... timesonline.co.uk ---------------------------------------------------------- Kabul recruiting army of 70,000 to replace warlords From Roger Boyes in Berlin Delicate grip: Western countries support plans for a national army that would strengthen President Karzai's authority. Photograph: Hermann Knippertz/AP PRESIDENT KARZAI of Afghanistan won the support of Western leaders yesterday for plans to create a national army of 70,000 recruits capable of enforcing order in a country gripped by fighting between warlords. He said that an “efficient, mobile, well-paid” and ethnically mixed force should be formed within a year. The warlords’ private militias would be outlawed and obliged to surrender their weaponry. Joschka Fischer, the German Foreign Minister, said: “This is about nothing less than the struggle of the civilised world against terrorism and against irrational fanaticism.” Herr Fischer’s statement at an international conference in the Petersberg hotel overlooking Bonn was echoed by several Western ministers. The event marked the first anniversary of the conference that laid the foundation of a post-Taleban Afghan state. As Afghanistan’s new ministers arrived by helicopter, a battle raged in the western Afghan city of Shindand, where Amanullah Khan, a Pashtun commander, and Ishmail Khan, the Tajik Governor of Herat, were raining artillery and tank fire on each other’s positions. The United States also announced that a B52 bomber had dropped several laser-guided bombs near Herat to protect coalition forces. “The situation is anything but secure,” said Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, whose Government wants to use the conference to show that a US-led war on Iraq would be a diversion from the prime task of eliminating al-Qaeda and of rebuilding Afghanistan. Next month Germany will provide troops for the Kabul-based international stabilisation force. An Afghan army is now seen as being crucial in disarming warlords, distributing aid and stamping out opium production. Training, supervised mainly by the United States and France, has begun in Kabul. An American official estimated the cost at £350 million a year. The troops are being paid $30 (£19) a month, with the promise of $50 a month on graduation. The new national army is supposed to replace 200,000 militia fighters, but so far it has only four battalions — about 1,400 troops. It is dominated by Tajiks and Uzbeks, ethnic minorities that made up most of the Northern Alliance, former rebels who became America’s key ally in the war to oust the Taleban. Pashtuns, Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group, are poorly represented, however. Three previous attempts to form a national Afghan army have failed. Conscription is ineffective and the start-up force is relying on warlords for supposed volunteers. The recruits offered by Ishmail Khan were so unsuitable that they were returned, a sign that Herat’s Governor has no enthusiasm for a national army. Coalition forces are meanwhile planning to extend their security coverage beyond Kabul to six regional cities. Western donors have been slow to deliver the €4.5 billion (£2.9 billion) that they have pledged Afghanistan over the next five years, but they say that a national army would strengthen the Government.