Mohammed Gul went from fighting the Taliban to making flat Afghan bread after joining a UN-funded disarmament project following the hardline regime's collapse.
But with the program ending next month, foreign aid workers fear that ex-combatants like Gul may be forced to return to violence to make ends meet, compounding impoverished Afghanistan's security woes.
Gul, an ethnic Tajik, fought for the Northern Alliance against the Taliban in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif before the regime's ouster.
PHOTO: AP
He now struggles to get by on the US$700 given him under the program last year to open his bakery after laying down his guns.
"If help stops altogether, it is very possible that former mujahidin will pick up their weapons and become criminals or worse because they don't have enough money," 26-year-old Gul said outside his mud brick bakery in Herat, an ancient city about 700km west of the capital, Kabul.
Disarming and rehabilitating the thousands of mujahidin and militants is vital to improving security and order in war-wracked Afghanistan, where armed groups and warlords hold sway over vast tracts of land in the landlocked Central Asian nation.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has been running the reintegration component of the project, which ends next month. The project is part of a three-year scheme -- the Afghan New Beginnings Program -- funded by the UN Development Program (UNDP).
Some 50,000 former combatants have gone through the program, in which they receive education, business planning assistance, micro-credit financing and grants to start businesses and learn skills for laying down their weapons and demobilizing.
But IOM official Tajma Kurt described as "disastrous" plans to "abruptly" end the more than US$100 million program without providing further aid to former fighters, some of whom could be forced to rejoin war lords or criminal gangs to make extra money.
"There has been no exit strategy thought out to ensure sustainability for the former combatants when the project ends," Kurt said during a recent visit to Herat.
"The biggest fear will be security for the international community if they do go back to carrying arms," he said.
Another 150,000 former combatants haven't joined the program, which is directed at armed men who had belonged either to anti-Taliban groups or the former Afghan army. A separate reconciliation process aims at peacefully reintegrating Taliban militants into the community.
The IOM has also been trying to school and find work for former child soldiers who were forced to join anti-Taliban groups or the Afghan army as armed guards, cleaners or errands-runners to earn money for their families.
Amid soaring unemployment of at least 40 percent and increasing Taliban-led attacks against US-led and Afghan forces, violent crime is on the rise in Afghanistan.
There have been several armed robberies in Kabul this year resulting in the killings of the victims.
In normally peaceful Herat, police officials said locals rejected a large sum of money from a "foreigner" to help kidnap a Westerner, ideally an American, and spirit them into a bordering country, apparently Iran.
UNDP spokeswoman Ariane Quentier said the terms of the three-year disarmament and reintegration project have been met, but the world body remained concerned about the future of the ex-militants.
Donor countries, government agencies and aid groups are to meet at an Afghan security conference in Tokyo next month to thrash out burning security issues, including plans for former combatants.
"Former combatants have been returning to violence in every country where there has been a civil war, and this is also an issue in Afghanistan," Quentier said on Wednesday. "This is something we will be looking at."
Of the 50,000 former combatants who have joined the disarmament project, 75 percent have found no sustainable income, she said.
One of those who has succeeded is Ahmed Ferdin, a 25-year-old who fought under slain anti-Taliban leader Ahmed Shah Massood and launched raids on the toppled regime's forces from the same mountains where Taliban remnants now hide.
"We had to give up our weapons because we are no longer fighting against foreign countries, like the Russians, and have no civil war," said Ferdin, who employs four workers at a tailoring shop he has opened in Herat.
"But owning this shop is 100 percent better than before because we don't like to fight," he said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese