Reedi Gul is probably dead now. Two weeks ago masked gunmen abducted the
24-year-old on a lonely mountain road in central Afghanistan. The next day
his father, Saleh Gul, received a phone call, and realised he was the real
target.
"I am an Afghan Muslim Talib," the voice announced. "If you want to see your
son alive, listen carefully."
Three weeks earlier Saleh Gul had been appointed governor of an
insurgent-infested district in Ghazni province. The Taliban demanded he quit
his job, pay a ransom, attack US forces and assassinate local officials.
Mr Gul paid $2,000 and resigned his position, but refused to kill. "I am not
a terrorist," he barked down the phone. So the Taliban added an impossible
demand: the freedom of an imprisoned commander.
Last Sunday their deadline passed. "Still no news," the anguished father
said four days later. "I think they have killed him by now." Mr Gul's face
was lined with worry but his voice rang with anger. "I had warned the
government this might happen. I told them Taliban was taking over. Why can't
they stop them?"
Brazenness
That question is resounding across Afghanistan following a summer of chaos.
In the south war has gripped Kandahar and Helmand provinces, where British
and Canadian troops are stationed. In the past fortnight Nato has launched a
blistering offensive, killing more than 500 Taliban, to stave off an attack
on Kandahar city - a previously unthinkable notion.
Elsewhere, suicide bombers are striking with Baghdad-like brazenness. In the
boldest attack yet, last week two American soldiers and 14 Afghans were
shredded by a huge blast outside the US embassy in Kabul, one of the
country's most tightly guarded areas.
Opium cultivation has soared. This year Afghanistan will produce more heroin
than western addicts can consume. The main hub of cultivation is
British-controlled Helmand. Since August 1 Britain and Canada have each lost
11 soldiers in combat, a high toll for what was originally presented as a
peacekeeping mission.
It was not meant to be like this. When American troops started to flounder
in Iraq after 2003 President George Bush lauded Afghanistan as a major
victory. When presidential and parliamentary elections passed peacefully,
his generals wrote the insurgency off. "The Taliban is a force in decline,"
declared Major General Eric Olson 18 months ago.
Today, to many observers those words look foolish. While northern and
western Afghanistan remain stable, President Hamid Karzai is isolated and
unpopular. Comparisons of the southern war with Vietnam are no longer
considered outlandish. And dismayed western diplomats - the architects of
reconstruction - are watching their plans go up in smoke. "Nobody saw this
coming. It's pretty dire," admitted one official in Kabul.
No single factor explains the slide. But some answers can be found in
Ghazni, a central province considered secure until earlier this year. Now it
is on the frontline of the Taliban advance, just a two-hour drive from
Kabul.
In the past two months the Taliban has swept across the southern half of the
province with kidnappings, assassinations and gun battles. American
officials believe Andar district, a few miles from their base in Ghazni
town, is the Taliban hub for four surrounding provinces. This week they
launched a drive in Andar, searching houses and raking buildings with
helicopter gunship fire into a Taliban compound. At least 35 people died
including a mother and two children.
"We've warned people they may see soldiers shooting in their villages. I
tell them this is the price of peace and freedom," said US commander
Lieutenant Colonel Steven Gilbert.
Travel along the Kabul-Kandahar highway that slices through Ghazni - once a
symbol of western reconstruction - has become a high-stakes game of power.
The Taliban sporadically mount checkpoints, frisking Afghans for ID cards,
phone numbers or any other sign of a link to the government or foreign
organisations. Those caught are beaten, kidnapped or killed. Foreigners
travel south by plane, passing high over the road they once boasted about.
In the surrounding villages people are frightened and angry. In Qala Bagh
district bands of 20 to 30 fighters descend at night. They demand food,
shelter or a son to join the fighting, said Maulvi Aladat, the new district
chief. A judge, a school principal and the local director of education have
been assassinated in the past two months. The two girls' schools are closed.
