There are no reliable statistics in Afghanistan. There has been none even prior to the decades of turmoil. Afghans are free from even the bonds of birth and death certificates. In Afghanistan you are born freely and die freely and you do not need a certificate for your burial.

Nobody knows for sure, how many men serve the many armies that are earnestly busy fighting each other or colluding with each other against a third warlord's military men. There was a time that such data was not needed. It was taken for granted that all Afghans were soldiers.

Presently, however, Afghanistan is a country with many armies , yet she is in dire need of having a national army. Void of the national army, the country is forced to rely on many local armies and militias controlled by a variety of warlords. These micro-armies are either in conflict or collusion with each other. The end result of the situation is an eerie balancing of power based on regions and ethnicity of the gunmen.

The national administration is supposedly in charge of a national army that is in the making. The living warlord, Marshal Fahim, in charge of most of the national military has built up his own military power on the basis of the popularity of his now dead commander, a martyr, Ahmad Shah Masoud, who still reigns over the minds of the minority Tajiks in Afghanistan and whose pictures have control over much of the government business in the capital city. Fahim, his deputy, who took over after Masoud's demise, now heads the ministry of defense. He is considered also a political rival to the ruling leader Karzai. Efforts of the administration coupled with the actual and promised help of the United States and some members of the United Nations Assistance and Security Force in the country have yielded in training of no more than 1000 troops for the national army.

But the real power lies, besides the US forces that are engaged in fighting remnants of Taleban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, with a multiplicity of Afghan armies each led by a warlord in the east, south, west, north and central Afghanistan. Men in these armies have pledged loyalty first and foremost to their commanding warlords, as warlords. On the surface some of these warlords have pledged to help the central government, but the central government has not been able to receive effective help from them when needed.

To site some examples one is tempted to mention Padshah Khan Zadran, a renegade warlord, who began as an ally of the central government and ended an enemy to the government's appointee as the governor of Paktya. Padshah Khan Zadran controls a small but persistent army of some 5000 fighters. He and his fighters had colluded with the US forces to fight Al-Qaeda and he himself has defied authority of the central government.

Then there is Hazrat Ali in Nangrahar. He controls an army of about eight thousand. Located in a strategically important region of the country in proximity of Pakistan and Tora Bora, a former campsite of Al-Qaeda, he is supposedly in alliance with the central government. Yet his forces would fight for him rather than Karzai.

In the north, there are the Uzbek and Tajik forces of General Dostum and Ustad Ata Mohammad, who had fought each other more than once for territory and whose subordinate commanders are still engaged in battles and skirmishes in many places in the north. The two warlords control armies as large as eight to ten thousand men each. Supposedly General Dostum is also the Deputy Minister of Defense, but in reality of this office he has only used its title. Witnesses have reported changes in attitude in this long time warlord who was famous for his tyrannical rule. But even so, war still erupts in his region and he has not been able to prevent it

In central Afghanistan, in the fateful valley of Bamiyan, there are Hazara warlords with contingencies of Hazara fighters, loyal to their leaders and wary of the incursions by Tajiks and Uzbeks. Presently there are no Pashtun forces in the area to threaten this beautiful, but distant region of the country. The Hazara fighters are also estimated in thousands. Many were systematically trained during the past two decades. They are fierce fighters and their allegiance is first and foremost to their warlords and their religion.

In the South, Gul Agha Shairzai the governor of Kandahar is in charge. He controls an army of over 10,000. A Pashtun himself, his army consists of Pashtun fighters who support their commander Shairzai first and Karzai second. Shairzai rules over a troubled area from where Taleban rose to power. It is adjacent to the provinces of Uruzgan, Zabul and Helmand where also the Taleban had influence and considerable power. Shairzai' allegiances were expressedly with the former King and now he is considered a supporter of Karzai as this is what is expected of him because of his ethnicity.

The other armies in Afghanistan consist of the huge military machine under Ismail Khan, the governor of Herat province and a rival group headed by Amanullah who has fought Khan's forces in and around Shindund several times. Ismail Khan a famous Mujahid during the decade of war with the Soviet Union rose of civilian prominence when he took over as the governor of Herat during Rabbani's government. Then he was taken prisoner by an Uzbek warlord who handed him over to the Taleban. He lived in captivity for more than a year before managing to escape from under the Taleban's beards in Kandahar where he was detained. He lived in Iran until the defeat of the Taleban due to the US military action and reclaimed power in Herat. It is estimated that he controls an army of over 20,000 men. The last Loya Jirga in Kabul did not assign him any role in the central government and it was reported that he was not happy. The United States has placed a lot of importance in this man who rules one of the sensitive regions of the country close to Afghanistan's western borders with Iran.

And then there are smaller armies under smaller warlords in almost all other provinces of the country. These armies do not make the national army. Apparently also Hamid Karzai has not been able to tame these forces to the benefit of his central government's authority. Instead, it appears that he is looking forward to the completion of the long and arduous process of making the national army, man by man. Of these there are only 1000 so far. 10/05/02