Democratic skeptics: Afghan MPs speak out against arming additional tribal militias

Here in Kabul, members of the Afghan parliament have warned President Karzai that a plan to arm tribal militias to help international forces battle the Taliban could backfire with disastrous results.

MP Sediqa Balkhi said that armed tribesmen are notoriously difficult to control, and have a history of shifting loyalties. Their allegiance to the Afghan government could not be assured, she said.

The concept of adding tribal muscle to the fight against the Taliban has won the support of the new head of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. David Patraeus. The Karzai regime’s Tribal Commission came up with the plan, which was greeted with enthusiasm by the Afghan president.

However, parliamentarians like Abdul Hamid Himaq are critical of the scheme. "Large numbers of NATO and Afghan Forces equipped with modern weapons can’t defeat the Taliban,” he told the assembly. “How are small groups of local tribes meant to do it?"

Other MPs stressed the importance of strengthening the Afghan government’s own forces, the army and police, to cope with security threats.

The controversy is symptomatic of the numerous, widening divisions among parliament, Karzai’s inner circle and the country’s international sponsors. In turn these disagreements aggravate the sense of drift and dismay now afflicting Afghanistan, which is suffering through its fourth decade of continuous warfare.

Much hope is attached to the prospect of a new administration in Washington D.C., yet even some of the most determined diplomats in the capital allow that it is too late to reverse the trends for yet another year of escalating violence in 2009.

“The good news is that President-elect Obama seems to understand that it’s crisis time in this part of the world,” one seasoned diplomatic observer tells skyreporter. “The bad news is that the machinery of U.S. foreign policy doesn’t change direction very quickly. And we need those new directions without delay.”

Graphic evidence of pressing need abounds. After seven years, the U.S.-dominated international effort to stabilize Afghanistan has failed to deliver on even basic goals, such as securing supplies of food, water and electricity.

The risk of a winter famine stalks large swathes of central and northern Afghanistan. And in Kabul, civilians get by on only four hours of electricity - every other day. Too often, the alternating day with no electricity at all extends to two 24-hour periods.

“We wait long hours in the dark,” one student says, “with only fear about our future to keep us warm.