Local Militias to Help Battle Growing Taliban Resistance in Afghanistan

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• JEFFREY BROWN:

  With a resurgent Taliban and the situation in Afghanistan deteriorating, President-elect Obama has promised a renewed focus on the country, and 20,000 to 30,000 additional U.S. troops will be sent there over the next year.

  Yesterday, the Pentagon confirmed another strategy, modeled on one used in Iraq: arming local militias to help fight the Taliban. The first of these is set to be deployed early next year.

  New York Times correspondent Dexter Filkins is in Kabul. I spoke with him a short time ago.

  Dexter, why does the military say it's making this move? What's behind it?

• DEXTER FILKINS, New York Times:

  Well, I think it's an urgent situation. The simple truth here — you know, for the past seven years, it's been that there aren't enough troops on the ground. There aren't enough American troops or British troops or Canadian troops, and there aren't enough Afghan police or Afghan army officers.

  So, you know, I think the feeling is we've got to do something and we've got to do it really quick. And that's — I think that's what has brought everyone to this point.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  Is it known who would make up these private militias and what exactly their mission would be?

• DEXTER FILKINS:

  Well, I mean, I think that's — you know, those are the big questions. But I think what the military's doing here is, frankly, taking a page from Iraq, the experience in Iraq.

  And if you remember, there's been this dramatic — quite dramatic reduction in violence in Iraq. And that is largely attributable to not merely the surge, but this phenomenon called the Awakening, where, you know, we now have in Iraq 100,000 Sunni gunmen on the payroll, many of whom were former insurgents.

  And that's this very kind of strange contraption that they've built there, and it's keeping the peace. I mean, it's, you know, a relative peace.

  And so I think what they'd like to do ideally is duplicate that here. I think, you know, that's a much trickier proposition. They're very, very different countries.

  Iraq is a very tribal place, much more so than Afghanistan is. There's just been so much social disintegration here after 30 years of war that, you know, it's hard to put these things back together.

  And so I think it's going to be really difficult. They're going to go into these villages, and they're going to go into the neighborhoods here, and they're going to try to recruit people, and say, you know, "Here's a Kalashnikov and a couple days of training. You know, will you work for us?"