Local Defence in Afghanistan

[subrosa]

it does not have to be mutually exclusive- the villages could hate the taliban and dislike the government at the same time. specially in the south and east where the provincial government is known to be corrupt.

i thought that the actual villagers were supposed to be the new cops, so there would be no question of bringing cops in from the outside, since they would already be there. the recruits would be the villagers you described below who are already willing to fight. they would just have to be trained and armed.
i dont know how local is local in this context.

[Bob's World]

For what it's worth, my assessment is that most of the rural areas where the insurgency is the strongest (and where this SOF Village Stability Operations program is being implemented) are what I would call Self-Governed Spaces.

They really have little use for external governance (or any of the bells and whistles that come with it) of any sort. GIROA is something they rarely see, and the Taliban come down out of the mountains to make their life hell, but at least they see them. Many such villages DO want the Taliban out, but GIROA isn't there to help them do that, and they can't do it by themselves.

This is where VSO comes in. A village either stands up and pushes the Taliban out and then calls for help; or they invite us in in advance and ask for such help. Everything worked through this Self-Governing mechanisms of the Village-Tribal-Religious local leadership. We help them organize local security and bring in some small development projects; again, all through the local leadership, and all employing local labor.

Next step is to then gather up GIROA officials who are forted up back at the District Center and take them out and introduce them to their own populace. To connect the official to the legitimate, and fuse the two together in a healing process.

There are no militia armies being built to go wage war on the Taliban, that is the loud voice of ignorance in the national media and similarly loud and disconnected Bloggers and columnists. These security forces cannot do law enforcement, and are purely defensive in nature; and now, are formally under the GIROA umbrella as a legitimate, official security force.

Not very sexy, but in a few, select, critical communities it is having significant effects; many of those effects extending far beyond those small, brave communities.