Fahim expressed the wish to build an Afghan army of around 250,000 men. After the negotiations, The Telegraph described Fahim as someone who is popularly known as "the village and Pansher valley idiot," but who actually very shrewd. When the first foreign troops of the peacekeeping mission arrived on 20 December 2001, Fahim said "They won't be needed for security." "They are here because they want to be," and because the United Nations Security Council sent them to Afghanistan to prevent another civil war, Fahim said, but insisted that their presence was merely symbolic and that the foreign troops were not supposed to use force. "Some ministers in the new government who have always lived outside the country are worried about security and they feel they need the peacekeepers for protection, but when they arrive here they will see that the situation is OK and that it is not necessary" Fahim added, possibly hinting at Chairman Karzai who lived for years in Pakistan. The heavily armed units of northern alliance soldiers who swept into Kabul will be withdrawn from the streets, Fahim added, but they will not leave the capital. There was not only a disagreement between Fahim and Karzai about the size of the peacekeeping force, but also about the duration they were supposed to stay in Afghanistan. Fahim indicated that the international forces should leave after six years, but Karzai said that they would stay "as long as we need them, six years as a minimum". As Defense Minister, Fahim had the task to unite the country's disparate armed groups. A daunting task, since Fahim's own troops had so far shied away from vast stretches of southern and eastern lawless lands under the sway of armed former Taliban warriors, most of them members of the dominant Pashtun ethnic group. Still, although a sometimes bumbling and awkward figure in public, and especially unpopular with the Uzbek minority, Fahim quietly had gained control of the Northern Alliance's fractious military commanders. He continued to hold this control, even when Abdul Rashid Dostum, the most powerful Uzbek warlord who had taken control of the city of Mazar-e-Sharif and who was very critical of the Bonn Agreement, was appointed his deputy. But the cooperation between the two strongmen didn't start easy, already after a month forces of Dostum were clashing with forces of Fahim over control of a district in Kunduz Province. The