A Slow Road to Self-reliance - Trudy Rubin, Philadelphia Inquirer opinion.
The six young men looked too scrawny to fulfill the high hopes placed on their shoulders.
They were members of the Afghan Public Protection Program, an auxiliary police force recruited from local villages in strategically important Wardak province. The force has been compared (mistakenly) to the Sunni militias that helped U.S. troops stem al-Qaeda violence in Iraq.
The Wardak program is a pilot project designed to provide local volunteers to help hold areas that have been cleared of Taliban by US and Afghan troops. They are trained by the Afghan national police, who in turn are trained by a team of US Special Forces. The special-ops guys call the volunteers "the AP3" or "the Guardians."
"We want to do this all over the country," said Maj. Gen. Michael Tucker, deputy commander of US forces in Afghanistan, referring to the project. Yet some news reports cite the slow progress of this experiment as one reason his boss, Gen. David McKiernan, was suddenly fired on Monday.
So what are we to make of the Guardians of Wardak? If they're so important, why is the project advancing at such a measured pace?
More at The Philadelphia Inquirer.