If Afghan government security forces aren't doing it...

..turn to the people on their own ground:

As Afghans Resist Taliban, U.S. Spurs Rise of Militias

ACHIN, Afghanistan — American and Afghan officials have begun helping a number of anti-Taliban militias that have independently taken up arms against insurgents in several parts of Afghanistan, prompting hopes of a large-scale tribal rebellion against the Taliban.

The emergence of the militias, which took some leaders in Kabul by surprise, has so encouraged the American and Afghan officials that they are planning to spur the growth of similar armed groups across the Taliban heartland in the southern and eastern parts of the country.

The American and Afghan officials say they are hoping the plan, called the Community Defense Initiative, will bring together thousands of gunmen to protect their neighborhoods from Taliban insurgents...

By harnessing the militias, American and Afghan officials hope to rapidly increase the number of Afghans fighting the Taliban. That could supplement the American and Afghan forces already here, and whatever number of American troops President Obama might decide to send. The militias could also help fill the gap while the Afghan Army and police forces train and grow — a project that could take years to bear fruit.

The Americans hope the militias will encourage an increasingly demoralized Afghan population to take a stake in the war against the Taliban...

The Americans say they will keep the groups small and will limit the scope of their activities to protecting villages and manning checkpoints. For now, they are not arming the groups because they already have guns. The Americans also say they will tie them directly to the Afghan government. These checks aim to avoid repeating mistakes of the past — either creating more Afghan warlords, who have defied the government’s authority for years, or arming Islamic militants, some of whom came back to haunt the United States...

The first phase of the Afghan plan, now being carried out by American Special Forces soldiers, is to set up or expand the militias in areas with a population of about a million people. Special Forces soldiers have been fanning out across the countryside, descending from helicopters into valleys where the residents have taken up arms against the Taliban and offering their help...

In the Pashtun-dominated areas of the south [emphasis added] and east, the anti-Taliban militias are being led by elders from local tribes. The Pashtun militias represent a reassertion of the country’s age-old tribal system, which binds villages and regions under the leadership of groups of elders. The tribal networks have been alternately decimated and co-opted by Taliban insurgents. Local tribal leaders, while still powerful, cannot count on the allegiance of all of their tribes’ members.

Militias have begun taking up arms against the Taliban in several places where insurgents have gained a foothold, including the provinces of Nangarhar and Paktia...

More from David Ignatius of the Washington Post:

Afghan tribes to the rescue?

While military officers wait for President Obama to conclude his agonizingly slow review of Afghanistan policy, they've been reading a paper by an Army Special Forces operative arguing that the only hope for success in that country is to work with tribal leaders.

This tribal approach has widespread support, in principle. The problem is that, in practice, the United States has often moved in the opposite direction in recent years. Rather than supporting tribal leaders, American policies have sometimes had the effect of undermining their ability to stand up to the Taliban.

The paper by Maj. Jim Gant, "One Tribe at a Time," has been spinning around the Internet for a month. It contends that in an Afghanistan that has never had a strong central government, "nothing else will work" than a decentralized, bottom-up approach. "We must support the tribal system because it is the single, unchanging political, social and cultural reality in Afghan society," he insists...

As tribal politics have come back in fashion in Afghanistan over the past year, a number of experiments have been launched. The Afghan Public Protection Program is working with tribal leaders in Wardak province and elsewhere. The Community Defense Initiative is recruiting and training local militias in western Afghanistan. Across the country, CAAT units (short for Counterinsurgency Advisory and Assistance Team) are working on local development and security projects.

The U.S. approach in Afghanistan now is a mix of national and local, government and tribe, top-down and bottom-up. There are frantic plans to expand the national army and police, even as the Northern Alliance rearms its fighters. That's one reason Gen. Stanley McChrystal's strategy is confusing -- it's going in several directions at once, looking for game-changing opportunities to halt the Taliban's advance.

This jumble of ad hoc ideas isn't necessarily a bad thing...

Post from this April:

The US and the Afghan Public Protection Force

AKA in some quarters as "militias"...

It's worth emphasizing Major Gant's point that the Afghan state, from its founding by Ahmad Shah Durrani in 1747, has only had a rather loose grip on people outside the (few) major urban centres.