KABU/KUNDUZ, 23 October 2003 — More than 600 Afghan militiamen have surrendered their weapons to the government in the first three days of a critical and ambitious demilitarization program, an official said yesterday.
The pilot phase of the UN-backed program to strip 100,000 combatants of their weapons and set them on the path to a new life entered its third day in the northern city of Kunduz, 60 km from the Tajikistan border and 250 km from the capital Kabul.
Since Monday 620 militiamen loyal to the city’s two local commanders have handed in AK-47s, mortars, machine-guns and anti-tank weapons.
“We have collected 560 weapons from 620 soldiers,” Paul Cruickshank, operations manager of the UN-supported Afghanistan New Beginnings Program (ANBP) told reporters at the weapons collection site in a local army base.
Beyond the collection trucks stacked with hundreds of surrendered rifles, another 170 uniformed militiamen queued up to hand in their arms in a dusty yard strewn with old tanks discarded from past wars.
A total of 1,000 local combatants are targeted for disarmament in Kunduz this week, as a pilot for the national program, which has a time frame of three years.
The central government’s Defense Ministry with United Nations support is implementing the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) program.
Demilitarization is considered crucial to bringing peace and stability to war weary Afghanistan, where feuding warlords with massive private armies still wield power and hinder desperately needed reconstruction through frequent clashes. The militiamen handing in their weapons at Kunduz are from a local army corps and a local army division, both commanded by Tajiks. The disarmed fighters will either be invited to join the new Afghan National Army, which aims for a total strength of 70,000, or assisted to find non-military means of living.
Ethnic Uzbeks, Tajiks and Pashtuns alike were among the combatants lining up for a new post-militia life yesterday.
Kunduz is dominated by Uzbeks but has a large population of Tajiks and Pashtuns. The city’s police chief is Pashtun and the governor is Uzbek.
Meanwhile, members of Afghanistan’s ousted Taleban regime, including the former foreign minister, have shown a willingness to side with and help President Hamid Karzai’s Western-backed government, the government said yesterday. But Karzai has not yet responded to the offer and former Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil has not been released from US detention as was reported earlier this month, Karzai’s spokesman Jawed Ludin said in a statement.
“It is confirmed that a number of individual contacts have been received from some members of the former Taleban movement, including Muttawakil, expressing interest and readiness to side with the government and offering assistance,” it said.
The statement did not give details of the contacts or who were the other officials.
“The government of Afghanistan has not entered into any form of discussion with members of the former Taleban movement,” it said. “The government... has not responded, either positively or negatively.”
