KABUL, 12 October 2003 — Afghan President Hamid Karzai has approved the launch later this month of an ambitious program to disarm, demobilize and reintegrate (DDR) 100,000 factional fighters that is seen as crucial to his efforts to extend his authority into the unruly provinces.

A statement from the presidential palace said the UN-backed drive to disband warlord armies would start in the northern province of Kunduz bordering Tajikistan on Oct. 24.

It said Karzai called upon the nation “to support this essential process which is instrumental to achieving peace and national security”. “In each location one thousand ex-combatants will participate in the process.

The main phase will begin shortly after the pilot phase,” the statement said. Private militiamen have been blamed for insecurity in the provinces, with armed conflicts between rival factions occurring regularly.

A pilot phase of the project will involve disarming 1,000 fighters in Kunduz followed by the same number in Gardez, Mazar-e-Sharif and Kabul. The main disarmament effort is not due to start until next summer.

The difficulties the Japanese-led plan will face were underscored in the past week when two pro-government factions clashed to the west of Mazar-e-Sharif in some of the worst fighting since the fall of the Taleban in late 2001.

The mainly Uzbek Junbish faction and the mainly Tajik Jamiat group agreed a truce on Thursday in crisis talks involving the government, the British ambassador and the United Nations, but only after more than 60 fighters were reported killed or hurt.

The clashes also raised concerns about NATO’s plans to deploy peacekeepers outside Kabul to boost security for aid work and elections due to be held next year. Germany plans to deploy 450 peacekeeping soldiers in Kunduz once the UN mandate of the NATO-led International Security Assistance force is changed to allow it to operate outside Kabul.

Aid workers have questioned the plan to send so many soldiers to a quiet location such as Kunduz when there were other much more volatile parts of the country which needed them far more.

The start of the DDR program had been delayed by long-awaited reforms to the Ministry of Defense, finally announced last month, to make the Tajik-dominated ministry more representative of the country’s ethnic diversity. Militias were reluctant to hand over their weapons to a ministry dominated by a rival faction.