Articles On Information: US-Trained Militias Far More Terrifying than Taliban

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<b><u><span style="font-size: large;">"Which side are we on today?"</span></u></b></div>
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<li>Neither the Russians nor the Americans ever had enough troops to 
truly control Afghanistan.  To make up for the lack of manpower we now 
see U.S. backed thug-like militias to enforce their own brand of "Law 
& Order".  That will really make the locals love America.</li>
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KABUL, Afghanistan (<i>New York Times</i>)  —  Rahimullah used to be a 
farmer — just a “normal person living an ordinary life,” as he put it. 
Then he formed his own militia last year and found himself swept up in 
America’s exit strategy from Afghanistan.<br />
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With about 20 men loyal to him, Rahimullah, 56, soon discovered a patron
 in the United States Special Forces, who provided everything he needed:
 rifles, ammunition, cash, even sandbags for a guard post in Aghu Jan, a
 remote village in Ghazni Province.<br />
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Then the Americans pulled out, leaving Rahimullah behind as the local 
strongman, and as his village’s only defense against a Taliban takeover.<br />
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<b><u>“We are shivering with fear,”</u></b></span>
 said one resident, Abdul Ahad. Then he explained: He and his neighbors 
did not fear the Taliban nearly as much as they did their protectors, 
Rahimullah’s militiamen, who have turned to kidnappings and extortion.<br />
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Mr. Ahad ran afoul of them in January, he said in a telephone interview.
 Militiamen hauled him to a guard station and beat him so badly that 
neighbors had to use a wheelbarrow to get him home.<br />
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Scattered across Afghanistan, men like Rahimullah continue to hold 
ground and rule villages. They are a significant part of the legacy of 
the American war here, brought to power amid a Special Operations 
counterinsurgency strategy that mobilized anti-Taliban militias in areas
 beyond the grasp of the Afghan Army.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://articlesoninformation.blogspot.com/" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU0nGqKK6KtWxHD5YYTPqY4ArePDns_DGz7jLGgnJPjh4o55rtbD7vacyNJ6TKI3DGfNajKBbi4r3ngraRpMPjITRt9fNsOnFYVSSkRBawKrEpeZZRLKZqUVVc6YQZz-AB5gi7vo6H4nU/s1600/11militias-web-superJumbo.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="center"><td class="tr-caption"><a href="http://articlesoninformation.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><span class="caption-text"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Members of the Afghan local police from Kandahar </i></span></span></a></td></tr>
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From the start, some Afghan officials, including former President Hamid 
Karzai, objected to the Americans’ practice of forming militias that did
 not answer directly to the Afghan government. They saw the militias as 
destabilizing forces that undermined the government’s authority and 
competed with efforts to build up large and professional military and 
police forces.<br />
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Now, many of those concerns have become a daily reality in Afghan villages.<br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><b><u>“For God’s sake, take these people away from us,”</u></b></span> Mr. Ahad, 36, said of Rahimullah’s militiamen. “We cannot stand their <b><u><span style="color: red;">brutality</span></u></b>.”<br />
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About 50 miles northeast of Mr. Ahad’s village, other anti-Taliban 
fighters arrested a 13- or 14-year-old boy in January and then killed 
him, the boy’s father said.</div>
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And in the northern province of Kunduz, men in a militia that had 
received American support raped a 15-year-old boy last year after 
forcing him to join, according to a United Nations inquiry.<br />
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From the beginning of the American presence here, the United States 
doled out cash to militias and warlords. Paramilitary forces were raised
 to guard American bases. The C.I.A. trained and funded at least <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/21/world/asia/21intel.html?_r=2&" target="_blank">six paramilitary </a>forces, with names such as the Khost Protection Force and 0-4, to pursue the Taliban and Al Qaeda.<br />
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The Afghan Local Police program, with nearly <b><u><span style="color: blue;">30,000 Special Forces-trained militiamen</span></u></b>
 nominally answering to the central government, is the biggest and 
best-known result of the American counterinsurgency strategy, and it has
 been successful in places. But reports of abuses and banditry by units 
in the program have hurt its reputation.</div>
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Then there are militia groups like Rahimullah’s that have also received 
American training or support over the years but operate under even less 
oversight.</div>
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In Ghazni Province, the drive to create militias gained momentum after a
 series of anti-Taliban uprisings in 2012 emerged in areas once 
considered lost. Until they pulled out of Ghazni’s districts last year, <span style="background-color: white;"><b><u>American
 Special Operations units gave cash, ammunition and even armored 
vehicles to men who had little or no official connection to the Afghan 
government and were often <span style="color: red;">former insurgents</span> themselves.</u></b></span></div>
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One of them is Abdullah, a militia commander with a chiseled, almost 
gaunt face, who wishes “my brothers,” as he still calls the American 
Special Forces soldiers, had not left late last year. “Whatever they 
wanted me to do, I would do for them,” he said. “If they tell me to kill
 someone, I will kill them.”<br />
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The Americans, he said, had once fought alongside him in Ghazni’s Andar 
district, offering a sense of discipline — not to mention firepower and 
air support.<br />
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Abdullah described the growing desperation and brutality of a war he and
 his 150 men now fight mostly alone against the Taliban. Abdullah said 
11 of his men were killed in their sleep in late January by a Taliban 
infiltrator posing as a new recruit. Then the Taliban followed up with a
 coordinated attack on his guard post.</div>
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“After they killed my son, they said he was involved in planting bombs 
on roadsides and cooperating with the Taliban fighters,” Mr. Mohammad 
said. But he added that his son had had no involvement with the Taliban.<br />
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Abdullah insisted that he did not kill civilians. The Taliban, he said, not he, were responsible for escalating the brutality.<br />
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Abdullah recalled the Americans lecturing him about the laws of war and 
human rights, but those notions barely seemed to register. He admitted 
to desecrating the bodies of his enemies.<br />
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“Yes, dead bodies are left on the ground,” he said. <b><u><span style="color: blue;">“We drag their dead bodies with a car.”</span></u></b><br />
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“These uprisers, they are like roundworms in your stomach,” said Khial 
Mohammad Hussaini, a tribal elder from Ghazni Province. “They are eating
 everything.”</div>
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<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/18/world/asia/afghan-militia-leaders-empowered-by-us-to-fight-taliban-inspire-fear-in-villages.html?_r=0" target="_blank">Read the full article . . . . </a></div>
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