The government offers scant protection. Ghazni's untrained police are
outnumbered and outgunned. Huddled inside poorly protected compounds with
few radios or vehicles, they are little match for large Taliban squads armed
with machine guns and rocket propelled grenades. The US-trained Afghan army
is curiously absent. Ghazni has just 280 soldiers, according to the
governor, Sher Alam Ibrahimi. Although on paper the army has 35,000
soldiers, desertion rates are believed to be high.
Murky background
After his cousin was abducted by the Taliban, Yar Muhammad appealed to the
provincial and national authorities for help. None came. Days later the body
of his cousin - an education department official who offended by teaching
girls - was discovered on a stretch of desert. "The government did
absolutely nothing. They didn't even help to find the body," he said
bitterly.
Local government is plagued by corruption and weak leadership. Ibrahimi, a
former warlord, seems an unlikely candidate for governor with his grindingly
slow speech and murky background that includes allegations of war crimes.
Many believe Mr Karzai appointed him for his links to a more powerful
warlord now in parliament.
Disillusionment with the president, who once promised so much, is high. "We
are like a herd with no shepherd," said one elder. In desperation, his
government has doubled the number of police through the use of arbikays -
untrained tribal fighters paid directly by the governor. They are a mixed
blessing. On Wednesday Dawlat Khan, one of the arbikay commanders, stormed
into the police chief's office in Ghazni, bursting with anger. "The Taliban
attacked my house. My wife and children were inside. What sort of government
do we have that cannot protect us!" he yelled.
Mr Khan typifies the compromises Mr Karzai has had to make to maintain law
and order. A life-long warrior with a fierce and unsmiling face, he has a
reputation for ruthlessness and brutality. Lt Col Gilbert said Mr Khan was
"covered in blood" the first time they met. But he is a fierce foe of the
Taliban, standing to fight when trained policemen scurry away. "In an
environment where peace is the norm, he wouldn't have a place," Lt Col
Gilbert said. "But after 30 years of war, famine and fighting, you don't
have the luxury of saying I don't want these hard core guys."
Poverty also fuels the fighting. Several elders said the Taliban was
offering upwards of 20,000 rupees (£180) a month to local unemployed men.
Western officials are beginning to scrutinise the source of the funds.
Mr Khan told the Guardian the militants have bigger guns and more fighters.
They have powerful friends. Several times he had collared Taliban fighters
only to discover days later they had been released following a call from a
powerful politician or influential tribal leader. They also have surprising
amounts of money.
Last year, he said, he captured two insurgents, "one of them alive". Mr Khan
asked him why he was fighting. The man replied: "You are being paid 5,000
Afghanis (£54). I am making 20,000 Pakistani rupees. So now you tell me why
you are fighting."
This year the Taliban formed an alliance with drug kingpins, offering to
protect poppy farmers and smugglers in exchange for a cut of the $3bn trade.
But diplomats believe most funding comes from fundamentalist sympathisers in
Pakistan and the Middle East. Some believe governments may be also involved.
"I would be shocked if the Saudi intelligence service and the Kuwaitis were
not trying to find ways to get money to the Taliban," said Michael Scheuer,
a former CIA agent with 20 years' experience in the region.
Many Afghans are bewildered by the west's failure to bring the fight to the
heart of the problem - neighbouring Pakistan. Maulvi Aladat pointed to the
glowing horizon. "It is as clear as the sun is setting," he said. "Everyone
knows where they are trained and funded, where the suicide bombers come
from. Everyone knows."
Military officers and diplomats also say Pakistan's tribal belt is the
engine room of the insurgency. From its remote mountain sanctuaries along
the border the Taliban has re-emerged from the shadows as a potent force.
Two shuras, or tribal councils, coordinate the attacks - one in the western
city of Quetta, the other in South Waziristan, a lawless tribal area that is
also a crucible of al-Qaida terrorism.
In an interview published yesterday, a senior Dutch officer estimated that
40% of Taliban fighters come "straight from Pakistan". The steady flow meant
that Nato operations, despite their successes, were "like trying to mop with
the tap still open", said Colonel Arie Vermeij.
