Delusions about the Afghan war...

This article correctly debunks the notion that the Afghan war is a war of necessity. It is rather portrayed as such. Notice that the Taliban were not involved at all in 9/11 and could care less about most everything except taking power in Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan and imposing their fundamentalist ideas on the population.
Winning the hearts and minds of the population is hardly on the agenda either. It was not achieved by the Brits or the Soviets and occupying a country and causing huge disruption in fighting insurgents hardly wins hearts and minds. Add to this that the surge will probably not be enough because it is politically impossible to send sufficient troops and also finally allies are abandoning the ship because they are finding the mission politically unsaleable.


Afghanistan: What Are These People Thinking?
Conn Hallinan September 10, 2009
Editor: John Feffer


Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org
One of the oddest — indeed, surreal — encounters around the war in Afghanistan has to be a telephone call this past July 27. On one end of the line was historian Stanley Karnow, author of Vietnam: A History. On the other, State Department special envoy Richard Holbrooke and the U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal. The question: How can Washington avoid the kind of defeat it suffered in Southeast Asia 40 years ago?
Karnow did not divulge what he said to the two men, but he told Associated Press that the "lesson" of Vietnam "was that we shouldn't have been there," and that, while "Obama and everybody else seems to want to be in Afghanistan," he, Karnow, was opposed to the war.
It is hardly surprising that Washington should see parallels to the Vietnam debacle. The enemy is elusive enemy. The local population is neutral, if not hostile. And the governing regime is corrupt with virtually no support outside of the nation's capital.
But in many ways Afghanistan is worse than Vietnam. So, it is increasingly hard to fathom why a seemingly intelligent American administration seems determined to hitch itself to this disaster in the making. It is almost as if there is something about that hard-edged Central Asian country that deranges its occupiers.
Delusion #1
In his address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Obama characterized Afghanistan as "a war of necessity" against international terrorism. But the reality is that the Taliban is a polyglot collection of conflicting political currents whose goals are local, not universal jihad.
"The insurgency is far from monolithic," says Anand Gopal, a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor based in Afghanistan. "There are shadowy, kohl-eyed mullahs and head-bobbing religious students, of course, but there are also erudite university students, poor illiterate farmers, and veteran anti-Soviet commanders. The movement is a mélange of nationalists, Islamists, and bandits...made up of competing commanders and differing ideologies and strategies who nonetheless agree on one essential goal: kicking out the foreigners."
Taliban spokesman Yousef Ahmadi told Gopal, "We are fighting to free our country from foreign domination," adding, "Even the Americans once waged an insurgency to free their country."
Besides the Taliban, there are at least two other insurgent groups. Hizb-I-Islam is led by former U.S. ally Gulbuddin Hekmatyer. The Haqqani group, meanwhile, has close ties to al-Qaeda.
The White House's rationale of "international terrorism" parallels the Southeast Asian tragedy. The U.S. characterized Vietnam as part of an international Communist conspiracy, while the conflict was essentially a homegrown war of national liberation.
Delusion #2
One casualty of Vietnam was the doctrine of counterinsurgency, the theory that an asymmetrical war against guerrillas can be won by capturing the "hearts and minds" of the people. Of course "hearts and minds" was a pipe dream, obliterated by massive civilian casualties, the widespread use of defoliants, and the creation of "strategic hamlets" that had more in common with concentration camps than villages.
In Vietnam's aftermath, "counterinsurgency" fell out of favor, to be replaced by the "Powell Doctrine" of relying on massive firepower to win wars. With that strategy the United States crushed the Iraqi army in the first Gulf War. Even though the doctrine was downsized for the invasion of Iraq a decade later, it was still at the heart of the attack.
However, within weeks of taking Baghdad, U.S. soldiers were besieged by an insurgency that wasn't in the lesson plan. Ambushes and roadside bombs took a steady toll on U.S. and British troops, and aggressive countermeasures predictably turned the population against the occupation.
After four years of getting hammered by insurgents, the Pentagon rediscovered counterinsurgency, and its prophet was General David Petraeus, now commander of all U.S. forces in the Middle East and Central Asia. "Hearts and minds" was dusted off, and the watchwords became "clear, hold, and build." Troops were to hang out with the locals, dig wells, construct schools, and measure success not by body counts of the enemy, but by the "security" of the civilian population.
