Afghanistan’s Taliban guerrillas have been battered so badly they are reduced to "cowardly" acts such as bicycle bombings, a senior Pentagon official says. U.S. Undersecretary of Defence Dov S. Zakheim, the fourth-ranking official at the Pentagon, also said on a visit to Kabul that Washington was pushing ahead with plans to pattern a national guard in Afghanistan after one being built in Iraq. "A year ago the Taliban still thought it could mount attacks with numbers of people," he told a news conference. "Now it tries even more cowardly things like a kidnapping or a bicycle bomb. It is a very different kind of operation and that is because we are beating them. So, in that regard, I believe we have made tremendous progress." Zakheim said planning was proceeding for a national guard that would fill holes while a new Afghan National Army is formed, a process that is proceeding more slowly than expected.
| The national guard idea is actually a better idea than using the army. Countries that use the army for internal security are generally not places you'd want your kids growing up. A national police force, even one with a heavy-duty SWAT function, makes more sense. |
"We are looking at that, we have put together a programme that we hope to model on what we consider to be very successful in Iraq," he said. "We have 200,000 Iraqis now in different kinds of units. We have a civil defence unit, we have a unit that protects facilities, we have a border protection unit as well as the Iraqi army. "So we have seen a lot of success there, and this is building on that idea, and with time you will see it will materialise. We are asking our Congress for funds to support that."
| It'll probably be pooh-poohed as a "jobs for warlords" program, and it could become that. It could also continue the process of trying to turn Afghanistan into something resembling a normal country. |
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