Western-trained, Western-armed,
enemies By Ramtanu Maitra
From Iraq to Afghanistan to the Central
Asian republics, Western militaries are finding it
is one thing to train a local army, quite another
to obtain its loyalty.
The US and British
militaries have suspended their training programs
for Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan,
Turkmenistan, Georgia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan
after more than 800 troops from these countries
deserted, and many reportedly joined militant
groups, such as al-Qaeda and Chechen rebel forces.
According to intelligence sources quoted
in the media, the deserters escaped with weapons,
including M-16s, rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs),
communications equipment, night
vision goggles and other
ordnance items.
In Afghanistan, meanwhile,
IRIN News of the UN Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs earlier this year quoted an
Afghan Ministry of Defense report saying that more
than a quarter of the Afghan National Army (ANA)
had deserted since its formation in mid-2002.
"Around two to three thousand soldiers have fled
the ANA so far," General Zahir Azimi, a
spokesperson for the ministry, told IRIN.
The ANA is under the supervision of the US
Army, with assistance from Britain, New Zealand,
France and Germany. Technical assistance to the
new army - envisaged to provide security to
Afghanistan's emerging post-Taliban government -
has also been provided by Bulgaria, Romania,
Canada, South Korea and Mongolia.
In Iraq,
the Americans and British are trying to build up
an Iraqi army, but it is an uphill struggle. An
estimated 500,000 Iraqis have signed up for the
new army and security forces, but more than half
have been dismissed as untrainable or deserted.
Among those who remain, their loyalty is
frequently questioned. Many reports indicate that
the army and police have been penetrated by
insurgents.
Shifting
allegiances Desertions in Iraq and
Afghanistan are particularly worrying for US-led
forces for two reasons. The first is that the
lives of allied soldiers are placed directly on
the line by disloyal forces. The second reason is
that some of these deserters are not simply
leaving the army, they are changing sides and
joining the resistance with their new-found
skills.
Last fall, news appeared for the
first time that Afghan rebels were buying
sophisticated Russian and Chinese-made SAMs (See
The Taliban's battle over the
ballot, Asia Times Online, September
10). The report quoted an unnamed rebel saying: "A
general conduit of the weapons smuggling for
Afghanistan is from Iraqi Kurdistan, from where
the weapons are transported through Iran to
Afghanistan. The SAM missiles of Russian and
Chinese origin are available at a cost of US$2,500
each. The main market of these missiles is
Afghanistan."
In a September 27 article,
"The Taliban's new face", noted-Pakistani
journalist Hamid Mir, who met with Afghan
officials, was told that the Taliban were buying
weapons from local warlords and also across the
border from Pakistani tribes. This official also
confirmed the Asia Times Online story that the
Taliban were in possession of SAM missiles of
Russian and Chinese origin, which they were
getting from Iraqi Kurdistan.
While the US
military remained silent about the existence of
these missiles in resistance hands, on September
25 another US military helicopter crashed in
southern Afghanistan, killing all five American
crew members. The Pentagon summarily said, "There
is no indication of hostile fire."
It is
not difficult to understand why the Pentagon is
cautious over what may turn out to be a bitter
truth. Helicopters are the most effective vehicles
in the moon-like terrain of much of Afghanistan.
When choppers get shot down, it is really bad
news.
It is widely acknowledged that the
Soviet military was demoralized in the 1980s by
the Stinger missiles supplied by Washington to the
Afghan mujahideen fighters, who routinely shot
down Russian Hind helicopter-gunships.
It
is quite possible that the people now using the
SAMs were trained by the US in the ANA, or in
Iraq. In Afghanistan it is accepted that the
resistance penetrated the recruitment process at
the very outset, as in Iraq.
A part of the
problem is that the Pentagon employs private
contractors to train many of the foreign troops.
This made it easier for the resistance to
penetrate the recruitment process and get
training. Since the private contractors are paid
by the number of people they train, vetting of the
trainees becomes somewhat less rigorous.
Most of these US-UK trainers are private
outfits, often run by retired military officers,
including three- and four-star generals. A few are
familiar names, like Kellogg Brown & Root, a
subsidiary of Halliburton. Other private trainers
have more cryptic names, like DynCorp; Vinnell, a
subsidiary of TRW; SAIC; ICI of Oregon; and
Logicon, a unit of Northrop Grumman. One of the
best known, Military Professional Resources Inc
(MPRI), boasts of "more generals per square foot
than in the Pentagon".
A new
challenge The growing number of helicopter
crashes in almost picture-perfect Afghan weather
in recent months cannot be explained away too
easily. The September 25 downing of a Chinook is
one of many. A US helicopter crashed on July 29
during a routine training mission in Bagram, north
of Kabul, injuring the two crewmen on board. That
crash came a day after a Chinook CH-47 helicopter
was destroyed in what the military called "a hard
landing" during an operation to hunt down
insurgents in the south. In April, a CH-47 crashed
in Ghazni province, killing 15 American servicemen
and three US civilian contractors.
In all
these cases, the Pentagon cited the weather,
"technical problems", or a "hard landing". On the
other hand, the resistance has routinely claimed
credit for shooting down these choppers.
Prior to the Afghan legislative elections
on September 18, Washington was expressing concern
about the resistance-induced violence.
However, now that the elections are over,
the US military is not showing any sign of
lessening its hardline approach. A senior US Army
commander in Afghanistan, General Jason Kamiya,
said recently that using airpower to eliminate
militants continued to be an essential component
of US military operations.
This despite a
statement by Afghan President Hamid Karzai that he
saw no more need for air strikes to be used in the
"war on terror". Karzai also called for a halt to
searches of Afghan houses by coalition troops and
urged the US military not to enter homes without
authorization from the Afghan government.
SAM missiles or not, the US is having to
do some serious rethinking in Afghanistan.
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