This theory impelled the Obama administration to "surge" 21,000 troops into Afghanistan, and to consider adding another 20,000 in the near future. The idea is that a surge will reduce the violence, as a similar surge of 30,000 troops had done in Iraq.
Delusion #3
But as Patrick Cockburn of The Independent discovered, the surge didn't work in Iraq.
With the possible exception of Baghdad, it wasn't U.S. troops that reduced the violence in Iraq, but the decision by Sunni insurgents that they could no longer fight a two-front war against the Iraqi government and the United States. The ceasefire by Shi'ite cleric and Madhi Army leader Muqtada al-Sadr also helped calm things down. In any case, as recent events have demonstrated, the "peace" was largely illusory.
Not only is a similar "surge" in Afghanistan unlikely to be successful, the formula behind counterinsurgency doctrine predicts that the Obama administration is headed for a train wreck.
According to investigative journalist Jordan Michael Smith, the "U.S/ Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual" — co-authored by Petraeus — recommends "a minimum of 20 counterinsurgents per 1,000 residents. In Afghanistan, with its population estimated at 33 million, that would mean at least 660,000 troops." And this requires not just any soldiers, but soldiers trained in counterinsurgency doctrine.
The numbers don't add up.
The United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies currently have about 64,000 troops in Afghanistan, and that figure would rise to almost 100,000 when the present surge is completed. Some 68,000 of those will be American. There is also a possibility that Obama will add another 20,000, bringing the total to 120,000, larger than the Soviet Army that occupied Afghanistan. That's still only a fifth of what the counterinsurgency manual recommends.
Meanwhile, the American public is increasingly disillusioned with the war. According to a recent CNN poll, 57% of Americans oppose the war, a jump of 9% since May. Among Obama supporters the opposition is overwhelming: Nearly two-thirds of "committed" Democrats feel "strongly" the war is not worth fighting.
Delusion #4
Afghanistan isn't like Iraq because NATO is behind us. Way behind us.
The British — whose troops actually fight, as opposed to doing "reconstruction" like most of the other 16 NATO nations — have lost the home crowd. Polls show deep opposition to the war, a sentiment that is echoed all over Europe. Indeed, the German Defense Minister Franz-Joseph Jung has yet to use the word "war" in relation to Afghanistan.
That little piece of fiction went a-glimmering in June, when three Bundeswehr soldiers were killed near Kunduz in northern Afghanistan. Indeed, as U.S. Marines go on the offensive in the country's south, the Taliban are pulling up stakes and moving east and north to target the Germans. The tactic is as old as guerrilla warfare: "Where the enemy is strong, disperse. Where the enemy is weak, concentrate."
While Berlin's current ruling coalition of Social Democrats and conservatives quietly back the war, the Free Democrats — who are likely to join Chancellor Angela Merkel's government after the next election — are calling for bringing Germany's 4,500 troops home.
The opposition Left Party has long opposed the war, and that opposition gave it a boost in recent state elections.
The United States and NATO can't — or won't — supply the necessary troops, and the Afghan army is small, corrupt and incompetent. No matter how one adds up the numbers, the task is impossible. So why is the administration following an unsupportable course of action?
Why We Fight
There is that oil pipeline from the Caspian that no one wants to talk about. Strategic control of energy is certainly a major factor in Central Asia. Then, too, there is the fear that a defeat for NATO in its first "out of area" war might fatally damage the alliance.
But when all is said and done, there also seems to be is a certain studied derangement about the whole matter, a derangement that was on display July 12 when British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told parliament that the war was showing "signs of success."
British forces had just suffered 15 deaths in a little more than a week, eight of them in a 24-hour period. It has now lost more soldiers that it did in Iraq. This is Britain's fourth war in Afghanistan.
The Karzai government has stolen the election. The war has spilled over to help destabilize and impoverish nuclear-armed Pakistan. The American and European public is increasingly opposed to the war. July was the deadliest month ever for the United States, and the Obama administration is looking at a $9 trillion deficit.
What are these people thinking?
Conn Hallinan is a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus.

