The U.S. military and the New York Times now rally against local militias in Afghanistan:
Afghans Form Militias and Call on Warlords to Fight Taliban
Facing a fierce Taliban offensive across a corridor of northern Afghanistan, the government in Kabul is turning to a strategy fraught with risk: forming local militias and beseeching old warlords for military assistance, according to Afghan and Western officials.
The effort is expected to eventually mobilize several thousand Afghans from the north to fight against the Taliban in areas where the Afghan military and police forces are losing ground or have had little presence.
…
Gen. John F. Campbell, the American commander in Afghanistan, said he was skeptical of any plan that involved paying warlords to deploy their men. “I think if they’re looking for people that have volunteered to protect their villages, you know, that’s one thing,” he said. But if the government’s plan involved “going to a warlord and saying, ‘I need to take you, and pay you and move you, and go do something here,’ that’s a completely different thing,” he told reporters on Saturday. “We would not be supportive of that.”
Not one word in the NYT piece mentions that this same tactic, setting up local militia, has been tried and fiercely defended five years ago by the then American commander in Afghanistan:
Petraeus’ First Big Afghanistan Gamble:
MilitiasLocal CopsGeneral David Petraeus has persuaded Karzai to set up a new force to supplement Afghan soldiers and police. It’s not really Anbar Awakening 2.0, since it doesn’t involve insurgents switching sides. And don’t use the M-word, Pentagon officials say. “They would not be militias,” Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters Wednesday. “These would be government-formed, government-paid, government- uniformed local police units.” Specifically, the new units will be paid by the Interior Ministry — or, rather, the foreign money that bankrolls the Afghanistan government will be disbursed to these new units through the ministry.
Stenographed the NYT at that time:
“Our position has been to develop a solution that bridges between having nothing and having Afghan National Police, and this program does that,” said the senior NATO official. “So it’s a good development and especially so since it has consensus within the Afghan government and the ownership that come with that,” he said.
The Afghan local police units the U.S. created in 2010 turned out to be unreliable local warlords who preyed on the civilian population. The new local forces the Afghan government now wants to create will turn out to be likewise but they are currently the only chance to keep the Taliban somewhat away from ruling over bigger chunks of the country.
Today's fierce resistance by the U.S. general against such forces has a certain "not invented by me" feeling. The total amnesia in today's NYT piece of the Petraeus program five years ago underlines that impression. It is like nothing can ever be good or useful unless the U.S. military invents and supports it.