Re: Afghani army:
An Afghan Army Evolves From Fantasy to Slightly Ragged Reality
By CARLOTTA GALL
RGUN, Afghanistan, Jan. 24 — It is a sight seen nowhere else in Afghanistan: two lines of Afghan soldiers patrolling either side of the street of the main bazaar, past turbaned tribesmen and shopkeepers, and trailing a gaggle of children.
Armed with Kalashnikov rifles and Russian-style helmets, the soldiers are part of the Third Battalion of the new Afghan National Army and are the first to be deployed on active duty outside Kabul. Down here, in a corner of Paktika Province near the Pakistani border in southeastern Afghanistan, they are a stunning novelty for the local people and the American forces who share a camp with them just outside town.
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The creation of a multiethnic, centrally commanded Afghan National Army has long been promoted by President Hamid Karzai, and his American and United Nations supporters, as the one solution to Afghanistan's endemic insecurity and powerful regional warlords. But only in the past few weeks, after months of training in Kabul, has the concept of a national force become a reality, with the deployment here first of a company of 50 men, then of two more with 173 Afghan soldiers.
"Put on a serious face, show them you are soldiers, treat the people with respect," the platoon commander, Second Lt. Abdul Matin, 24, ordered his men as they set off on foot through the streets.
A few paces away strode Todd, an American staff sergeant who is one of a team of Special Forces trainers who have been coaching the Afghans since they completed their basic 10-week training at the army academy in Kabul nearly two months ago. Like all the Special Forces men here, he uses only his first name.
"The locals were a little hostile at first — they thought they were a foreign army of occupation," a Special Forces captain, Rocco, said of the new Afghan soldiers. People in this majority Pashtun region also feared that the soldiers were an army of the powerful ethnic Tajiks from the north coming to impose a new rule here, said the mayor, Muhammad Ghous.
But after a concerted public relations campaign by the Americans based in Orgun and by the Afghans themselves to explain the soldiers' presence and the whole idea of the multiethnic army, the force has won acceptance and growing support.
"Now they feel honored that the first deployment for the Afghan National Army is in Orgun, so now they are going the extra mile," Rocco said of the local population.
Information from residents about local troublemakers, mines, weapons caches, and even about rockets aimed at the American base, has increased markedly since the arrival of the Afghan battalion, Rocco said.
The Afghans found victory in their first operation, a dawn raid against a band of men running an illegal checkpoint. Two policemen joined them and arrested the six men, while the soldiers blew up the checkpoint to ram their message home. Virtually every operation has been based on information given by the locals, including children who found rockets aimed at the American base, Lieutenant Matin said.
More surprisingly, local men have begun to ask how they could join the national army. This week, 130 men from the area, including 40 of the local commander's men, applied at a special ceremony.
The Afghan soldiers and local police note that, as Afghans, they are trusted by the populace in a way foreign soldiers never would be, and that as an army that is not locally controlled they can ride above tribal politics. "Through us, the Afghan National Army can solve the problems of the Americans," said Colonel Akbar, 40, a Russian-trained officer and second in command of the Third Battalion. "Until the Afghan National Army is built, there will be no security in Afghanistan," he said.
Efforts to train the national army have been painfully slow. The government's plan is to build a force of 70,000 soldiers in five to seven years. After eight months, only 1,700 recruits have graduated from the basic training in Kabul, with 600 more scheduled to graduate in the coming weeks. Apart from difficulties with recruitment, there has been a high dropout rate, up to 40 percent. And regional commanders have clung to their personal armies, jeopardizing the viability of a national force.
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