No sign of Afghan reconciliation

By Charles Haviland BBC correspondent in Chaghcharan

Representatives of two antagonistic militia factions in the central Afghan province of Ghor have said they are not yet ready for reconciliation, six days after heavy fighting around the provincial capital, Chaghcharan.

Their remarks came as several hundred troops of Afghanistan's new National Army arrived to try to reassert central authority.

The tiny town of Chaghcharan, at the heart of vast, remote and unruly province, seems to symbolise the problems Afghan President Hamid Karzai is having in bringing into his fold men who've borne weapons for, in some cases, decades.

Here, as in towns throughout Afghanistan, the men with guns are the men that wield power. Last week, tensions between them, seemingly over job allocations in the local administration, spilt over into violence which left at least two people died.

Civil enough

On Thursday, representatives of the two main feuding factions sat side by side in the massive stone-built Governor's office in Chaghcharan.

The Afghan National army is an ethnic mix

On one side was Abdul Salaam Khan, whose men were victorious in last week's hostilities; on the other, an envoy from the ousted military commander, Ahmad.

They were civil enough with each other. But each side blames the other for the fighting.

"Any reconciliation will depend on the will of the people, not me," Commander Khan declared. He insisted the clashes were a "people's uprising" against Commander Ahmad and two other officials.

"We can't immediately make friends," echoed the envoy of Commander Ahmad, who remains encamped some way outside the town.

Both commanders belonged to the same militia division, and both still keep hundreds of men under arms.

Difficult task

Chaghcharan itself - little more than a village of mud houses - is, on the surface, calm. Local people said the fighting had been some distance away.

The government is confident there will no more violence in Chaghcharan

A battalion of the fledgling Afghan National Army has just arrived to tackle the difficult task of asserting central control.

It's backed up by about 20 members of the US Armed Forces, who've come as advisers.

The ANA commander, General Aminullah Patyaneh, proudly pointed out his battalion's rich mix of ethnic Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks.

They used to be in different militia factions, he said, including Hezb-e Islami which is now implacably opposed to the authorities in Kabul.

The ANA represents the Afghanistan of the future, the country that President Karzai and international well-wishers are keenly trying to build.

But Chaghcharan has underlying tensions.

A visiting Afghan government minister said reconciliation would be easy. But the governor of Ghor Province, Ibrahim Malikzada, angrily dismissed that attitude.

"It's easy to talk," he said, looking dejected. "President Karzai can be as optimistic as he likes. But it's simply not stable here."

A visiting official from the United Nations' programme to disarm militias, Basil Massey, agreed.

"There's a sense of pride and revenge, and if we don't go in for disarmament, there is likely to be a conflict restarting in this area," he warned. He hopes to extend the programme here as soon as possible.

Everyone pays lip service to disarmament. Commander Khan says he'll disarm and go back to tending his sheep - but the other side must do so, too.

Many analysts say disarming the militias, some of whose leaders are in top government positions, is a problem more intractable than the war against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

The people of Ghor province might agree.