United Nations to start pilot disarmament programme

The United Nations announced on Wednesday that the initial pilot project of the country’s over 100,000 ex-combatant disarmament effort would begin later this month. “The first pilot project will start the third week of October in Kunduz province when 1,000 people will be disarmed,” Sultan Aziz, a United Nations senior advisor and programme director of the Afghanistan New Beginning Programme (ANBP), told IRIN in the Afghan capital, Kabul. According to ANBP, six pilot projects would be undertaken before the main phase, the disarming of 100,000 ex-combatants, would start early next summer. “6,000 people will be disarmed in the pilot projects in six provinces including Kunduz, Gardez, Mazar-e Sharif, Parwan (Kabul), Kandahar and Bamyan provinces,” Paul Cruick, an operations manager of ANBP said. As Afghanistan embarks on an ambitious programme to demobilise large numbers of commanders and fighters, international observers have emphasised that Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) of former combatants remained a key solution if the shattered country was ever to achieve an acceptable level of stability. "Without a credible DDR process in Afghanistan, it is inconceivable that any of the key elements of the political process agreed upon at the Bonn conference in late 2001 – including the adoption of a new constitution, judicial reform, and elections – can be meaningfully implemented,” Robert Templer, the Asia programme director of the International Crisis Group (ICG) said in a recent ICG report. Efforts to start the UN-backed DDR were announced following recent major reforms at the Afghan Ministry of Defence. The multi million dollar DDR programme was scheduled to start in the middle of this year, but was suspended by the United Nations pending major reforms to be under taken within the ministry to make it more ethnically balanced. "What has really been delaying us was the political position that had to be taken,” the ANB operation manager said, noting that the reform at the defence ministry was a step in the 'right direction'. According to the ANBP the initial intend was that the DDR would be completed in 12 months before the country’s general elections next June. “Now it is very evident that it will not be completed in 12 months. This process will take from 18 to 24 months,” Cruick ascertained. Aziz said the DDR was a volunteer process and the ANBP was providing an incentive package enabling the disarmed people to support their families during the transitional phase until they were reintegrated. “The ex-combatant will receive a compensation/severance package including $200 cash and a clothing and food package [130 kg of different types of food],” the ANB programme director said, adding that this was merely to ensure that the transition from a life of essentially no salary and no prospects to a life when they are reintegrated was easier and simpler. “This is not a cash for weapon programme,” he stressed. While the country is already suffering from hundreds of thousands of unemployed mainly youth, ANBP said reintegrating over 100,000 people would prove a major challenge. “However, we will not have problems in our pilot projects. We can create job opportunities for the 1,000 disarmed in every province. I hope the government and private companies will help us in the reintegration of the rest of the 90,000 demobilised people,” Aziz noted. Meanwhile, dismantling the relationships between factional leaders and their lower-lever troops, presents a complicated political challenge for the process. ANBP has said in its recent report that in light of this aim, factional leaders and commanders would have to be offered sufficient incentives to participate. “A related risk is the potential for DDR to leave a security vacuum. At present, neither the Afghan National Army nor the national police have the capacity to fulfill security needs in the provinces,” the report said, adding that the ANBP was working with military and police planners to avoid such a vacuum.