Afghanistan the Next US Quagmire

This is from antiwar.com.

Afghanistan has been from the beginning a quagmire for the US. Obama seems to plan to make it worse by sending in more troops. He has done nothing to stop civilian casualties from bombing and is continuing drone attacks into Pakistan. I find it surprising there is not more resistance to the US dominated occupation within the US itself. The campaign is bound to become more costly in terms of US casualties. It will also be expensive and expand US debt at a time when this is the last thing that the US needs. Of course it will provide a stimulus for the military-industrial complex. Commentators almost never mention the fact that the operation was illegal from the getgo and only given a fig leaf of legality after the fact of occupation, the same as in Iraq.



February 20, 2009
Afghanistan, the Next US Quagmire?
by Thalif Deen
The United States is planning to send an additional 17,000 troops to one of the world's most battle-scarred nations – Afghanistan – long described as "a graveyard of empires."
First, it was the British Empire, and then the Soviet Union. So, will the United States be far behind?
"With his new order on Afghanistan, President (Barack) Obama has given substantial ground to what Martin Luther King Jr., in 1967 called 'the madness of militarism,'" Norman Solomon, executive director of the Washington-based Institute for Public Accuracy, told IPS.
"That madness should be opposed in 2009," said Solomon, author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.
The proposed surge in U.S. troops will bring the total to 60,000, while the combined forces from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), including troops from Germany, Canada, Britain and the Netherlands, amount to over 32,000.
When in full strength, U.S.-NATO forces in Afghanistan could reach close to 100,000 by the end of this year.
Still, in a TV interview Tuesday, Obama said he was "absolutely convinced that you cannot solve the problem of Afghanistan, the Taliban (insurgency), the spread extremism in that region solely through military means."
"If there is no military solution, why is the administration's first set of decisions to continue drone attacks and increase ground troops?" Marilyn B. Young, a professor of history at New York University, told IPS.
She said the uncertainty around Afghan policy seems to be spreading even while the Obama administration announces an increase in troops.
"This is one of the ways events seem to echo U.S. escalation in the Vietnam War," said Young, author of several publications, including "Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam: Or, How Not to Learn From the Past."
On Tuesday, the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) released a report revealing that in 2008, there were 2,118 civilian casualties in Afghanistan, an increase of almost 40 percent over 2007.
Of these casualties, 55 percent of the overall death toll was attributed to anti-government forces, including the Taliban, and 39 percent to Afghan security and international military forces.
"This is of great concern to the United Nations," the report said, pointing out that "this disquieting pattern demands that the parties to the conflict take all necessary measures to avoid the killing of innocent civilians."
During his presidential campaign last year, Obama said the war in Iraq was a misguided war.
The United States, he said, needs to pull out of Iraq, and at the same time, bolster its troops in Afghanistan, primarily to prevent the militant Islamic fundamentalist Taliban from regaining power and also to eliminate safe havens for terrorists.
But most political analysts point out that Afghanistan may turn out to be a bigger military quagmire for U.S. forces than Iraq.
Solomon of the Institute for Public Accuracy said Obama's moves on Afghanistan have "the quality of a moth toward a flame."
In the short run, Obama is likely to be unharmed in domestic political terms. But the policy trajectory appears to be unsustainable in the medium-run, he added.
"Before the end of his first term, Obama is very likely to find himself in a vise, caught between a war in Afghanistan that cannot be won and a political quandary at home that significantly erodes the enthusiasm of his electoral base while fueling Republican momentum," Solomon argued.
Dr. Christine Fair, a senior political scientist with the RAND Corporation and a former political officer with UNAMA in Kabul, told IPS she is doubtful that more troops will secure Afghanistan.
"Perhaps several years ago more troops would have been welcomed. My fear is that more troops means more civilian losses and further erosion of good will and support for the international presence," Fair said.
"I would personally prefer a move from kinetics and towards using this increased capacity to help build Afghan capacity," she noted.
"I also think greater support from the international community for reconciliation is needed. Afghans need to own this process," said Fair, a former senior research associate with the Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention at the U.N. Institute of Peace (USIP) in Washington.
However, she said, the international community has legitimate interests in remaining in some capacity to ensure that Afghanistan does not again emerge as a safe haven for al-Qaeda and other international terrorist groups.
Fair also co-authored (along with Seth Jones) a USIP report released early this week, titled "Securing Afghanistan," which spelled out the reasons why international stabilization efforts have not been successful in Afghanistan over the last seven years.
"Security issues in Afghanistan are extraordinarily complex, with multiple actors influencing the threat environment – among them, insurgent groups, criminal groups, local tribes, warlords, government officials and security forces," the report said.
Afghanistan also presents a multi-front conflict that includes distinct security challenges in the northern, central and southern parts of the country, the study declared.
In Afghanistan, Solomon argued, the U.S. president is proceeding down a path that can only be too steep and not steep enough.
The basic contradiction of his current position – asserting that the situation cannot be solved by military means yet taking action to try to solve the problem by military means – signifies that Obama is bargaining for short-term wiggle room at the expense of longer-term rationality, he added.
"In a very real sense, Obama is kicking a bloody can down the road, unable to think of any other way to confront circumstances that will grow worse with time in large measure because of his actions now," he said.
Even while disputing some thematic aspects of the "war on terrorism" at times, Obama is reinvesting his political capital – and re-dedicating the Pentagon's mission – on behalf of a U.S. war effort that is probably doomed to fail on its own terms, Solomon said.
"Reliance on violence is a chronic temptation for a commander-in-chief with the mighty U.S. military under its command. We've seen the results in Iraq – or, more precisely, the people of Iraq and many American soldiers have seen and suffered the results," he added.
(Inter Press Service)

