Afghanistan’s Taliban guerrillas have been battered so badly they are reduced to "cowardly" acts such as bicycle bombings, a senior Pentagon official says. U.S. Undersecretary of Defence Dov S. Zakheim, the fourth-ranking official at the Pentagon, also said on a visit to Kabul that Washington was pushing ahead with plans to pattern a national guard in Afghanistan after one being built in Iraq. "A year ago the Taliban still thought it could mount attacks with numbers of people," he told a news conference. "Now it tries even more cowardly things like a kidnapping or a bicycle bomb. It is a very different kind of operation and that is because we are beating them. So, in that regard, I believe we have made tremendous progress." Zakheim said planning was proceeding for a national guard that would fill holes while a new Afghan National Army is formed, a process that is proceeding more slowly than expected.
The national guard idea is actually a better idea than using the army. Countries that use the army for internal security are generally not places you'd want your kids growing up. A national police force, even one with a heavy-duty SWAT function, makes more sense. | "We are looking at that, we have put together a programme that we hope to model on what we consider to be very successful in Iraq," he said. "We have 200,000 Iraqis now in different kinds of units. We have a civil defence unit, we have a unit that protects facilities, we have a border protection unit as well as the Iraqi army. "So we have seen a lot of success there, and this is building on that idea, and with time you will see it will materialise. We are asking our Congress for funds to support that."
It'll probably be pooh-poohed as a "jobs for warlords" program, and it could become that. It could also continue the process of trying to turn Afghanistan into something resembling a normal country. |
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