Captured Arms Will Stop Going to Afghan Militia

The U.S. military has stopped handing over confiscated weapons to Afghan militia fighters after criticism that it was strengthening regional warlords at the expense of the national government.

The change was made quietly after reports Oct. 16 that weapons caches were going to militia fighters traveling with American forces, U.S. military spokesman Col. Roger King said Friday. Critics worried that arming private militias would fuel fighting between rival warlords, destabilize Afghanistan and undermine the fragile government of President Hamid Karzai.

King said commanders decided that the practice conflicted with U.S. efforts to train an Afghan national army.

“We realized there was some discrepancy between what may be going on in the field and what the actual policy was supposed to be,” he said.

Almost every day, U.S. forces searching along Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan find caches of weapons and ammunition. On Thursday, special forces based in the town of Orgun found 148 82-millimeter mortar rounds, 700 rounds of heavy machine gun ammunition and five antipersonnel mines.

Most of the finds are destroyed. But until the policy change, fighters traveling with the U.S. forces were given their pick of usable materiel. Other militia fighters in the area had second pick, and the Afghan National Army, which has fewer than 2,000 fighters, was last.

King said U.S. commanders had been trying to ensure the forces aiding them were well supplied.

“For clarity’s sake, we’ve gone back out and said, ‘This is it, this is cut and dried: It either goes to the Afghan National Army at the Kabul military training facility ... or it is destroyed.’ ”

King said the change might hurt the readiness of those aiding Americans but that it might force the Afghans to turn to the Defense Ministry for weapons, reinforcing central government.