Afghanistan Times
Related Articles
By Farhad Naibkhel-KABUL: Ministry of Defense (MoD) plans to establish the local army in order to boost up security in remote districts across the country, officials said Wednesday.
“Retired army officers and soldiers will be hired in the local army to boost up security in their own region,” said Deputy Spokesman for MoD Mohammad Radmanish.
He said that the retired officers and soldier are trained and capable, thus the MoD will use them as local army to reinforce security in a better manner in the country.
The local army would have their own uniforms and will operate at the frame of MoD shoulder to shoulder with Afghan police and army in the districts, he added.
He stated that local army would have salary, but still it is early to elaborate further.
Local army is the Afghan government initiative and according to assessment over 20,000 local army needed to reinforce security in all insecure regions, he noted.
According to report the Army and Afghan police strength is 336,042, which out of them 180,031 are army. Based on report of SIGAR in May 7, 2017, the Afghan Local Police (ALP) has 28,986 guardians.
Afghan Local Police members, known as “guardians,” are usually local citizens selected by village elders or local leaders to protect their communities against insurgent attack, guard facilities, and conduct local counterinsurgency missions. Although ALP forces were positively operated in most of the districts and provinces throughout the country, but in some cases they also caused some challenges, such as allegedly they were blamed with killing of innocent people duty personal enmity and some other crimes.
Also according to the report from January 1, 2017, through May 8, 2017, there were 2,531 Afghan National Defense and Security forces (ANDSF) service members killed in action and an additional 4,238 wounded in action. These figures are consistent with ANDSF casualty figures provided for the same period as last year.
