Disarmament drive enters main phase

Following several weeks of delay, the UN-backed disarmament demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) main phase was launched on Monday in the capital, Kabul. The programme, which aims to decommission tens of thousands of ex-soldiers, is seen as vital for bringing stability to the country, ahead of Afghanistan's landmark election in September. The Afghan Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the Afghanistan New Beginning Programme (ANBP) - the official name of the DDR process - marked the start of DDR main phase by decommissioning 135 members of the Kabul-based 99th Rocket Brigade and collecting over 60 surface-to-surface and surface-to-air Soviet-era missiles. "We are late, but will try to accelerate it and decommission 40 percent of Afghan militia forces throughout the country before elections start," the deputy defence minister, General Rahim Wardak, told IRIN following the official launch of the DDR drive in the capital Kabul. According to the MoD, some 800 soldiers from six Kabul-based military units will be disarmed, demobilised and reintegrated in two weeks, before DDR is extended throughout the country. "We are committed to decommission around 33,000 of the ex-soldiers across the country by the elections and there will be no exception," Wardak said. Accelerating the DDR process is seen as a crucial component in weakening provincial warlords, a key objective if the elections are to take place in an environment free of voter intimidation. Monday's move followed a statement in early May from the United Nations special envoy to Afghanistan, Jean Arnault, expressing serious concern about the faltering DDR process. "Further stalling of the DDR programme is bound to have very negative consequences," said Arnault. Under the pilot phase of DDR, which started last October, some 6,230 soldiers have been decommissioned. The main phase should have started several weeks ago, but regional commanders with large private armies had resisted the move. Wardak said central government had solved the issue, and key commanders including Ismail Khan, the powerful governor of the western city of Herat, and General Abdul Rashid Dostum in the north, had assured the government of full cooperation. "I don't think the commanders will resist now they have to prove their role in the rehabilitation of Afghanistan by joining the DDR process," Wardak explained. According to ANBP officials, the reintegration options for the disarmed soldiers are agriculture, vocational training, small business, demining or joining the fledging Afghan National Army or Afghan National Police. "We have definitely got jobs for everybody to come through this phase," Peter Babbington, acting programme director for ANBP, told IRIN. Babbington said ANBP had created mobile DDR teams and would be deployed throughout the country very soon.