Afghan militias are sprouting up to take on Taliban

The emergence of the militias, which took some leaders in Kabul by surprise, has so encouraged US and Afghan officials that they are planning to spur the growth of similar armed groups across the Taliban heartland in the southern and eastern parts of the country.

US and Afghan officials say they are hoping the plan, called the Community Defense Initiative, will bring together thousands of gunmen to protect their neighborhoods from Taliban insurgents. Already there are hundreds of Afghans who are acting on their own against the Taliban, officials say.

The endeavor represents one of the most ambitious - and riskiest - plans for regaining the initiative against the Taliban, who are fighting more vigorously than at any time since 2001.

By harnessing the militias, US and Afghan officials hope to rapidly increase the number of Afghans fighting the Taliban. That could supplement the US and Afghan forces already here, and whatever number of US troops President Obama might decide to send. The militias could also help fill the gap while the Afghan army and police forces train and grow.

The US officials hope the militias will encourage an increasingly demoralized Afghan population to take a stake in the war against the Taliban.

“The idea is to get people to take responsibility for their own security,’’ said a senior US military official in Kabul, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “In many places they are already doing that.’’

The growth of the anti-Taliban militias runs the risk that they could turn on one another, or against the Afghan and the US governments, as has happened in the past. The Americans say they will keep the groups small and will limit the scope of their activities to protecting villages and manning checkpoints.

For now, they are not arming the groups because they already have guns. The Americans also say they will tie the groups to the Afghan government and tightly control their activities so they do not create more warlords, who have defied the government’s authority for years.

The first phase of the Afghan plan, now being carried out by US Special Forces soldiers, is to set up or expand the militias in areas with a population of about a million people. Special Forces soldiers have been fanning out across the countryside, descending from helicopters into valleys where the residents have taken up arms against the Taliban and offering their help.

“We are trying to reach out to these groups that have organized themselves,’’ Colonel Christopher Kolenda said in Kabul.

Afghan and US officials say they plan to use the militias as tripwires for Taliban incursions, enabling them to call the army or the police if things get out of hand. The official assistance to the militias so far has been modest, consisting mainly of ammunition and food, officials said. But US and Afghan officials say they are also planning to train the fighters and provide communication equipment.

“What we are talking about is a local, spontaneous, and indigenous response to the Taliban,’’ said Hanif Atmar, the Afghan interior minister. “The Afghans are saying, ‘We are willing and determined and capable to defend our country; just give us the resources.’ ’’

In the Pashtun-dominated areas of the south and east, the anti-Taliban militias are being led by elders from local tribes. The Pashtun militias represent a reassertion of the country’s age-old tribal system, which binds villages and regions under the leadership of groups of elders. The tribal networks have been alternately decimated and co-opted by Taliban insurgents. Local tribal leaders, while still powerful, cannot count on the allegiance of all of their tribes’ members.

Militias have begun taking up arms against the Taliban in several places where insurgents have gained a foothold, including Nangarhar and Paktia provinces.

So far, there appears to be some divergence in the American and Afghan efforts. While US Special Forces units have focused on helping smaller militias, Afghan officials have been channeling assistance to larger armed groups, including those around the city of Kunduz.

There several armed groups, led by ethnic Uzbek commanders as well as Pashtuns, are confronting the Taliban.

“In Kunduz, after they defeated the Taliban in their villages, they became the power and they took money and taxes from the people,’’ Atmar, the interior minister, said. “This is not legal, and this is warlordism.’’

Kolenda said, “In the long run, that is destabilizing.’’

One of the most striking examples of a local militia rising up on its own is in Achin, a predominantly Pashtun district in Nangarhar province that straddles the border with Pakistan. In July, a long-running dispute between local Taliban fighters and Shinwari tribe elders flared up.

When a local Taliban warlord named Khona brought a more senior commander from Pakistan to help in the confrontation, the elders in the Shinwari tribe rallied villagers from up and down the valley where they live, killed the commander and chased Khona away.

The elders had insisted that the Taliban stay away from a group of Afghans building a dike in the valley. When Khona’s men kidnapped two Afghan engineers, the Shinwari elders decided they had had enough.

“The whole tribe was with me,’’ one of the elders said. “The Taliban came to kill me, and instead we killed them.’’