Afghanistan Enlists Tribal Militia Forces

By ANAND GOPAL and YOCHI J. DREAZEN

KABUL -- The Afghan and U.S. governments have launched a new effort to enlist tribal fighters from many of the country's most violent provinces in the war against the Taliban, hoping that a tactic first used in Iraq can help turn the tide here as well.

Thousands of armed tribal fighters from 18 Afghan provinces will initially be hired to provide security for elections on Aug. 20, officials from both countries said. If the security is effective, Afghan officials say they will try to give the tribesmen permanent jobs protecting their villages and neighborhoods.

The tribal initiative is being run by a new branch of the Afghan government called the Independent Directorate for the Protection of Highways and Public Property. In coming days, officials from the agency will ask tribal shuras, or councils, in participating provinces to organize armed militias to guard polling places, roads and public gathering spaces.

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Emilio Morenatti/Associated Press

U.S. soldiers took position near Sari Ghundi village as they patroled near the Pakistani border, about 60 miles southeast of Kandahar Monday.

Officials hope that the militias will provide an additional layer of security to support the new American strategy of trying to better protect Afghan civilians from Taliban violence.

Members of the militias will be allowed to use their own AK-47s and other weapons, but they won't receive arms, ammunition or uniforms from the government.

Afghan officials said the effort is an attempt to import a successful tactic from Iraq, where Sunni tribal fighters in Anbar Province helped drive al Qaeda in Iraq out of the area. The so-called Awakening fighters are widely thought to have played a significant role in taming Iraq's once-unrelenting violence.

"We are trying to recreate the Awakening of Iraq here in Afghanistan," said Arif Noorzai, the director of the initiative. The militias are supposed to work in coordination with the Afghan National Army and Police, but their most important role might be in areas where the Afghan security forces aren't present, Mr. Noorzai said.

U.S. and Afghan officials are concerned that the Taliban will launch large-scale attacks to dissuade Afghans from voting and sap public confidence in the broader Afghan political process. Last week, Taliban fighters fired at least nine rockets into central Kabul.

On Monday, eight Taliban insurgents raided Pul-i-Alam, a provincial capital south of Kabul, firing rockets at government buildings and sparking a gun battle that left at least 11 people dead, including the attackers.

In restive Paktika province, Gov. Abdul Quoom Katwazi said there had been a sharp uptick in insurgent infiltration from neighboring Pakistan. "Many of our enemies are trying to cross into Afghanistan to disrupt the election," he said in an interview. "There may be bad days ahead."

Mr. Katwazi said he was trying to improve security in his province by hiring roughly 1,500 local tribal fighters. The so-called arbakai fighters -- the pashtu name for the militia forces -- will be paid $150 each for the month, and the governor said he hopes to keep them on his payrolls long-term. "We are going to test this system," he said. "If it works, we will continue it."

The new program is part of a broad American and Afghan push to forge closer ties with Afghanistan's tribes, which U.S. military strategists see as powerful potential allies in the fight against the Taliban.

A senior American military official in Kabul said the U.S. was working to develop detailed intelligence about local tribal power structures to better identify which groups and leaders to seek to engage.

The official said the U.S. is also trying to steer development money and reconstruction projects to smaller, less powerful tribes as a way of counteracting the Taliban's proven success in recruiting supporters from marginalized sectors of Afghan society.

The new initiative doesn't mark the first time U.S. and Afghan officials have tried to enlist the country's tribes in the fight against the Taliban.

In a few instances, tribal militias were formed in specific parts of the country but were disbanded after they were deemed ineffective. In some cases, the militias turned to criminal activity or took part in tribal feuds.

The most recent attempt was last year, when Afghan officials created a local-militia effort in parts of eastern Afghanistan's Wardak province. U.S. officials said at the time they hoped eventually to replicate the so-called Afghan Public Protection Program, or AP3, elsewhere in Afghanistan.

Nearly 10 months later, the program remains confined to Wardak. U.S. and Afghan officials there have struggled to recruit fighters from the majority Pashtun community, and the program is disproportionately made up of minority Hazaras. The imbalance has sparked tensions between the two groups and prevented American officials from increasing the program's size and reach.

"Nobody wants to join this force and be seen as working for the government," said Roshanak Wardak, a parliamentarian from Wardak province.

Senior U.S. officials said the tribal militias will have to be closely monitored and carefully controlled to prevent them from challenging the central government or falling under the sway of regional warlords.

"This is an area where warlords and militias got a very, very bad name, so we don't want to create anything that makes the Afghan people think we're going the wrong direction," Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander here, said in a recent interview. "They'll say, 'we don't want any more armed groups around here.'"

Officials from both countries also warn that tribal allegiances can be fleeting. Two years ago, international forces withdrew from the southern town of Musa Qala, leaving it in the hands of a local tribe. The tribe then allowed the Taliban to gain control of the town, forcing Western troops to invade and recapture the area the following year.

Still, tribal leaders have had some successes. Earlier this summer, tribal elders in a district of northwestern Afghanistan's Baghdis province helped broker a cease-fire in which the Taliban pledged to not attack polling centers during the presidential elections and the government agreed to remove its forces from the area. Afghan officials see it as a possible template for other peace deals.

On a recent afternoon, Gen. Dawlat Khan Zadran, the police chief for Paktika, a large, rural province of more than 1 million people, signed individual contracts for 1,500 arbakai fighters. The one-page documents said the fighters would take orders from local police and army commanders and pledge not to interfere with the balloting. "I don't have enough police to protect the people," he said. "It's a gamble, but I hope the arbakai can help."

Write to Yochi J. Dreazen at yochi.dreazen@wsj.com