August 3, 2003
Instability in South Grows as Pro-Taliban Fighters Attack Allies of U.S.-Led Forces
By APRIL WITT
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 3, 2003; Page A01
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- There is an armed guard in the house of God.
At the front gate of the Abdurrad Akhunzada mosque, a turbaned watchman paces warily in the dusty twilight, hiding his Kalashnikov beneath an outsized scarf so he doesn't frighten men arriving for evening prayers.
A remote-controlled bomb exploded at the mosque last month, injuring the mullah and 24 worshippers as they knelt, hands outstretched in supplication. Two days later, a mullah, who had hung the Afghan flag in his mosque and said good Muslims support the nation's central government, was shot to death as he sat praying, a book open in his hand. A third Kandahar mullah was attacked this week, executed outside his mosque by gunmen on a motorcycle.
All three clerics served on a religious council that recently decreed that, contrary to pronouncements by the Taliban Islamic movement, there is no legitimate jihad, or holy war, against the central government or the foreign troops that support it.
A year and a half after the United States and its allies drove the Taliban from power, acts of politically motivated violence have become frequent and fierce in the key southern province of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban and the source of countless shifts in Afghan politics and culture over the centuries.
Bands of 50 or more pro-Taliban fighters have begun appearing around Kandahar, both along the border with Pakistan and in the interior of the province. Just over the border in the Pakistani town of Chaman, high-ranking Taliban officials are meeting openly and handing out guns, money and motorbikes, according to a witness and Afghan police officials. Poor Afghans who don't share the Taliban's strict interpretation of Islam or its mission of jihad are nevertheless accepting Pakistani money to plant land mines and bombs in Afghanistan, they said.
In addition to Taliban fighters, other men with guns -- warlords -- dominate much of Kandahar, allowing the trade in illegal drugs to flourish. Civic activists who once hoped to provide an alternative to both radical fundamentalists and marauding militiamen feel silenced and afraid.
"If someone rises up to say something about democracy or social equality, then tomorrow he won't exist anymore," said Mohammad Wali Hotek, head of one of the largest tribes in the Pashtun ethnic group, which is predominant in the south. "As there is no rule of law in Afghanistan, the gunmen can do anything they want.
"We are tough people," said Hotek, who was praying at the Abdurrad Akhunzada mosque when the bomb exploded there last month. "The experiences we are having now make us lose our hope for the future."
Kandahar police also say they feel demoralized and targeted. In July alone, one district police chief was shot to death on his way home from work and another was killed along with five of his officers when a band of about 20 armed men stormed their compound, police officials said.
This past week, five or six government officials were ambushed and killed along the same isolated road where a Red Cross water engineer was executed in late March.
The mood in the province is so tense that when a major dust storm developed earlier last week, blotting out the sky with mustard-colored sand, some Kandaharis read it as a portent.
"It just feels like something is building," said Sarah Chayes, an American former journalist who now runs a pro-democracy group called Afghans for Civil Society. "One year ago I didn't have any problem driving around Kandahar by myself. Now I feel it is a lot more dangerous."
Kandahar's mounting security problems have dire consequences for the province's poorest people. In the four months since the execution of the Red Cross engineer, the number of nongovernmental organizations with foreign workers in Kandahar has dropped from 22 to just seven or eight, said Talatbek Masadykov, head of the Kandahar office of U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan. Those who have remained often stick close to the city of Kandahar rather than risk traveling to outlying districts. Crucial reconstruction and humanitarian aid, from bridge repairs to food distribution, have slowed or stopped as a result, he said.
The growing instability in Kandahar has ominous implications for the rest of Afghanistan. As the heartland of the Pashtuns, whose monarchs ruled Afghanistan for much of the past three centuries, and the place where the Taliban began its rise to power in the early 1990s, Kandahar has long been the trendsetter for the rest of the country.
"Kandahar was the first capital of Afghanistan," said Masadykov. "Historically, those who know Afghanistan say that if you can solve the political issues in Kandahar, you can solve the issues in the whole country. If you can't do it in Kandahar, it means that you are lost."
