AFGHAN FORCES AND FEARS

Kabul - Afghanistan : Around the time President Trump announced his new strategy for Afghanistan, a delegation of American and Afghan military officials arrived in New Delhi.

They wanted to learn more about Indian Territorial Army, which has been deployed in contentious areas to ease the burden on India's regular army.

The American military has turned to that force as a potential model for how to maintain the Afghan government's waning  control -without too high a cost-  in difficult parts of Afghanistan at a time when the Taliban are resurgent.

But diplomats and human rights groups worry that the proposal looks much like an older model.

The Afghan Local Police, local militias, who were trained and paid by the Americans but were accused a long series of human violations and sexual abuse of boys.

The size of the new force has yet to be decided, but it could number more than 20,000, according to a senior Afghan official who was granted anonymity because the concept was still being discussed.

The new local force would be under the command of the army, and recruits would go through similar training as regular soldiers.

But the new force would serve primarily in the local communities, holding areas cleared by the regular army, whose units would take on a primarily offensive role.

Afghan officials said the new approach would in fact help rein in unwieldy array of militias rather than empower them to commit abuses.