Residents and officials warn that the rush to recruit local defence forces around Kandahar following the arrival of last year’s surge of American troops had given rise to poorly-controlled armed gangs.

They listed armed robberies, thefts and assaults by the militias, saying the groups had become the main worry of many residents in the province’s rural districts…

Many Afghans view the forces as a throwback to the civil war when warlords maintained their own marauding private armies. They are also a reminder of Russian-backed militias which operated around Kandahar in the late 1980s…

Engineer Abdul Qadr, director of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission in Kandahar, said the freedom of the ALP was attracting the less disciplined members of the more formal Afghan National Police.