[R-G] Afghans back Taliban, says abducted senator

[Anthony Fenton]

Afghans back Taliban, says abducted senator

Chris Sands, Foreign Correspondent

     * Last Updated: October 02. 2008 11:36PM UAE / GMT

http://www.thenational.ae/article/20081002/FOREIGN/285390611/1011

Abdul Wali Ahmadzai was kidnapped by the Taliban in July. Chris  
Sands / The National

KABUL // It was early one morning this summer when Abdul Wali Ahmadzai  
began to understand the true strength of the Taliban in his province.

As the senator for Logar travelled to a meeting, eight men armed with  
weapons including Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenade launchers  
stopped his convoy on a dirt road.

He was held hostage for more than two months and would come away  
having witnessed a reality some insist does not exist.

“The important point is that the people support the Taliban. This is  
the main problem: now the people do not like the government and they  
support the Taliban,” he said in an interview.

Logar province lies on Kabul’s southern border and after years of  
being portrayed as relatively safe, it has been thrust into the  
limelight by a number of brazen insurgent attacks.

Mr Ahmadzai’s kidnapping came in July, but the warning signs were  
around for a while. By the time he joined the senate as part of  
Afghanistan’s 2005 parliamentary elections, he was already noticing an  
alarming trend.

“When Hamid Karzai became president he made good relationships with  
commanders in the north and gave them lots of money and positions. But  
he did nothing for the south and east,” he said.

“I told [the government] please be careful because if the Taliban come  
back to Logar just once, it will be very difficult to stop them. But  
they didn’t care, they didn’t listen.
Now you can see everyone is upset with the government and they have  
stopped talking and started fighting.”

Mr Ahmadzai, 40, had been an aid worker and a pharmacist before opting  
– reluctantly, he says – for a career in politics. Despite the dangers  
involved in his new job, he travelled twice a week from Kabul to his  
home province until that fateful day in July.

He stayed in Logar on the eve of his kidnapping. Then, accompanied by  
three bodyguards and two cars full of elders, he set out the next  
morning for a meeting with local officials. At 8am the gunmen were  
waiting for him, their faces covered. He refused to put up a fight.

“The Taliban have good intelligence. They know who is going out from  
the upper and lower houses of parliament, where they are going and  
when they are going,” he said.

He was soon handed over to a second group of insurgents. Over the two  
months he would be held at five or six different locations, always  
moving under the shelter of darkness. He stayed in empty homes and on  
one occasion was detained for 15 days near the office of a district  
governor.

“The government’s control was just on the main road and the places  
surrounded by walls and wire,” he said.

With him throughout was his driver, who had also been abducted. In the  
second half of their ordeal they were transferred to an area bordering  
the provinces of Ghazni, Paktia and Logar. Mr Ahmadzai claims hundreds  
of Taliban were living openly there, holding public meetings, mingling  
with the population and using police vehicles.

When both men were eventually released, the insurgents said it was  
part of an exchange deal in which three militants were freed from  
prison. The senator denies this, but feels no animosity towards the  
men who took him hostage.

For Mr Ahmadzai the experience has simply confirmed what he had  
suspected two years ago, when he first noticed the Taliban re-emerging.

Now with his seven children in Kabul, he is afraid to return to Logar  
and doubtful that he will stand in the next parliamentary elections  
scheduled for 2010.

“We represent the people, they chose us, and we can solve their  
problems. But when we talk to the president he doesn’t listen. One  
Talib even came and said he voted for me, so I represent their side as  
well,” he said.

“If the situation continues like this, I don’t want to stand again.  
There are two reasons: one is security, the other is that I can’t work  
for my people. And the elections will not be fair because there is no  
one who can [safely] vote in the south and east.”

Mr Ahmadzai said he was angry with the government, not the insurgents.

“I have a good from memory from those Taliban because from the  
beginning until the end they treated me like a guest,” he said.

csands at thenational.ae