Sitting cross legged on the floor of his air-conditioned quarters Major Ataullah, a burly Afghan army commander, listed the many influences of his peripatetic military career.
”I’ve worked with Soviets, French, Canadians and, for the past year, the British,” said Ataullah, who uses only one name. He gestured at Major Martin David, a neatly pressed British officer sipping tea. ”My third mentor,” he said with a toothy smile.
There have been four attempts to forge a strong central army in Afghanistan since the 18th century. Each has failed, frustrated by war, invasions or the stubborn ways of conservative tribesmen. Now the West is making the fifth try, and the task is no less urgent, or complicated, than in the past.
On paper 46 000 recruits have joined the Afghan national army (ANA); President Hamid Karzai’s government hopes to hit 70 000 by the end of 2008. The United States, anxious to ensure an exit strategy for its own troops, is footing the bill — $2-billion so far with another $2-billion promised for new M-16 guns, Ford trucks and bulletproof jackets.
Mentors
Military mentors from Britain, France and Canada are helping to train the fledgling force. As the Taliban insurgency displays remarkable resilience, Western officials present the ANA as a rare success story — and in comparison with the notoriously crooked police, it is. British trainers say the ANA troops are relatively incorrupt and thirsty to fight the Taliban. ”The problem is not getting them to fight; it’s in trying to make them stop,” said a British officer.
But five years after it was founded, the ANA is far from being a standalone army. Desertion rates, estimated at 20%, remain unacceptably high. There are ethnic imbalances, particularly within the officer ranks. And the ANA still depends on its Western mentors for everything — food, ammunition, even a boot out of bed in the morning.
One recent Sunday morning, Lieutenant Colonel Carew Hatherley, commander of the Grenadier Guards, idled beside his vehicle at Camp Shorabak, the joint British-ANA camp in western Helmand. His men were loading their vehicles for a dangerous mission taking supplies to ANA troops in the Taliban-infested Sangin valley. But something was missing — the ANA.
”We’ve gone to their rooms to wake them up,” he said with a half-exasperated smile. ”But it’s not a problem, we have to go with it. We’re working on Afghan time today.”
Adjusting to the ”Afghan way” can be a challenge to the Grenadier Guards, a 351-year-old regiment officially commanded by the Queen. Some frustrations are trivial: Afghans refuse Western military rations in favour of fresh lamb and rice. Others are more serious, such as a refusal to clean weapons or stores. ANA officers employ some harsh disciplinary tactics. One Afghan soldier caught making an inappropriate gesture to a British servicewoman was stripped, chained to a sink and beaten by his fellow officers for two days. Then he was dumped at the front gate.
The British say their most pressing problem is absenteeism. Afghan men value family life and find barracks life strange. Many overstay their leave by weeks, facing no punishment on their return, or never come back. The Helmand battalion is 30% under strength as a result. ”We end up sitting here with bated breath hoping they will turn up,” said Captain Noel Claydon-Swales.
Desertions and absenteeism mean that fewer than half of the 46 000 soldiers are available for active duty at any one time, said Antonio Giustozzi of the London School of Economics, author of a new study on the ANA. British officers cite TE Lawrence’s advice from 1917 on working with the Arabs — ”Better [they] do it tolerably well than you do it perfectly” — as a mantra for tempered expectations.
”To the British way of doing things there are massive frustrations at times. But we can’t make them the mirror image of ourselves because that’s not the Afghan way,” said Hatherley.
Recruitment is a large part of the ANA’s difficulty. In a country of proud tribesmen, joining the national army has historically been a second-rate career choice. The Taliban want to keep it that way through a campaign of violent intimidation.
On Thursday a roadside bomb ripped through an ANA bus in Kabul, killing the driver and wounding 14 people.
Many who do join are from poor backgrounds and their motivations vary. Private Ahmed Jawad, a 25-year-old tailor from Kabul, said he tried to escape basic training (an experience he likened to Guantánamo Bay) by leaping into an icy river. His flight was halted by guards who opened fire, then flung him into jail for 10 days. A day after arriving at Camp Shorabak, Pte Jawad said he liked the wage and would give Helmand his best. But if it didn’t work out, he cheerfully admitted, ”I will try to escape again.”
Atrocities
Beside him sat a diminutive 17-year-old in an oversized uniform. Hussain, who uses one name, said he signed up to avenge Taliban atrocities against ethnic Hazara villagers in Bamiyan, his home district, during the 1990s. ”They stoned the women and dragged people by the feet until they were dead. If I catch the Taliban, I will kill them,” he said quietly.
The US hopes to bolster troop morale with money, gear and creature comforts. The starting wage has been boosted to $99 a month and at the $69-million Camp Shorabak the Afghans live as well as their British mentors. There are air-conditioned quarters, freshly cooked meals, new vehicles and computers for the officers — even if many only use them for watching movies. ”This is a 21st-century barracks for a 16th-century army,” remarked one US contractor.
Th US has also donated thousands of Ford jeeps with air conditioning and stereo systems but no armour plating. More controversially the US plans to replace the ANA’s Soviet design AK-47 rifles with the American M-16, a weapon that is prone to dust, requires greater maintenance and uses smaller bullets.
It will be more difficult to scrub the Soviet legacy from the officer corps. Many of the ANA’s top figures trained under the Soviet Union. The Helmand brigade commander, General Mohiyadeen Ghori, trained for four years at Moscow’s Frunze Academy. He has a stout view of winning local support. ”Most of them are supporting Mullah Omar,” he said. ”I will punch them in the face and tell them to stop fighting us. Our plan is to show them force, then clean the tears from their eyes. Then they will know who is in charge.”
There are several reasons for optimism. Recently the ANA cleared Taliban fighters from Babaji, near Laskhar Gah, with little British help. After fighting in Sangin the ANA rounded up looters — local police — and impounded the stolen goods, said Ghori. Motorbikes, cellphones, even turbans would be returned to their owners, he promised.
But the historical omens are ominous. It took most European countries between 50 and 100 years to form their national armies, said Giustozzi. The Soviet Union tried to fast-track the process in Afghanistan in the 1980s, but failed. ”You can keep pumping in money but in the long term it is not sustainable,” he said. – Guardian Unlimited Â