[R-G] Afghanistan: chaos central

[Sid Shniad]

Le Monde Diplomatique                                                     February 2009 



As the US ponders doubling its troops, the Taliban rules again 


Afghanistan: chaos central 



A correspondent looks back at the deterioration across the country over the past three years: the resurgence of both the Taliban and the old corrupt elites, the failure of the occupation forces, and the worsening conditions of life for everybody else 



By Chris Sands 



As the summer of 2005 faded, everyone in Kabul had forgotten there was a war on. American soldiers bought carpets in Chicken Street bazaar; mercenaries downed vodka in restaurants before wandering upstairs to sleep with Chinese prostitutes. The brothels were in the same neighbourhoods as the mansions that militia commanders were building themselves with CIA funds and drug money. Back then, this city was ideal for post-conflict profiteering. Hastily created NGOs continued to flood in, so did journalists eager to write about the local golf course and the suave president. Victory had been declared. But the Taliban knew their time was coming again. The warning signs were around for anyone who cared to look. 



I’d been in Afghanistan under a week when aid groups revealed that deteriorating security threatened their projects. Soon after, the governor of Maidan Wardak, a province bordering Kabul, told me all was okay there. Then the PR finished and he said a new generation of militants had shown its face, young men disillusioned with the occupation, some trained in Pakistan. Trouble was evident near Jalalabad, where a villager complained that his cousin had vanished after being arrested by the Americans three years earlier. We talked in a dirt yard full of kids and they were the only ones who expected his return. 



Kandahar is the spiritual heartland of the Taliban, and in late 2005, the movement was drawing strength from its birthplace. There I saw a reality our politicians had made us believe did not exist. A man working at the football stadium reminisced about the executions on the pitch. If capital punishment was still common, he said, the new government wouldn’t be so crooked. (I heard this repeatedly until it was said across the country.) The police were the worst offenders, looking for bribes to supplement their low wages. Another Kandahari had joined the Taliban as a teenager in the 1990s. “At that time we were very happy,” he said. “It was like we were very poor and had suddenly found a lot of money.” Insurgent attacks and violent crime were already a problem in Kandahar, yet the Taliban were rarely the subject of people’s fury; they blamed the government and its allies. 



Taliban on the rise 



In the spring of 2006, Kabul’s imams complained publicly that officials were corrupt and alcohol was easily available. They were also angry at house raids by foreign soldiers in rural areas and accused them of molesting women. Most said the time for jihad was approaching. 



When rioters tore through Kabul on 29 May, it was no big surprise. The spark was a fatal traffic accident involving US troops, but the explosion had been primed long before. Protesters shouted “Death to America”. The situation was now ripe for the Taliban to harness national discontent. They were soon fighting pitched battles with British soldiers in Helmand, and in areas close to Kabul, people warned the government might collapse. I couldn’t find anyone in Ghazni who admitted to taking the insurgents’ side: they said poverty and a lack of reconstruction caused people to rebel. Looking at the broken roads and crumbling homes, I saw what they meant. Police had tried to stop the Taliban’s favourite mode of transport by banning motorbikes in one district. The militants responded by imposing travel restrictions on everybody; in the mosques they would tell worshippers not to drive. 



The more the Taliban turned to violence, the more they were seen as a force that could not be stopped. The bloodshed made people long for the stability of the old regime, if not its repressive laws. Villagers across the south and east had gained almost nothing from the US-led invasion, and many had lost good security. Among people in Logar, bordering Kabul, the anger was palpable. “Our biggest problem is with the foreigners – we just hate them. Our families, our children, our women – everyone hates them,” said an elder. “Let’s pretend I’m a young man,” said another. “I have graduated from school, but I can’t go to university and there is no factory to work in. So how can I feed myself? I can just join the insurgents – it’s easy.” 



The Taliban first rose up in 1994 when Afghanistan was controlled by warlords who previously had CIA support. Mullah Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil lost his father during the Soviet occupation and joined the Taliban “to give the country freedom”. He went on to become Mullah Omar’s spokesman and later his foreign minister. We talked in January 2007 when Mutawakil was being kept under watch in Kabul. He knew his government had made mistakes, letting jihadis from across the world train and fight here. But he was adamant that the international community’s decision to isolate the regime had only made it more extreme. 