Afghanistan caught in friendly fire.

This is hardly a change in direction, at most it is a change in emphasis. The Bush administration was also on bad terms with Karzai and complained about corruption and criticism of bombing raids. The US wants to be rid of Karzai and replace him with some other US protege who is more pliant and less critical and perhaps less corrupt as well or at least corrupt in a more favorable direction! As usual the US will attempt to use its influence to determine the next president. Karzai's worst sin was not corruption but his strain of independence and critical stance towards US policy especially with respect to collateral damage caused by airstrikes.

Afghanistan caught in friendly fire
By M K Bhadrakumar
The Barack Obama era is commencing on a combative note in Afghanistan. The Afghan bazaar is buzzing with rumors that the equations between Washington and Kabul have become uncertain. Senior Afghan figures have been quoted as concluding that "the new US administration and the current Afghan administration will not be speaking the same language". This followed a controversial visit to the Afghan capital Kabul last week by United States vice president-elect Joseph Biden. As the chairman of the powerful US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden is not a novice to foreign affairs and diplomacy, or to Afghanistan. Yet, during his visit, Biden apparently pulled up

Afghan President Hamid Karzai for not giving a good account of himself as a ruler. Again, Afghan Foreign Minister Dadfar Spanta has objected to US secretary of state-designate Hillary's Clinton's use of the term "narco state" to describe Afghanistan in her Senate testimony last Tuesday on her nomination. He called in the Associated Press specifically to rebut that Clinton's characterization was "absolutely wrong". Nerves are getting frayed at the edges. NATO chief chips in Alas, the Obama presidency is starting on a false note when close coordination between Washington and Kabul ought to be the hallmark of relations. As if taking a cue from the irate Americans, the secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, tore into the Karzai government in an unprecedented opinion piece in The Washington Post on Sunday, alleging among other things that "the basic problem in Afghanistan is not too much Taliban; it's too little good governance". Scheffer is a consummate diplomat in the best traditions of the Atlantic alliance and is known to be always at Washington's bidding. He wrote, "We have paid enough, in blood and treasure, to demand that the Afghan government take more concrete and vigorous action to root out corruption and increase efficiency, even where that means difficult political choices." Kabul didn't even wait for a full working day before Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmad Baheen plainly told Scheffer where to get off. He accused that the Afghan government was being undermined as the "international community, including some powerful NATO member countries, has their own favorite warlords" who they back against the Karzai government. Baheen, in turn, accused Western aid groups of corruption and the coalition forces for condoning opium production. Biden leaks confidential talkThe curious part is that details of Biden's sensitive conversation in the Afghan presidential palace have found their way into the media and, inevitably, to the noisy Kabul bazaar. Afghans cannot resist coming up with conspiracy theories. Karzai's spokesman Humayun Hamizada neither confirmed nor denied the reports that Biden had delivered a tough message to Karzai. He merely said the conversation was "frank but cordial and friendly". In diplomatic idiom, that usually means Biden and Karzai politely agreed to disagree. Or, more to the point in this case, Karzai, being the weaker of the two, held his ground. Hamizada hinted that the differences were mainly over the war's strategy. He recalled Karzai had time and again stressed the "need to review the war on terrorism ... need to review our strategy, the way we fight terrorism and where we fight terrorism". According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFERL), Biden played "an aggressive foreign-policy role" in Kabul and delivered