"Karzai OK’s local police plan; Afghans will oversee the initiative" by Deb Riechmann, Associated Press | July 15, 2010
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his national security team endorsed a US-backed plan yesterday to set up local police forces around the country, allowing villagers to protect themselves in areas where international and Afghan forces can’t be spared.
The new Local Police Force initiative will be overseen by the Afghan government. That was a key demand of Karzai who fears that simply arming villagers without government oversight would essentially create local militias that could undermine his administration and possibly fuel a new civil war....
What do you think is happening there now?
NATO officials declined to comment on the program, even though NATO Commander General David Petraeus has been intimately involved in discussions about it recently at the presidential palace. However, a coalition official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed US backing for the plan.
Related: Petraeus' Private Eyes
The new hires?
“The challenge we’ve got is that we’ve got a huge area,’’ British Major General Nick Carter, a NATO commander of troops in southern Afghanistan, said earlier this week. “We’ve got a large quantity of population and we can’t be everywhere. And what the village stability operations allow us is the opportunity to give the Afghans the courage to take protection into their own hands so we don’t have to put conventional forces there.’’
How about being nowhere?
Carter said local police forces have to be set up cautiously.
“What you don’t want to do is disconnect those population centers from the government,’’ Carter said. “What we’re trying to do throughout everything we do in this campaign is connect the government to the population.’’
That's what the missiles and raids are doing.
***********
The local policing plan in Afghanistan is somewhat akin to the Awakening Councils in Iraq where Petraeus, the former top commander in Iraq, reached out to Sunni sheiks — a move credited for helping oust militants from key areas and sharply decreasing attacks.
We are already doing that.
Related: The Boston Globe's Invisible Ink: False Flags Flying High in Afghanistan
Hasn't been working, has it?
In Afghanistan, however, there are fears that local police forces will fall under the control of local warlords.
Well, if they are OUR WARLORDS that is FINE!
Critics question the wisdom of handing out weapons to Afghans in the middle of a war.
If such things were not so fatal that MSM bullshit would be funny.
How about the WISDOM of INVADING and OCCUPYING a place over lies?
And they fear the plan could stoke rivalries between ethnic groups in a country that has been in conflict for 30 years.
Yeah, thanks to the U.S.
Earlier reports hinted at friction between Karzai and Petraeus over the issue, although the coalition denounced the reports as being untrue....
Do newspapers ever tell the truth?
A military source in Kabul, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to share information about NATO’s discussions with the government, said Karzai and Petraeus had been “forthright’’ with each other about their concerns over certain aspects of the local defense initiative....
Yeah, I'm sure this will work.
Related: Weapon Given to Iraq Are Missing
I'm feeling better already, aren't you?
