With escalating violence threatening Afghanistan's future, the US military has a new focus: employ as many of the poor as possible to rebuild schools and medical clinics so they won't join the Taliban or al-Qaeda.
"The more Afghans we can put to work helps take away some of the enemies' ability to recruit," said Major General Jason Kamiya, the US military operational commander in Afghanistan.
"I'd rather have an Afghan national working on a road or helping build a clinic than getting three to five bucks or whatever the Taliban or al-Qaeda-associated movement pays him to plant an IED [improvised explosive device]," he said in an interview on Saturday. "We are hiring as many Afghans as we can."
As part of the strategy, an ambitious series of reconstruction projects are on the drawing board for fall and winter, when militants are normally quiet, in an attempt to prevent an insurgent offensive next spring.
Unprecedented fighting last spring saw hundreds of people killed and sparked warnings that three years of progress toward peace since the ouster of the Taliban is threatened by the near-daily ambushes, assassinations, kidnappings and bombings.
The violence has also raised fears for crucial legislative elections on Sept. 18 -- the next key step toward democracy after a quarter century of war.
Most building projects in past years have slowed down during the winter months when the freezing temperatures make construction difficult. But this year, the military is determined to push ahead with them, US military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jerry O'Hara said on Sunday.
"Last winter, the military's emphasis was to go after the Taliban, go find them where they were hiding," he said. "This winter, we will still maintain that effort, but our priority will be to improve the situation of the Afghan people so they see the benefit of these elections and they see the local officials improving their lives."
In the past nine months, the military has employed more than 15,000 Afghans on projects nationwide that have cost about US$80 million, O'Hara said. One such project is a 3km cobblestone road through Urgun, near the border with Pakistan.
Kamiya visited the road -- the first hard-surfaced transport link in the poverty-stricken region -- on Saturday and was greeted by local officials eager to express their loyalty to the US-led coalition.
"All the people know you are building the roads and appreciate it," said Haji Satar, the local government chief.
"You are giving us a guarantee of security and all the people are doing their best to keep the security here," he said.
The US military is now preparing to lay foundations for a cobblestone road from Urgun to other regional centers.
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