a "strong message" to Karzai. American officials have been cited as saying Biden "encouraged the Afghan leader to rid his government of corruption and temper his public statements regarding civilian casualties caused by NATO forces in Afghanistan". Biden seems to have taken a particularly dim view of Karzai's growing criticism regarding the excessive use of military force by US troops against Afghan civilians. He reportedly warned Karzai that Washington "will view future statements as posturing for the presidential elections set to take place in Afghanistan later this year". American sources added that Biden "included no mention of the end of Karzai's presidential run, over which the United States in any case has no say". Afghan bazaar speculates regime changeMeanwhile, the Kabul bazaar is full of rumors that Biden flatly told Karzai he was on his way out and that the US vice-president elect's mission might have been an effort to find a suitable replacement. Unsurprisingly, Biden's call on Interior Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar led to further speculation that the British-educated Afghan official, who, according to RFERL, "is widely considered one of the most effective managers in Karzai's administration", might just be the suitable replacement that Washington is looking for as the next president of Afghanistan. A spate of articles has appeared in the Western media during the past six months portraying Karzai as presiding over a corrupt, inefficient, ineffectual government that is confined to Kabul and its environs. This has generated a negative impression about Karzai in Western opinion, apart from making it very obvious that things are not going smoothly between the Afghan government and the international community. Karzai holds his ground What probably put the Americans' back up was an outspoken interview that Karzai gave to The Chicago Tribune last month. For the first time, Karzai reacted to Obama's harsh remark while on the campaign trail that the Afghan president had not yet "gotten out of the bunker and helped to organize Afghanistan". Karzai loudly wondered: "Bunker? We are in a trench, and our allies are with us in the trench. We were on a high hill with glorious success in 2002, backed fully by the Afghan people ... We must now look back and find out as to why are we in a trench, or if you'd like to describe it, a bunker. Why are we in a bunker?" They seem to have duly taken note in Washington, and did not like the assertive remark, deciding they might as well make it plain that someone they put in power, they could just as well remove from power. What is overlooked, however, is the substance of Karzai's criticism. Which is a pity, since Obama can only benefit from reading and re-reading the transcript of Karzai's hour-long interview. Most expert commentators would share Karzai's views, though they might constitute an open indictment of the American military commanders and their chief in the Pentagon. Karzai had a strong point when he said, "The international community should correct their behavior ... the [US-led] coalition went around the Afghan villages, burst into people's homes and committed extra-judicial killings in our country ... And if this behavior continues, we will be in a deeper trench than we are today. And the war against terrorism will end in disgraceful defeat." Again, Karzai was spot on when he said, "If they [US-led forces] go to the Afghan homes and burst in and arrest or kill, does that leave the Afghan people with the feeling that they have a government? No. That is actually the destruction of the Afghan government. If Afghanistan is a sovereign country, if Afghanistan has a constitution, if Afghanistan has laws, and if there is the slogan of strengthening Afghan democracy and institutions, then Afghan sovereignty and Afghan laws must be respected, and not violated in such an extreme manner as is being done today." He stressed that the war strategy reportedly being conceived in the Pentagon to arm Pashtun tribes and set them against each other would have catastrophic consequences: "If we create militias again, we will be ruining this country further." True, the new US war strategy is unrealistic insofar as it simplifies what are in fact