http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/10/26/1098667761452.html?from=storylhs
Warriors' redundancy scheme By Paul McGeough, Chief Herald Correspondent in Kabul October 27, 2004 In the mud-walled village of Gan Qadan, on Afghanistan's sprawling Shomali Plains, the warlord Ghulam Eishaan cannot quite believe that foreign powers are offering millions of dollars for him and his men to drop their guns. He scratches his head at the news that a new redundancy program is being offered to make people like him swear off fighting - a lump sum or a stipend of up to $US500 ($670) a month. The program is pitched at about 550 warlords and their senior commanders. So far only 20 have accepted. And any individual fighters who swear by peace are being rewarded with supplies of wheat, beans, salt, a medal and a certificate of thanks signed by the President, Hamid Karzai. The ACTU has never had to confront redundancies quite like this. And convincing individual fighters of the merits of wheat 'n' beans in exchange for their promise of peace has proved more of an election time challenge in Afghanistan than was the Costello baby bonus in Australia. Wrapped in a traditional blanket, Eishaan the warlord explains that he had parted with his eight tanks and three armoured personnel carriers before the new redundancy deal. Advertisement Advertisement But, like many Afghans, it seems he has not broken entirely with his past. He has almost 500 fighters but has collected only 256 small weapons from "irresponsible people" to be handed to the authorities. If they will come for them, he adds. Eishaan's hesitancy is hardly surprising. The deposed Taliban regime attempted to ethnically cleanse the Shomali Plains by putting whole villages to the torch - including his - and destroying a vital network of irrigation canals. And that was just one of the wars that is mapped graphically on his battle-scarred body. Reciting opponents and dates that encompass his entire adult life, he pulls at the folds of his robes, puckering his flesh to show the shrapnel still embedded in his limbs, his missing arm and ragged scars on his stomach, shoulder, back and legs. "We've had the Russians and we've had the Taliban. If something like that happened again, then of course we'd need our guns and resistance fighters," he said with a pragmatism tested by time. All of which makes the process of Afghan DDR - disarmament, demobilisation and redeployment - painfully slow. Fewer than a third of an estimated 80,000 fighters have been demobbed in almost 18 months - a pitiful result that observers blame on foot-dragging by the warlords themselves and their agents in the bureaucracy. An estimated 70 per cent of the heavy weapons - fighter jets, truck-borne rocket launchers, tanks, shoulder-to-air missiles - have been turned in since the program began early last year. But in a historic culture of violence, a man's gun - or tank - is his last bulwark against uncertainty. So at Karezak, north of Kabul, the 21-year-old warlord Mafouz threatens to shoot any official trying to remove the two Soviet tanks parked beside his house. At Jalalabad, in the east, a DDR team found five tanks buried in a paddock; and at Badakhshan, in the far north east, they retrieved a tank hidden by villagers in a house that they built around it. Disarmaments experts in Afghanistan complain that they still must rely on their ability to persuade warlords to give access to their huge stockpiles of weapons and ammunition. Rob Pavey, a DDR supervisor with the Halo Trust, which specialises in the removal of land mines and unexploded ordnance from war-ravaged countries, said it was impossible to gauge the extent of the country's illicit weapons stockpiles. "Often they are not guarded, so they're cash 'n' carry for bomb makers. In one warehouse alone, almost 80 people have died as a result of explosions while they have hunted for scrap metal. "At Ghanzi [south-west of Kabul], we've had a team working for a month to destroy 30,000 weapons - they'll still be there in a year. At Herat [in the far west], we have just won access to the Citadel, where [the deposed local warlord] Ishmail Khan stored an estimated 3000 tonnes of weapons and ammunition." After an election campaign that most observers predicted would be derailed by violence (it was not) the US military chief, Lieutenant-General David Barno, declared it to be "the end of the rule of the gun" in Afghanistan. But all it takes is a drive to the north, past the warlord Eishaan's village and into the jaws of the Panjshir Valley, to see a vastly different attitude. From here the fabled warlord Ahmad Shah Massoud repelled repeated Russian and Taliban attacks. The 90-kilometre long valley is the burial place of Massoud and the spiritual home of his Northern Alliance. It is thick with heavy weapons, including 30 scud missiles. But Massoud's warlords, who dominate the government and bureaucracy, insist the stand-alone province is closed to all DDR teams. Eishaan is still puzzled: "If you had walked into my camp three years ago and told me we would be paid to hand over our weapons I would have thought you were extremely crazy". ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/yQLSAA/TySplB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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