To be sure, Afghanistan is more stable than it was during recent decades of war. Factional fighting has also plagued the north, but in the capital, Kabul, people can go to sleep at night without worrying that rival warlords' stray rockets will kill them in their beds. Observers say the Taliban does not seem to have mass support or the capacity to recapture the country.
During a one-day stop in Afghanistan this past week, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, played down recent Taliban attacks and declared "security and stability are increasing."
But some unresolved threats to the peace appear serious -- and may be worsening.
Human Rights Watch released a report this past week saying that warlords, whom the U.S. military helped put in power so they could fight the Taliban and al Qaeda, are terrorizing much of the country. Their gunmen are intimidating journalists and political opponents as well as robbing, detaining and raping ordinary Afghans with impunity, the report said.
At the same time, cooperation between the U.S. military and regional leaders has not always succeeded in thwarting the Taliban and al Qaeda -- notably in Kandahar. Twice in recent months, large Taliban groups have attacked U.S. or allied forces, and Kandaharis are increasingly critical of the United States for not acting more aggressively to stop terrorism and protect the populace.
Recent efforts to flush out Taliban forces have brought some tangible results, but have failed to stop them from regrouping over the Pakistani border, beyond the reach of coalition forces.
In early June, Kandahar provincial soldiers killed about 40 people they identified as pro-Taliban fighters during a clash six miles north of Spin Boldak, near the Pakistani border. Afghan Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali later said many of the dead carried Pakistani identification cards or mobile phones.
On July 19, a large group of pro-Taliban fighters fired on a convoy of U.S. Special Forces and other coalition soldiers patrolling near Spin Boldak. The coalition soldiers returned fire and called in AH-64 Apache helicopters, killing between 22 to 24 enemy fighters, the U.S. military said. A Kandahar police official said the dead men were killed as they fled over the border into Pakistan.
Mohammad Anwar, an Afghan trader who grew up in Spin Boldak and now lives in the Pakistani town of Chaman, said he is perplexed that high-ranking Taliban officials live openly in his prosperous neighborhood. In late June, he saw guns, money and motorbikes being dispensed at a local mosque, he said. "Everybody knows there are terrorists there, but they don't take action," Anwar said. "It scares me."
Gen. Mohammad Akram Khakrizwal, the Afghan central government's highest-ranking police official in Kandahar, said he too has watched with alarm as remnants of the Taliban grow more visible and active.
After coalition forces routed them, Taliban leaders fled and hid for six months, he said. Then they started appearing openly in Pakistan. "They wanted to know what the reaction would be," Akram said. "After there was no reaction from the coalition or the government, they started regrouping."
Before long, he said, the Taliban and its allies began slipping into Afghanistan to disseminate anti-government, anti-coalition propaganda fliers, which Afghans call "night letters."
"Then they started burning schools and, again, no one said anything," he said. "The third phase was explosions. . . . Now they are targeting mullahs and police officials."
To Akram, who fought the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the progression looks ominously familiar. "It is dangerous," he said. "During the Russian invasion, we did the same thing: step by step. These Taliban have been organizing step by step.
"Now that they have not been stopped and they are in larger numbers, they will make the situation worse for the coalition forces and the Afghan government."
Most Kandaharis, however, say they are sick of war and don't support the Taliban. Many remark wistfully though that they miss some of the law and order that came with the repressive regime.
In one Kandahar district recently, pro-Taliban fighters were living in the mountains and coming into the closest villages to shop until tribal elders invited them to a meeting and asked them to leave, Masadykov of the U.N. mission said. The elders complained to the fighters that when they plant bombs and slip away into Pakistan, U.S. soldiers come looking for them and kill innocent Afghan villagers by mistake.
"The elders told them, if you really are so strong that you can conquer the whole country and keep it, please do it," he said. "But if you can't do it, why are you making headaches for us?"
© 2003 The Washington Post Company