I read once, probably a couple of years ago, about a French sociologist that, during a related meeting in Canada, proposed that the best way to empower the populations under threat in Sudan was to give weapons to everyone of them. Regardless the impression it caused in me, I failed in the moment to save that piece of news, never to find it again; yet that proposal and its implications still come to my mind from time to time as a caveat about what empowerment could mean for some.
So it is just natural to revive such reflections after the report about program on "community guards" to be implemented in Afghanistan, according to the January 12 edition of the FT. The reporter mentions the fears of future lawless militias, the distrust to generate in different regions of the country, and the international shame such a measure implies. It is also highlighted that not everyone is suited to use a gun, since it is not only a matter of owning but of training and control.
But the author never takes a step further into the ethical entailments of arming civil populations - or creating civil armies. What kind if weapon would be brought through weapons? Is that sustainable or durable? Would it better-off the lives of civilians? Is it the only way?
It is very difficult to have an answer to those questions, or the options to solve the conflict in Afghanistan. In a country already intervened by the US and NATO forces, it is not out of mind to think that the only consideration of such a solution is a symptom of failure, and that, in their desperateness, some civilians can do the trick to protect foreign troops withdraw and make the body count look more like a war and less like a genocide - by now.