Posted on 02/03/2008 3:56:55 PM PST by DeaconBenjamin
A secret British plan to build military training camps for former Taliban fighters in Helmand has sent Afghan-UK relations to an all-time low, say officials.
Kabul had no knowledge of attempts to persuade fighters to switch sides and train to fight in local militias until the plan was exposed last December, they said.
Western diplomats and Afghan officials said the plan was a UK initiative. The British embassy in Kabul refused to comment.
Electronic documents outlining the scheme were found on a team of western and Afghan officials detained in Helmand province in late December.
Mervyn Patterson, a United Nations political officer, and Michael Semple, deputy head of the European Union mission in Afghanistan, who were in the team, were ordered to leave the country on December 25 for “threatening national security”.
Both the UN and EU denied at the time that the pair had been trying to negotiate with the Taliban although the UN did admit the men had been meeting figures opposed to the government.
Afghan officials and western diplomats, however, told the Financial Times that the plan appeared to have gone much further, although they said Mr Patterson was not involved in the training camp scheme.
The plan envisaged a camp for 2,000 former Taliban fighters offering vocational and military training, with the provision of communications equipment, including satellite phones.
An Afghan official involved in efforts to drain popular support for the Taliban, said Kabul was furious it had been kept in the dark. “We have operational discussions about these security issues with the international community on a weekly basis, so why did they keep this secret?” the official said.
UK officials have sought to distance themselves from the two, saying neither worked for the UK.
The Brits who thought this up are nuts. It’s a good sign though if the Afghanis start to be smarter than Europeans.
Before misleading comparisons to our effort in bringing in Iraqis into the security forces are being made, it shuld be stressed that there is a considerable difference between recruiting Iraqi conscripts/oppurtunistic tribal fighters and training brainwashed Pakistani Taliban terrorists. The latter need to be annihilated.
“there is a considerable difference between recruiting Iraqi conscripts/oppurtunistic tribal fighters and training brainwashed Pakistani Taliban terrorists”
I would have thought that there were a great deal of similarities actually. A lot of the people fighting on the side of the Taliban are exactly ‘opportunistic tribal fighters’. Afghanistan has always been very tribal and its wars based on shifting tribal coalitions.
The article is short on such details, so we can’t fully evaluate this, but with what is given I’m with the Afghan Government. I see no point in trying to weed out tribal men from fanatical Taliban islamists. In Iraq the recruitment of tribal fighters followed a split within the Sunni insurgency. The Iraqi tribes turned against Al-Qaeda themselves and began to work with us. No such split or change is evident within the Afghan insurgency.
“Nearly every tribe in Afghanistan fought the Russians, were on the side of the Russian, fought against the Taliban and fought with the Taliban.”
So you’re saying nearly everyone was on one side or on the other?
I have been with Karzai on this from the get go.
What colossal chutzpa the English had to override and undermine the Afghan gov't on this - hurts the whole operation
I'm glad they were stopped before is got worse...could have brought the whole operation down
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