multi-layered structures of violence in Afghanistan. The strategy overlooks the enormous variety of local violence. A policy similar to the "awakening" of Sunni tribes in Iraq cannot be the answer to Afghan violence. Equally, Karzai was critical of the so-called "surge" policy that is the brainwave of Central Command chief General David Petraeus from his Iraq campaign. He felt any additional US troops should be deployed to man the Afghan-Pakistan border rather than intensify military operations in the southeastern provinces as the Pentagon is contemplating. To this end, the US plans to double the number of its troops in the country, from about 30,000 to 60,000. Karzai anticipates that the proposed "surge" will only accelerate the bloodbath, which in turn will make his position extremely precarious politically and generate more local support for the Taliban fighters who are increasingly being seen by the people as a genuine resistance to the marauding Western forces. Who isn't corrupt?The US criticism about rampant corruption in Afghanistan has basis. But, then, what do we expect out of a long sunset when a country slowly bleeds to death and foreign military occupation strips it of national honor and self-confidence? Putting things into perspective, it was former US secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld who introduced the US policy of dispatching planeloads of green bucks to the Hindu Kush in a cynical move to encourage Afghan "warlords" to take on al-Qaeda so that Americans didn't have to do the fighting. Most of these "warlords" who worked for the US special forces today ostentatiously display their ill-gotten wealth. Many are deeply involved in prostitution, bootlegging and drug trafficking. They are openly buying and selling sinecure positions. Their palatial mansions in Kabul came up right under the nose of the US Embassy. Again, it was the Pentagon's obstinacy that the drug problem was not their business which allowed the situation to develop into its current scale, eating into the vitals of the Afghan state. When the occupiers themselves are the fountainhead of venality - like the Spanish Conquistadors who introduced "European diseases" in the Western hemisphere in the 16th century - how can the blame be apportioned to Karzai's regime or family members? In a devastating essay recently, noted American aid worker and author Ann Jones lifted the veil of silence over the spectrum of corruption that the George W Bush administration introduced in Afghanistan. (See The Afghan reconstruction boondoggle Asia Times Online, January 13.) The US not only skimped on aid but ploughed the big bucks into the coffers of well-connected American military contractors and profiteers and the whole retinue of parasites who generally go under the rubric of experts and consultants. Jones called it "a form of well-organized routine graft that leaves the corruption of Karzai's government in the shade and will undoubtedly continue unremarked upon in the Obama years. Those multi-millions that will continue to be poured down the Afghan drain really represent promises made to a people whose country and culture we have devastated more than once." Browbeating, damning or dumping Karzai will not end the stalemate in the war. Actually, the best thing would be to allow the Afghan people to genuinely choose Karzai as their president in the upcoming election and if they indeed do so, to let him select his team. It may not be an English-speaking team, but that is the best way the Afghan political process can hope to gain traction, if at all, in the current gloomy scenario when it looks difficult to rescue the seven-year US enterprise. Karzai is still the best choice America has got in Kabul. Biden's visit was a mistake because in political terms, he seems to have mortally wounded Karzai, even if Washington's his intention was merely to do some plain speaking before the Obama era commenced, about salvaging the US's efforts. Biden's tough talk leaps out of a classic Graham Greene novel set in Indo-China in the 1950s. It dampens the residual hopes of a clean break from the overbearing US war strategy in Afghanistan, which Karzai resents and the Taliban exploit. Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

