NATIONAL SECURITY
Overview: In 2006 the aim of the Karzai government’s national security policy is to establish a credible armed force, the Afghan National Army (ANA), and a national police force that will represent all the major ethnic groups in Afghanistan and provide all conventional aspects of domestic security. In early 2006, some 24,000 soldiers had been trained by U.S. forces and participated in counterterrorism operations, but the air force still was in the planning stage. Afghanistan, a landlocked nation, has no navy. The long-term goal has been to prepare an army of 70,000 (in five corps), an air force of 8,000, a border guard force of 12,000, and a police force of 62,000. In 2006 the government estimated that 10,000 militia organizations existed, many of them commanded by regional warlords. Some militia personnel have been integrated into the ANA and the police forces, but the disbanding of militias remained an elusive goal of the central government in 2006. Large areas remained outside government control and were dominated by narcotics traffickers, tribal leaders, and terrorist groups. Reportedly, in 2005–6 trafficking and terrorist groups in the south increased their cooperation.
Foreign Military Relations: Afghanistan has depended almost entirely on U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces to provide security in and around Kabul. In early 2006, some 19,000 U.S. troops and 1,500 troops from other countries made up the United States-led Operation Enduring Freedom. In 2006 the International Security Assistance Force, which since 2003 has been under the rotating command of officers from NATO countries, included 9,000 troops from 36 countries. In May 2006, command rotated from Italian to British officers. In 2003 Afghanistan received an estimated US$191 million in foreign military assistance; in 2005 that figure was US$396 million. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), of which Afghanistan became a cooperative partner in 2003, provides expertise on border security.
External Threat: The only external threat is the movement of hostile forces and terrorists from staging areas across the porous Pakistan border.
Defense Budget: The estimated military expenditure for 2003 was US$61 million.
Major Military Units: In 2006 all of Afghanistan’s 24,000 military troops were in the Kabul-based Central Corps of the army, which consisted of three ground forces brigades. Plans called for an army headquarters command in Kabul and regional commands in Herat, Mazar-e Sharif, and Kandahar. Militia forces of the Northern Alliance, estimated to total 15,000 personnel, have acted in conjunction with Afghan forces in some instances.
Major Military Equipment: Amounts and distribution of equipment, mostly Soviet-manufactured, are not known. In 2005 the army had main battle tanks, reconnaissance vehicles, armored infantry fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers, towed artillery, multiple rocket launchers, mortars, surface-to-surface missiles, recoilless rifles, antiaircraft guns, and surface-to-air missiles. The air force had five combat aircraft and five armed helicopters.
Military Service: Males are eligible for conscription at age 22, and volunteers can enlist at age 18. The term of service is 12 months.
Paramilitary Forces: Plans call for a border guard force of 12,000, which was not yet in existence in mid-2006.
Foreign Military Forces: In early 2006, the United States-led Operation Enduring Freedom included some 19,000 U.S. troops and 1,500 troops from other countries. Plans called for reduction of the U.S. contingent to 16,000 during 2006 and for command of the Afghanistan occupation to pass from the United States to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in July 2006. The International Security Assistance Force, which since 2003 has been under NATO command, included 9,000 troops from 36 countries. In 2006 that force was scheduled to expand to about 17,000. The largest contingents were to come from Britain, Canada, Italy, and the Netherlands. Previously concentrated in northern and western Afghanistan, the force was to move into the southern province of Helmand and the central province of Uruzgan. The 2006 Afghanistan Compact called for NATO troops to remain through 2010 or until the Afghan armed forces reach their planned troops levels. In 2006 President Karzai forecast that Afghanistan would need some foreign troops for 10 more years.
Police: Plans called for Afghanistan to increase its police force, the Afghan National Police (ANP), to 62,000, including conventional, border, highway, and counternarcotics police, by the end of 2005. By that date, about 40,000 individuals had been trained with substantial German assistance. Although the police officially are responsible for maintaining civil order, local and regional military commanders continue to exercise control in the hinterland. Police have been accused of improper treatment and detention of prisoners. The mandate of the International Security Assistance Force extended into several new provinces between 2003 and 2006, but local militias maintained control in some areas unoccupied by those forces. Because the North Atlantic Treaty Organization force has not assumed counternarcotics or border control functions, serious gaps exist in those aspects of security. Troops of the Afghan National Army have been sent to quell fighting in some northern regions lacking police protection.
