Afghan War Blog

Members of the 8th Special Operations Kandak provide training to a contingent of the Afghan Local Police (ALP). Another Militia? It ap...

Kunduz CIVCAS Event. An airstrike took place during the recent attack on a Taliban position in Kunduz city where two American Special...

The Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) have not quite been up to the task of finding, fixing, and finishing the Taliban a...

Khost Protection Force & the CIA - Part 1. A regional counterterrorism pursuit team set up in Khost province by the CIA has been prob...

Foreign Troops Deploy to Kunar.  Provincial security officials say that over 150 foreign troops have been deployed to the city of Assadabad...

A recent news article by Carlo Munoz in  Stars and Stripes  (August 8, 2015) informs us about militias in northern Afghanistan.  "The...

ALP Graduation in Shah Joy District Militia forces have had a mixed performance in Afghanistan. Many of the attempts to establish local ...

A new militia group formed in Mazar-e-Sharif has Afghan government officials worried. The members say they have formed up their group to ...

Afghanistan has a long history of the use of locally-based militias to keep areas secure and loyal to the Afghan central government. The p...

The Panjshir Valley, just north of Kabul, is renowned for being just one of two provinces that never fell to Taliban rule. As Afghanistan mo...

The Marines are pushing a program in Afghanistan called the Interim Security Critical Infrastructure (ISCI) .  The ISCI was started (as best...

Militias are a mixed blessing in Afghanistan.  On one hand they can provide the security that the central Afghan government fails to provide...

Matthieu Aikins has wrote a piece on the background of the dispute between Karzai and the west concerning private contracting security firms...

Armed militias have threatened the stability and peace of northern Afghanistan.  The turmoil of the militias preying on the population and t...

Militias or "laskhars", in the frontier regions of Pakistan are having some success in fighting off the Taliban.  Read more in ...

Oxfam Australia has come out against community defense initiatives in Afghanistan citing the dangerous aspects of militias and lack of ISAF ...

A village in Konduz Province has formed a militia to oppose the spread of Taliban influence.  Read more in "Into Taliban Territory: The...

American troops are partnering with many different types of Afghan units in an attempt to quell the Taliban insurgency.  One such "part...

A recent posting by the Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN) questions the support of militias in northern Afghanistan by U.S. Army Special F...

A militia force in Shahabuddin, northern Afghanistan has been supported by the coalition forces in an attempt to provide security to this ge...