US-Backed Armies Firing Blanks ('challenge' of creating national armies)

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0902-24.htm

Published on Thursday, September 2, 2004 by the Inter Press Service

US-Backed Armies Firing Blanks
by Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS - Fear of being linked to U.S.-backed regimes that lack authority has inhibited potential recruits in violence-prone Iraq and Afghanistan from heeding calls to join nascent or rebuilding national armies, say U.S. academics and political and military analysts.
''The challenge of creating national armies in both countries is fundamentally linked to the challenge of legitimacy for the new (U.S.-installed) governments,'' says Margaret Karns, who lectures on international organisations, foreign policy and diplomacy at the University of Dayton in Ohio State.

''Low legitimacy'' for the governments of President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan and Prime Minister Iyad Allawi of Iraq ''translates into limited willingness of individuals to sign up for the military, knowing that they might become targets of groups opposed to either government,'' Karns told IPS.

Since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Washington has been struggling to create a 40,000-strong military force to take over security in the war-torn country.

But according to Brigadier General James Schwitters, who is part of the U.S. command responsible for training Iraq's new army, only 3,000 of the soldiers could be regarded as having been militarily trained, as of early August.



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had been firing blanks; we wouldn't be in this mess now. In fact, I curse the Jap pilot that shot Poppy Bush down for having LOUSY EYESIGHT! Bush 41 SURVIVED!