Kandahar was frightening in the spring of 2007. The police were accused of kidnappings and robberies, and the scars of suicide bombings pockmarked the streets. Residents admired the Taliban: the alternatives were dire. Democracy meant anarchy and, in the villages, a brutal occupation. “If I sit at a table with an American and he says he has brought us freedom, I will tell him he has fucked us,” said a father-of-two. He had fled Kandahar during the Taliban government because he was against its restrictions on education. “But I was never worried about my family,” he added. “Every single minute of the last three years I have been very worried.” 



A religious leader from the district of Panjwayi described how 18 of his relatives had been killed in an air strike. Reports of civilians bombed from above were frequent. First villagers or local officials would say innocent people were dead and Nato or US-led coalition would deny it. Then all parties would agree civilian blood had been spilt, but argue over casualty figures. Hamid Karzai kept demanding that the carnage stop, but it never did. 



Ceasefire called 



In Kabul, a senator from Helmand said it was killing the entire country. He was among members of parliament’s upper chamber who had called for a ceasefire and negotiations with insurgent groups. They had also said a date should be set for the withdrawal of foreign forces. By then the parliament was a symbol of the Taliban’s resurgence. Police in riot gear stood watch and the building was falling to pieces. Not only was there sympathy for the militants inside, there were also men whose viciousness had caused the discontent that helped create the movement. Most Afghans wanted the warlords brought to justice, but the international community had let them stand for election, and here they were showing off their power. 



Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef used to serve as the Taliban’s ambassador to Pakistan and, after a spell in Guantanamo, lived under constant surveillance in Kabul. He said men with blood on their hands were now the West’s great hope. “At the time of the Taliban, if someone killed another person it was possible to capture him, send him to court, punish him and execute him. Today, if someone goes to a village and kills 100 people, tomorrow he is given more privileges by the government. The Americans and the world community brought the warlords to power.” 



Poor forced out of areas 



By summer 2007, suicide bombings were the weapon of choice and they frightened Afghans, who had never seen them during the Soviet occupation. Men who hated the Taliban were starting to resemble them. A former Northern Alliance commander from the province of Badakhshan said: “Now when any foreigner is killed, every Afghan says ‘praise be to God’.” We were chatting at his home in an area of Kabul where the poor had been forced out so warlords and foreign contractors could move in. 



Afghanistan’s Sikh and Hindu community had been about 50,000 before 1992. Now it was down to 5,000. The exodus had been instigated by the Mujahideen, not the Taliban. With the same old faces back in power again, no one was happy. “The Taliban told us we had to do all our religious ceremonies in private, but they did not stop us from doing them. It was a government that was not recognised by the world, but it was better than now,” said a Sikh. 



Female MPs said they felt ashamed for not being able to help their constituents. One said she was sure the time was approaching when she would be a prisoner in her own home again. “For all this I blame America. When the Russians were here, the people picked up guns to fight them. Now people are picking up guns to fight the Americans,” she said. “Soon my daughter will finish school and then she wants to start private education,” said another. “But I cannot let her because I cannot give her a bodyguard.” 



Some are above the law 



A judge at the Supreme Court told me that some people here are above the law. He would not name names, but described the control that warlords have over his colleagues as “totally ordinary”. Immediately after, the Taliban attacked a luxury hotel. A friend of mine reassured me that, as a Pashtun, he would offer me protection. “Mullah Omar destroyed Afghanistan because of Osama bin Laden, but he didn’t give him up,” he said. A day later a Taliban commander from Helmand described how the resistance had struggled to find support in the early years. But after innocent people had been detained or killed, the jihad had burst into life. Now even the Afghan army secretly gave them bullets and treated their wounded. 



In April I drove from Kabul to Paghman and found a pile of burnt trash where the offices of Zafar Radio used to be. Masked men had torched the premises for being “un-Islamic”. In July, a car bomber attacked the Indian embassy, scattering corpses. People were angry with the government, saying it was unable to provide security. In an area of the capital where Hamid Karzai had narrowly escaped assassination, a doctor sold samosas from a roadside stall; it was the only job he could get. 



Last year was the grimmest since the invasion. The US military’s total of 113 killed up to September was two more than for the whole of 2007. As for civilians, 1,445 were killed from January to August 2008, according to the UN. Now in 2009, the Taliban’s strength is growing on Kabul’s doorstep, in Maidan Wardak and Logar. The main highway south is impossibly risky. In the east, the rebels have taken new ground as they move freely across the border. In the north, warlords are reasserting their dominance. Kabul is a claustrophobic, paranoid place. More foreign troops are due. But they risk the same backlash as the Soviets, and the long-term aim remains unclear. 



Original text in English 



Chris Sands is a journalist