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We have lost a major part of Helmand to the Taliban because we failed to keep the population," Hamidzada said.
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CAIRO — Britain
will pay tribal elders in Afghanistan's
restive Helmand province to persuade them to
fight Taliban, in what some experts see as a
high-risk "bribing" scheme, The Independent
revealed on Wednesday, November 26.
"We don't want
to create militias, but we need to be
empowering tribal arbakai [community forces]
and citizen patrols," Humayun Hamidzada,
Afghan President Hamid Karzai's spokesman,
told the paper affirming the plan.
"Equip them,
not just with weapons but with whatever it
takes, so they can protect their
territories."
Under the Afghan
Social Outreach Program (ASOP), London will
pay tribal elders monthly wages of about £800
a year to help raising their tribes against
Taliban.
The elders to take
part in the ASOP will be handpicked by
Helmand's governor Gulab Mangal.
Officials affirm
that the program will be piloted in two
Helmand districts in the coming weeks, and it
is expected to be rolled-out across the
province next year.
The ASOP was first
sprouted during talks between Karzai and Prime
Minister Gordon Brown in London earlier this
month.
Foreign Secretary
David Miliband flew to Kabul Wednesday,
November 26, on a surprise visit to discuss
the details with Karzai.
The top diplomat
also flew to Helmand, the volatile southern
province were 8,000 British forces are
deployed, to meet some community leaders
likely to be involved.
A spokesman for the
UK embassy in Kabul said the new plan will
"establish community councils in Helmand
and build trust between communities and
government."
The councils,
expected to hold meetings twice a month, are
similar to the Sunni Awakening Councils, paid
until recently by the US to fight militant
groups in Iraq.
Taliban, ousted by
the US following the 9/11 attacks, has been
engaged in protracted guerrilla warfare
against foreign forces and the West-backed
Kabul government for the past seven years.
Failure
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"If mishandled, [ASOP] has the potential to make matters worse," Waldman believes.
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Kabul officials say
the plan comes after realizing that failed
strategies were behind recent losses to
Taliban.
"We have lost a
major part of Helmand to the Taliban because
we failed to keep the population,"
Hamidzada said.
"We failed to
keep the tribal elders on our side."
The new strategy
comes amid growing violence across Afghanistan
and a steady trickle of British casualties in
Helmand.
Kabul has recently
accused Britain of "losing the support of
the people".
Afghan officials say
that the ASOP will be the first step towards
winning back influential tribal elders.
"When we lose
them we lose the territory. We should go back
to the people," Hamidzada said.
Mangal, the Helmand
governor, admitted last week that Taliban
controlled more than half of his province.
High-Risk
Experts, however,
believe that the "Afghan Awakening"
would not work.
"Given the
fragile security situation, ASOP is a
high-risk strategy," Matt Waldman, head
of policy in Afghanistan in Britain's renowned
Oxfam charity, told the Independent.
He warns the plan
could legitimize militias and store up
problems for the future after years of
international efforts to disarm irregular
forces.
"If mishandled,
[ASOP] has the potential to make matters
worse."
Experts also believe
that the possibility of creating
"Awakening" councils in Afghanistan
would prove much more complex and difficult
than in Iraq.
Taliban, and other
militant groups, hail from the same tribes the
ASOP seeks to recruit, they explain.
Other critics fear
the payments are Karzai's way of
"bribing" tribal elders to deliver
votes ahead of next year's presidential
elections.
"It's
anti-democratic," a senior Western policy
analyst in Kabul said.
"If this is
perceived as more political patronage, or
bribery, it runs the risk of generating
friction and resentment."