Internal Threat: In 2006 a large part of the country remained without adequate security, and armed bands launched attacks in regions not controlled by the central government. Several extremist antigovernment groups maintained a substantial presence in Afghanistan in 2005. They included surviving members of the Taliban, al Qaeda operatives, and the Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin, led by warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In 2006 elements of the formerly anti-Taliban Northern Alliance reportedly were supplying arms to the Taliban. In 2004 the international medical organization Doctors without Borders withdrew its aid workers from Afghanistan when five members were killed, and in 2005 other international nongovernmental organizations periodically suspended operations.
A major internal security factor has been criminal activity associated with the prosperous drug trade. Drug processing laboratories are located throughout the country, traditional informal financial networks launder narcotics profits, and some provincial and national government officials have been implicated in the drug trade. Despite a small decrease in 2005, Afghanistan's estimated opium output still made it by far the largest global producer of the drug. In 2005 progress was reported in several major opium-producing provinces, but the government program lacked national scale, opium growers often were not compensated for lost crops, and strong regional leaders profited from the drug trade. Cultivation expanded significantly in provinces such as Badakhshan, which is located on the main trafficking route into Tajikistan. Reportedly, as of early 2006 only two major Afghan narcotics dealers had been arrested since the government began its “war on drugs” in 2002.
Incidents of abduction, violence, and terror continued in 2005, particularly in regions not under control of the national government. A government program to disarm 100,000 militia personnel in 2003 and 2004 resulted in disarming an estimated 11,000 by mid-2004. Abdul Rashid Dostum (who also is deputy defense minister), Water and Energy Minister Ismail Khan, Abdul Rabb al-Rasul Sayyaf, Atta Mohammad, and former Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim have been particularly intransigent warlords. Local fighting also has persisted over land resettlement questions. Between 2004 and 2005, the Afghan government decommissioned more than 60,000 former combatants and collected more than 35,000 weapons under the Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration program. A new effort, the Disarmament of Illegal Armed Groups (DIAG), was launched in June 2005.
Terrorism: In the early 2000s, President Karzai suffered two assassination attempts (one during his presidential campaign), and some government officials were assassinated. Small-scale attacks on villages have been common. Large-scale terrorist attacks were rare in 2004 and 2005, but incidents increased in the south and southeast during 2005 and were expected to increase more sharply in 2006 as larger Western forces entered southern territory dominated by insurgents and narcotics traffickers. In an effort to split the Taliban movement, in 2005 President Karzai offered amnesty to members of the former Taliban regime and current fighters. He claimed that several hundred had accepted his offer by early 2006.
Human Rights: The Bonn Agreement of 2001 established the Independent Afghan Human Rights Commission to investigate human rights abuses and war crimes. However, in the early 2000s some types of human rights violations have continued, particularly outside the region controlled by the central government. The National Security Directorate, Afghanistan’s national security agency, has been accused of running its own prisons, torturing suspects, and harassing journalists. The security forces of local militias, which also have their own prisons, have been accused of torture and arbitrary killings. Warlords in the north have used property destruction, rape, and murder to discourage displaced Pashtuns from reclaiming their homes. Child labor and trafficking in people remain common outside Kabul. Civilians frequently have been killed in battles between warlord forces. A prison rehabilitation program began in 2003, but poor conditions in the overcrowded prisons have contributed to illness and death among prisoners. In the absence of an effective national judicial system, the right to judicial protection has been compromised as uneven local standards have prevailed in criminal trials.
The government has limited freedom of the media by selective crackdowns that invoke Islamic law, and self-censorship of the media has been encouraged. The media remain substantially government-owned. In 2004 a media law nominally lifted restrictions on some media activity but continued to forbid criticizing Islam or insulting officials. Journalists and legal experts criticized the nominally lesser restrictions of the 2004 law, and harassment and threats continued after its passage, especially outside Kabul. The commission that oversees the press includes no representatives of the news media, and the press law permits government censorship of the news. No registration of religious groups is required; minority religious groups are able to practice freely but not to proselytize. In 2006 a Supreme Court decision to free an Afghan citizen accused of apostasy for having converted to Christianity received substantial criticism from the conservative Muslim community.
Women’s right to work outside the home, including political activity, has received increasing acceptance in the early 2000s. The constitution of 2004 makes an explicit commitment to the advancement of women and to gender equality, and 25 percent of the seats in the lower house of the National Assembly are designated for women. However, conservative elements in the judiciary have demanded separate education and a strict dress code for women.