Security fears

For months now, the Afghan government has been promoting a "yes we can" message in the country’s provinces - trying to signal strength and confidence.

A spokesman for the interior ministry told the Deutsche Welle that the Afghan security forces were well-prepared and had long proved themselves in Kabul where they "have borne responsibility for over two years and the international troops are only here for emergencies."

He added that the ISAF troops would remain present in the areas under Afghan control from July. Moreover, he pointed out that those areas belonged to the calmest in Afghanistan.

Fears for stability in remote regions

However, some local politicians, far from Kabul, worry the situation will become less stable when the international troops withdraw.

"Our security depends on the situation in the neighboring provinces," said Muhammad Asef Mubalegh, the deputy governor of the province of Bamian. "If the police and army are not strengthened throughout Afghanistan we won’t be able to guarantee security here."

Officials in other areas such as Herat in the west, Mazar-i-Sharif in the north and Lashkargah and Mehtarlam in the south and east have similar concerns. They say that the local police are not sufficiently well equipped.

Meanwhile, Qayum Momand, a political expert at the Afghan Research and Development Institute in Kabul, said there was a much deeper problem, which was that "many members of the army and police are loyal to various political groups and not to the nation as a whole."

As long as there is no national army and police in Afghanistan - in the sense that they are loyal to the Afghan people - there will be no security in Afghanistan," he insisted.

Kabul accused of withholding information

Politicians in Kabul are aware of this problem but they argue that a loyal army cannot be built from one day to the next in a poor and divided country such as Afghanistan. However, critics of President Karzai's government say it is not helping matters by not telling the truth about security matters.

"The government says it has considerably weakened the Taliban but the opposite is true," said Qayum Momand. "We can see that the Taliban are not only strong in the south and the east but also in the north."

He said that people were becoming increasingly worried about this and about the government's misinformation. Moreover, they wondered whether the transition to Afghan control was happening because the government is strong enough or because the international community has had its fill of Afghanistan after 10 years.

Author: Ratbil Shamel / act
Editor: Ziphora Robina