[Interviews
with residents and army recruitment officers across several provinces suggest
the Taliban pressure is taking a serious toll, with officials in some provinces
reporting recruitment down by as much as 50 percent. Exact data on Afghan
forces has been classified by both the Afghan government and the United States,
which largely bankrolls the security forces.]
By Najim Rahim and Mujib Mashal
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Afghan
National Army soldiers drilling at a military training center in Kabul in May.
Credit
Shah Marai/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
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KUNDUZ,
Afghanistan — Rahimullah
served in the Afghan Army for two years, deployed to the bloody front lines of
the southern province of Helmand. When he quit, it was not because of the
combat: It was when the Taliban went after his family back home, telling them
that if he didn’t leave the army there would be a fine of one Kalashnikov
rifle, seven cartridge magazines and $1,000 — or worse.
“My father called me to say the Taliban are
demanding this,” said Mr. Rahimullah, 30, who now lives back in the eastern
province of Kunar with his family. “I left the army, and some other of my
friends left, too. We didn’t have the money to pay them. We had joined the army
from poverty.”
Such demands are another way that the Taliban
has been able to keep pressure on the Afghan Army, which was already struggling
with record casualties and attrition. As the insurgents have made inroads in
eastern and northern Afghanistan — long the most important recruiting grounds
for the army — they are directly threatening the military’s ability to
replenish its dwindling ranks.
Interviews with residents and army
recruitment officers across several provinces suggest the Taliban pressure is
taking a serious toll, with officials in some provinces reporting recruitment
down by as much as 50 percent. Exact data on Afghan forces has been classified
by both the Afghan government and the United States, which largely bankrolls
the security forces.
Senior officials in Kabul, the capital,
admitted to a partial drop in recruitment this year, but said they were hoping
to intensify efforts and make up the loss by the end of the year. Gen. Mohammed
Ibrahim, the commander of the Afghan Army’s national recruitment center, said
the force had recruited 37,000 men last year, and 42,000 in 2015.
“In the first six months of this year, we
recruited 13,000 personnel, but we are planning to recruit 25,000 in the second
six months,” he said. “We do face challenges in recruiting enough personnel, I
cannot hide that.”
The general attributed the recruitment woes
as much to the increasing violence as to a decrease in funding for outreach
efforts, such as television advertisements.
“We used to gather about 350 or 400 people a
month, now it’s about 150 a month,” said Abdul Qadeer, head of army recruitment
in Kunduz Province, where the Taliban have twice seized the center of the
provincial capital in recent years. “All the districts outside the city are
under enemy influence, and they threaten the youth into not joining the army.”
Taliban pressure includes fines on families
of soldiers, physical punishment of soldiers who return home, and even
confiscation of land and homes.
“The Taliban tell the father of an army
soldier to either call back your son, or give us a Kalashnikov rifle and
400,000 afghanis,” said Mujtaba Khan, head of army recruitment in Badakhshan
Province, referring to a fine of about $6,000. “And when the son returns, he is
beaten and locked up.”
Other officials said that the rising number
of army casualties in gruesome, high-profile attacks over the past year was
also affecting recruitment.
In one recent massacre in Kandahar Province,
the Taliban nearly wiped out an entire army unit of 60 men. In April,
insurgents drove into the army’s headquarters in the northern province of Balkh
and killed at least 140 soldiers in a rampage that lasted several hours. In a
March attack claimed by the Islamic State, militants barged into the military’s
main hospital in Kabul, slaughtering dozens of soldiers who were being treated
there.
While the Afghan government does not publicly
disclose exact casualty figures, the coffins are still coming home to villages.
In private, officials say on average 20 to 30 Afghan soldiers and police
officers die every day as the violence intensifies.
“Before the attack on army corps in the north
and the military hospital in Kabul our numbers were higher, but now recruitment
is down,” said Abdul Maroof, in charge of army recruitment in Takhar Province.
“Compared with previous years, I would say our recruitment is at about 50
percent less.”
When the new Afghan Army took its initial
strides at the peak of the international presence, with the American-led NATO
coalition of tens of thousands of soldiers and marines leading the way, most of
the heavy fighting was concentrated in the south and parts of the southeast.
The soldiers, however, largely came from the north, where jobs were few and the
agricultural base was not enough to feed large families.
In recent years, the fighting has spread to
the north and northeast of the country, even as the war in the south has
intensified. Afghan forces lead the fight, with American help mostly limited to
air support, training and advising.
The drop in recruitment is a major blow to a
force that is suffering from drastic losses of men and territory. Some of the
units struggled so much, losing men and equipment, that they had to be entirely
rebuilt. The fighting has also laid bare the leadership woes of the Afghan
forces, with many officers proving corrupt or inadequate to the new ways of
fighting.
The Afghan Army is rolling out a program to
retire hundreds of old generals and colonels clogging the top, in the hopes of
promoting a new generation of commanders.
While many families relent under Taliban
pressure and call their children back from the army, others resist — and pay
the price.
Soon after the Taliban made major gains in
Kunduz Province, they came for the Parwan family. The family lived on the
outskirts of the city of Kunduz, and two of their sons were serving in the
Afghan Army.
“They told us, ‘Either call your brothers and
pull them out of the army, or we will take over your land,’” said Arash Parwan,
23.
The family relied on the combined salaries of
the soldiers, and they made a calculation that farming the land alone could not
sustain them. So they resisted the Taliban, instead deciding to flee to the
city center.
“The Taliban took over our land and two
houses,” Mr. Parwan said. “They toppled one of the houses, and turned the other
into their base.”
Najim Rahim reported from Kunduz,
Afghanistan, and Mujib Mashal from Kabul. Zabihullah contributed reporting from
Jalalabad and Jawad Sukhanyar from Kabul.
