Parade Exposes Afghanistan's Daunting Task to Build New Army

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, April 29, 2003

Parade Exposes Afghanistan's Daunting Task to Build New Army

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Military Parade in Afghanistan

A large-scale military parade on Monday in Kabul, capital city of Afghanistan revealed that building a brand-new national army would be a daunting task for a country which had been plagued by war and civil conflicts for over two decades.

Thousands of Afghan soldiers, mostly wearing Russian-style fatigues with AK-47 rifles in hands, marched through a makeshift parade-ground on a main street near the National Stadium of east Kabul in tight security, as security authorities were on high alert against possible attacks by the ousted Taliban.

The event was organized to mark the 11th anniversary of the victory of Afghanistan's Jihad, or holy war against the occupationof the Soviet army, which withdrew from the country in late 1980's,leading to the final capture of Kabul by Afghan Mujahideen troops on the same day in 1992.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Defense Minister Fahim inspected the military procession in two Soviet-era jeeps, apparently a legacy of more than 10 years of Soviet occupation during which the Red Army provided lots of military support to a puppet Afghan government.

Military Parade in Afghanistan

Much of the weapons and equipment in the procession, including tanks, armored vehicles and ever two Scud missiles, were also outdated Soviet-era products after having been changed hands for time to time during the last decade.

Observers here earlier said Monday's parade was expected to highlight the government's ongoing effort to build a new modern army, which President Karzai hopes to replace the existing militia-style troops loyal to different ethnic warlords across the country.

The government has a plan to build an ethnically-balanced national army with no more than 70,000 soldiers, while a program to disarm and demobilize existing armed troops will be launched with two months.

However, only about 150 new army soldiers participated in the parade, although nearly 3,000 soldiers recruited from various ethnic groups have completed their training mainly with US military assistance.

Most of the US-trained soldiers are currently carrying out joint operations against Taliban remnants with US-led coalition forces in southern Afghanistan, or responsible for security at Monday's ceremony, Afghan sources said.

Despite a recent consensus among Afghan regional military leaders on the formation of a new national army for securing social order, and in the long run, the country's territory integrity, the process was going relatively slow.

Analysts here feared that powerful local warlords, some want tosee more autonomy from the central government, would be reluctant to facilitate the army-building efforts, and in the future, to voluntarily disarm their own troops.

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