This is from the Independent.
This is a debate between two of the occupiers of Afghanistan. If Afghanistan were an independent nation one would think that it would be the Afghan govt. that would approve of these sorts of policies!
The U.S. criticism has some valid points but rather ironically the same sort of objections could be made against US policy in Iraq where the US is in effect arming Sunni militias many of them former insurgents to use them against Al Qaeda supporting insurgents.


US attacks UK plan to arm Afghan militias
By Jerome Starkey in Kabul
Published: 14 January 2008
The US general in charge of training the Afghan police has criticised British-backed plans to arm local militias in an attempt to defeat the Taliban. The remarks by Maj-Gen Robert Cone, the second most senior US soldier in Afghanistan, are likely to deepen the row between London and Washington over how to counter the insurgency.

General Cone, who is in charge of rebuilding the Afghan police force, is the second US commander to condemn the initiative. He said: "Anything that detracts from a professional, well-trained, well-led police force is not the answer."

Last month, Gordon Brown said Britain would increase its support for "community defence initiatives, where local volunteers are recruited to defend homes and families modelled on traditional Afghan arbakai". The arbakai system involves arming untrained Afghani men, who agree to come running at the beating of a drum if their village elders feel threatened.

British diplomats and military strategists in the restive southern province of Helmand hope the idea might bolster Afghanistan's fledgling police force, which is unable to defend itself against attacks by Taliban insurgents. At least 10 officers died yesterday in a Taliban attack on a checkpoint in Kandahar. But US officials fear that arbakai fighters would fall under the command of warlords disloyal to the Afghan government. Their reluctance to endorse the plan follows a disastrous international initiative to build an "auxiliary" police force, which was scrapped last year.

Auxiliary officers were given assault rifles and uniforms after just a few days of rudimentary training, on the understanding that they would be required only to police the area they came from. "The auxiliary police was an attempt to take short-cuts," said General Cone, warning that there were similarities between the doomed auxiliaries and Mr Brown's arbakai plan. "It is very important to understand why the Afghan National Auxiliary Police Force did not work, as we look at any informal programme that doesn't promote professional policing," he added.

Analysts also fear the introduction of arbakai would undo years of effort by the United Nations to disarm illegal militias.

General Cone's remarks follow earlier criticism of the idea by the commander of the 37-nation Nato coalition in Afghanistan. General Dan McNeill said the plan would work only in small parts of the countryside which did not include Helmand, where most of Britain's 7,700 troops are stationed. He said: "My information, from studying Afghan history, is that arbakai works only in Paktia, Khost and the southern portion of Paktika, and it's not likely to work beyond those geographic locations."

General Cone is leading a root-and-branch reform of the Afghan police force, which has been ill-equipped, badly paid, poorly trained and dogged by corruption since 2001. The US government has pledged $7.4bn (£3.7bn) to improve Afghan security forces between now and October. But General Cone admitted there was no "model of what policing should be" in the country. "When Afghan people understand what well-trained, well-paid police do, they will demand it," he added. "But right now they are just not familiar."

He said he backed greater community involvement in the police if it meant "neighbourhood-watch type programmes" rather than arming and paying local people.

Britain has faced increasing criticism from allies in recent months for championing alternative tactics to defeat the Taliban. The Prime Minister promised more "tribal engagement" during a recent visit to Kabul. But last month the Afghan government expelled two UN and EU diplomats for meeting commanders sympathetic to insurgents.