On The Ground: No Stability

News from Afghanistan by a former Peace Corps Volunteer
August 2003

In two years, I have not felt the sense of urgency about the political and security situation that I have begun feeling this week. If the ongoing degradation in the security situation is allowed to continue, the result will almost certainly be a durable disillusionment with the US presence here.

Armed attacks inside Kandahar Province have taken a deadlier turn over the past month or so—fewer audible rocket-launches during the night, but more deaths: 2 moderate, pro-central government mullahs praying in their mosques, for example, two district police chiefs and several of their men, in the border area with Pakistan, at least two serious fire-fights leaving dozens dead and wounded, and most recently, the assassination of half a dozen members of government security forces at a Taliban road-block in the north of the province.

But even beyond the number of actual incidents is the rising level of frustration felt even by those Kandaharis most committed to the stability process, to the central government, and to the Western presence here. The terms in which this frustration is expressed are wholly new.

"Soon Afghans will turn against the Americans the way they turned against the Russians," several people have told me in the past week. "And once that happens, nothing will stop them." A businessman added: "Even doctors and engineers took up arms against the Russians." In the past week, a murky dust-cloud ("Khaura") engulfed Kandahar. Popular wisdom associates this phenomenon with an imminent change of regime. Kandaharis were harking back to the fall of Daud Khan and Amanullah—when, they said, a similar dust storm obscured view for days.

These comments are coming not from Taliban or religious extremists, but from those who looked to the US involvement here to bring about a new era for Afghanistan. The problem is that the United States is seen as having brought back, and as continuing to support, the warlords the Taliban chased out. The oppression and arbitrary rule Kandaharis are suffering has forced them just about to the breaking point. Recent examples include:

• The monopoly of public resources, such as stone and water, for members of the governor's family or tribe.
• The jailing or release of prisoners for reasons of personal interest. No significant Taliban or al-Qaeda official has been captured on the governor's initiative. But the "search for Taliban" has served as a pretext to ransack and loot houses throughout the province.
• The monopolizing of legitimate private business opportunity, like the right to sell gasoline within city limits, or the right to operate taxi services between Kandahar and neighboring cities.
• Threats and intimidation
• The torture of prisoners
• The theft of public resources such as customs duties
• Assassination attempts against officials opposed to the governor's practices, such as the prison director's recent (7/29) attempt to kill the chief of police.
• The refusal to pay salaries of security forces not under the governor's direct command, leaving the governor's private militia the only viable armed force in the province.
• Open trafficking in heroine and hashish

"In one year, the Americans will lose this country," said a highly educated Kandahari recently.