Posted on 09/08/2003 6:26:22 AM PDT by TastyManatees
Warlords wear out Afghans' welcome
'Now anyone with a gun is the law'
By KATHY GANNON
Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Along a potholed road in eastern Afghanistan, Mohammed Jan points through a cloud of dust at a line of mansions that seem out of place in such poverty-stricken surroundings.
"This is where the new, beautiful houses begin. They belong to the commanders. Their money is from drugs, from smuggling. They will never be caught. Their soldiers are working with the Americans," says Jan, himself a small-time opium grower.
Nearly two years after the collapse of Taliban rule, ordinary Afghans like Jan say they are losing faith in the United States and its coalition partners.
They point to rampant corruption, President Hamid Karzai's weak leadership and the behavior of U.S.-backed warlords whose private armies operate with impunity throughout most of Afghanistan.
Their disillusionment is strengthening Taliban holdouts, whose attacks are getting bolder. Nowadays the rebels don't fear being turned over to authorities; they say most villages give them food and shelter.
"The big mistake is from the Americans. They want to bring peace to Afghanistan with thieves and killers. The Americans after two years have learned nothing," said Abdul Raouf, a car dealer in the eastern city of Jalalabad. "Every day the situation is worse."
The American invasion of Afghanistan relied heavily on local anti-Taliban forces, and it was inevitable that these warlords would continue to be important forces in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaida network that masterminded the Sept. 11 attacks.
But Afghans increasingly wonder whetherit was worth it.
"Everybody says warlords, but who are these warlords? They are commanders, they are government ministers," said Raouf. "We didn't like the Taliban, but there was security then, there were laws. But now anyone with a gun is the law."
Back at the mansions, in the province of Nangarhar, a white marble watchtower peeks over the 10-foot-high brick wall.
"Drug smuggler," Jan says. "That's a commander of Hazrat Ali's. Are the Americans crazy? We Afghans know who these people are and what they are doing. There is no security, no development, but these people's pockets are fat with money. We know that without the Americans they would be nobody."
The military chief of Afghanistan's eastern zone, Hazrat Ali is a powerful man appointed by Karzai but aligned with Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim.
The United States says it is committed to strengthening the central government and is putting more than $1 billion into extending Karzai's control beyond Kabul, the capital to the whole Texas-size country.
U.S. officials insist that Jan's lament doesn't reflect the full picture. They say some areas are more secure, some less; some Afghans are optimistic, others not. They point to the reconstruction projects that are beginning, the road that links the capital to Kandahar.
Reconstruction, the argument goes, is bound to be slower in the east and south of Afghanistan, where Taliban and al-Qaida fighters are being hunted. Sometimes, Western diplomats say, solutions entail messy compromises; when Karzai decided that the governor of Kandahar was corrupt, he removed him but made him a government minister.
The opium industry, harshly suppressed by the Taliban, has made a roaring comeback.
The United Nations says production in 2002 generated up to $1.2 billion or almost a fifth of Afghan GDP. Central Asian states and Russia are complaining bitterly about the increase in Afghan drugs flowing north.
Those benefiting most are the commanders aligned to the government and working with the U.S.-led coalition, say Afghans in eastern Jalalabad.
More than we can say for the NY Times!
Every man in Afghanistan is likely to be a thief and a killer, if put in a position of power. Their entire culture is founded on thievery and killing and bestial brutality. There's nobody in the whole place we could put in authority without complaints of this type.
I am not interested in nation building. I am interested in keeping a boot on the throat of the bloodthirsty Mohammedan fiends.
-ccm
Unfortunately, it sounds like we're almost back to business as usual. This is perfectly credible as this has been the MO of the US government for quite some time. We may as well just make an appointment for another war. I have great faith in the US Military to win wars. I have very little in the State Department (or any other part of the bureaucracy) for what goes on in between.
For years Afghanistan has been a major supplier. Your summary explains it well and is helpful in its detail. This broad just wants to present an anti-American point of view. Just as in Iraq, those with her goal can always find a few people who will say what they want. However, nostalgia for Saddam and the Taliban easily identifies those speakers as having been beneficiaries of tyranny.
Those benefiting most are the commanders aligned to the government and working with the U.S.-led coalition, say Afghans in eastern Jalalabad.
Isn't that as it should be? Cooperate with the good guys and benefit. Cozy up to the bad guys and get whacked.
My brother has recently returned from peacekeeping and building schools and repairing roads in that country. One of the first things I asked was if the country is better or worse than when he first got there last year. He asked if I was talking about the physical or political or everyday life of the people who live there. He agrees with the gist of the story, that this type of activity is going on and each section of the country is still run by its warlords and that the "short, smelly, ungrateful people in that country" blame everything on the USA.
They can't (or choose not to) see the good things the soldiers on the ground are building for them. Do this for us, now go away. Wait, is there anything else you can do for us, because you know, the USA is a really rich nation and... Gimme, gimme, gimme. Just stay out of the way of our poppy trade.
Unfortunately, the Army informed his batallion of reservists that they will be going back within a year.
An exaggeration, but there's a germ of truth in it. One of the worst ratbags is "FK," Mohammed Fahim Khan, the Defence Minister and heir to Ahmad Shah Massoud's Jamiat-i Islami organisation. (People forget that the first shot in this war was OBL's assassination of Massoud on 9/9/01. That was designed to throw the Northern Alliance, the core of which was the Jamiat, into disarray, and make it impossible for the US to come in after him. FK seized control of the Jamiat and worked closely with the USA, but he's crooked as the road from Konduz to Mazar-e Sharif). Other guys flipped to the TB/Hekmatayar forces when they didn't get enough loot from the central government.
Gul Agha Sherzai, the guy in Kandahar who was canned by Karzai, is fiscally corrupt but morally honest. He is the son of a now-deceased resistance hero.
Three Afghan leaders who are not corrupt are Karzai, Khalili, and the King. Of the three only Karzai has national appeal. Khalili is a member of the oppressed and despised Hazara minority, and many blame the King for the communist takeover which led to the Soviet invasion, and all the subsequent grief. The more observant Muslims also disapprove of his lifestyle (he was quite a playboy in his youth). Kinda the same way some Christians are reacting to Arnold's, er, juvenile escapades.
Karzai is a Pushtun (in fact, he is a Mohammadzai, and related to the King) but he is still popular in Tajik and Hazara areas. You often see members of FK's Jamiat militia displaying pictures of Karzai and Massoud. They don't stick up the pictures of FK, which pisses FK off no end. So he has taken to spreading around an old picture that has him and Massoud walking in conversation with someone else (maybe Daoud, warlord of Konduz).
Afghanistan isn't one country: it's scores of tribes and thousands of villages, each accustomed to going its own way without much help or hindrance from a national government. But among those people, there are many who like and admire us, and many who are grateful (I don't know how many times I was thanked for one thing or another, but a day didn't pass without some guy telling me what the war had done for his own family).
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
That's my thought, too. Unlike Iraq, Afghanistan has never been much of a civilization and probably never will be one. As long as the Taliban can't gather together in any significant number for any significant length of time without being cut down and scattered by Afgan or US troops, then I think our effort is successful. Local government by warlords and the fact of opium cultivation aren't good things, per se, but that's probably just the way its going to be.
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