Barnett Rubin, an Afghanistan expert at New York University, said that after
being driven into Pakistan's tribal areas in late 2001 the Taliban
"reconstituted their command structure, recruitment networks, and support
bases ... while Afghans waited in vain for the major reconstruction effort
they expected to build their state and improve their lives".
Sincerity
Joanna Nathan, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group, said
closing down the Pakistani staging areas was vital. "This conflict will
never be more than contained without stamping on the staging posts and
sanctuaries in Pakistan."
Western officials are also divided about the sincerity of Pakistan's
military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, in combating the Taliban. In Kabul
last week he offered his help in defeating the Taliban, later describing
them as a "bigger threat than al-Qaida". But that was undermined by a deal
with tribal militants in Waziristan. In return for Pakistan soldiers
withdrawing to base, the pro-Taliban militants undertook to stop harbouring
foreign fighters and to halt cross-border infiltration. Within hours of the
deal being inked, some tribal leaders claimed there had never been any
foreigners in their area.
Last Sunday - two days after Mr Musharraf left Kabul - a man wearing an
explosive vest hurled himself at a vehicle containing Abdul Hakim Taniwal,
the governor of Pakita province. The killer is believed to have come from
Waziristan.
Friends said Mr Taniwal, a university professor who returned from Australia
to serve his country on pay of $200 a month, was the sort of man Afghanistan
needs. He had argued for reconciliation with the Taliban and a resolution of
tensions with Pakistan. He was a good man among rogues. "Many governors are
former commanders involved in drug trafficking, land grabbing and
corruption. Why did they kill this one? Because he was completely clean and
a wise man of peace," said Mr Rubin. "It is a big blow against peace."
Drug boom
Shutting down the Pakistani sanctuaries would not necessarily end the
insurgency. This year the Taliban's strength has been nourished by a new
source: heroin. After spurning the opium trade as un-Islamic and immoral,
this year the Taliban leadership reversed its position and allied with drug
smugglers. The 59% surge in opium production to an unprecedented 6,100
tonnes will swell the Taliban war chest. "This is going to put a lot more
money into the pockets of the insurgency," said one drug official.
More ominously, the drugs boom feeds cynicism about the Karzai government.
"You can't tell poor farmers not to grow drugs and then you have civil
servants driving a luxury car and living in a huge house," said Ms Nathan.
Dismay about the drugs epidemic has given way to arguments about how to
tackle it. US and European military commanders, particularly the British,
insist their troops should not get directly involved in fighting the trade.
This week the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa,
called on them to wade in. "Counter-insurgency and counter-narcotics efforts
must reinforce each other so as to stop the vicious circle of drugs funding
terrorists and terrorists protecting drug traffickers, " he said, calling on
Nato to destroy heroin labs, disband drug bazaars, attack convoys and arrest
smugglers.
The speed and scale of this summer's violence has disoriented both Afghans
and foreigners. In the south outlandish theories that the US is covertly
supporting the Taliban, or that British troops have come to avenge
colonial-era defeats, are common.
The underlying factors - cross-border sanctuaries, corrupt governance and
drugs - have been in place for years. But what changed is the aggressive
Nato deployment. After a difficult start, Nato has scored some successes.
With more than 500 Taliban killed in Panjwayi, the Taliban stronghold west
of Kandahar, soon the area will be cleared of insurgents, said the British
commander, Lieutenant General David Richards. With luck, Nato hopes it will
soon revert to its original goal, facilitating aid projects and
strengthening the Karzai government.
But others question whether an insurgency can be defeated by death tolls
alone. The only durable solution is to talk to the Taliban, said Wadir Safi
of the University of Kabul. "Without negotiation this could go on for
decades. The government must accept the Taliban as partners in these areas.
You can't simply kill them all."
Afghans have a long history of ejecting foreign armies. The good news for
Nato is that most still believe the military visitors are a force for good.
"People are tired of fighting. Nobody wants to go back to that," said one
official in Ghazni, who requested anonymity. "But if the people are
disappointed much more, they could unite against the foreign forces. History
could repeat itself."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
|