KABUL, Afghanistan — President Ashraf Ghani has ordered a top-to-bottom review of the operations of Afghanistan’s defense forces, including discussing the resumption of controversial night raids banned by his predecessor.
The move appears aimed at revamping the military for the fight against the Taliban amid new indications that U.S. and international forces will play a greater role than initially envisaged after the 13-year U.S.-led combat mission formally ends next month.
The wholesale review is already underway, presidential spokesman Nafizullah Salarzai told The Associated Press, saying Ghani had instructed the National Security Council to “work on a manual of guidelines and standards for military operations.”
Under new guidelines quietly approved by President Barack Obama, U.S. troops may once again engage Taliban fighters, not just al-Qaida terrorists, U.S. administration officials confirmed last week. Until Obama broadened the guidelines, U.S. forces were to have limited Afghanistan operations to counterterrorism missions against al-Qaida after this year, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss Obama’s decisions.
The emerging rethink in both Kabul and the U.S. appears linked, at least in part, to this year’s successes by jihadi radicals in Syria and especially Iraq — which have made the December 2011 pullout from Iraq seem less successful and forced a re-engagement there by the West.
Salarzai would not give precise details of what military procedures were under review, though he said the discussions include a possible lifting of the ban on night raids. First Deputy President Abdul Rashid Dostum said the raids might resume early next year.
Both underlined that the ban has not yet been lifted. “This is being worked on and is not yet final,” Salarzai said.
Resuming night raids would be a significant shift. The operations, in which Afghan and U.S. Special Forces entered homes to search for insurgents under cover of darkness using night-vision goggles, were banned by former president Hamid Karzai in 2011.
The raids were highly unpopular with the Afghan public, with many people viewing them as a violation of privacy and of the traditional sequestering of women. The military, however, regarded them as essential to the anti-Taliban fight, and has been lobbying to resume them ever since.
Salarzai gave no timetable for the review, saying only that Ghani “will personally look at that manual to ensure it will not cause any risk to Afghan civilians or security forces.”
The overhaul appears to include every aspect of the way the Afghan military operates, from training to staffing issues to battlefield tactics. The military has faced a host of issues even as it has won some praise after taking the lead in fighting the Taliban over the past year.
