More weapons surrendered

Former militia commanders in Afghanistan's eastern province of Nangarhar have voluntarily surrendered a number of weapons to the Disbandment of Illegal Armed Groups (DIAG) programme, officials from the UN-backed initiative said on Thursday in the Afghan capital, Kabul. "Nine former commanders surrendered around 25,000 rounds of ammunition, as well as 77 light and heavy weapons, including mortars and rocket-propelled grenades to the DIAG weapons collection team in Nangarhar province," Ahmad Jan Nawzadi, public information officer at the DIAG programme, explained. The arms will be transferred to the government’s Pol-i-Charki central weapons collection point in Kabul. Some of the weapons will be re-commissioned for use by the army, the rest destroyed, according to DIAG officials. Two days earlier, elders from the Mangal tribe in the southeastern province of Paktia surrendered three Soviet-era T-54 tanks as well as a number of weapons to the DIAG collection team. The handover took place in the Said Karam district. The tanks have been decommissioned and are to be removed to the heavy weapons cantonment site in Gardez, capital of Paktia. Following the disarmament of Afghan militia forces under the UN-backed Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) programme completed in late June 2005, the Afghan government and the UN are now focusing on the DIAG initiative. More than 60,000 former combatants had been disarmed under the DDR initiative, which took almost 20 months and cost more than US $150 million to complete. In addition to assisting ex-combatants, about 35,000 light and medium weapons and 11,000 heavy weapons were collected across the country by the programme. The Afghanistan Compact - a multi-billion dollar UN-backed blueprint for continued international engagement over the next five years - commits the war-ravaged country to disbanding all illegal armed groups by the end of 2007. But the challenge of collecting weapons in a country scarred by over two decades of conflict and internal strife is far from over. There are still between 1,800 and 2,000 illegal armed groups threatening a fragile stability across the country, according to DIAG.