In Their Own Defence!

"Both sides are causing us problems, and the (U.S.) foreign forces, with their night raids, are too.  We want to live our lives in peace.  We're not on the side of the Taliban or on the side of the government.  This is a spontaneous movement and the people support it."  Lutfullah Khan, commander, Andar force

Finally, the spectacle of Afghan villagers doing something for themselves.  Not bewailing the ineffectiveness and absence of government troops, the short, weak arm of the national government in defending remote villages from the depredations of the Taliban, but deciding on their own that they've suffered long enough under the rule of the Taliban.

In the Andar district, representing a poor farming area roughly 160 kilometres south of the Afghan capital of Kabul, villagers have initiated an anti-Taliban revolt.  They have formed their own militias, to challenge the insurgents.  This is a movement that has spread through 38 villages in all, to form a "people's militia" of self defence.

The cause of this courageous rebellion was the final straw the villages felt when the Taliban closed down their schools.  The local government had issued a decree banning unlicensed motorbikes.  Which conveyances just happened to represent the most common form of transport for the Taliban.  The closing down of the schools represented retaliation on the part of the Taliban.

But it wasn't the government nor its agencies that suffered as a result, rather the villagers themselves, and their children, left without schools, without resource to an education.  "We were caught between the government and the Taliban and we decided to fight back", said one villager, a young shopkeeper, who joined his village militia.

It has been years that they have been forced to ban music, and to observe nightly curfews imposed upon them by the Taliban.  "They used to stop us all the time and check our mobile phones for music.  It was like being in prison.  Now we're free, and nobody stops you to ask ridiculous questions."

The militias deny that outside assistance has been a factor.  They have succeeded in reopening schools across the province.  The governor of the province has stated that the militia movement had awoken aspirations of a countrywide revolt against Taliban oppression.  "It (the uprising) has already started in neighbouring Paktia province and we think it will happen everywhere.  We hope it will be a countrywide movement."

What this does demonstrate is that Afghans are fully capable, shoved far enough into an uncomfortable and uncompromising corner, of refusing to submit any longer.  That they will take their courage in hand and provide a united front to prove how effective strength in numbers can be.  And that they are fully capable of handling affairs that are clearly in their best interests, on their own initiative.

Will wonders never cease...