Ordinary people are the victims of the war of movement between allied forces and the Taliban, writes Joshua Partlowin Qaysar, Afghanistan
IN SQUADS of roaring dirt bikes, armed to the teeth, Taliban fighters are spreading like a brush fire into remote and defenceless villages across northern Afghanistan.
The fighters swarm into town, assemble the villagers and announce Taliban control, often at night and without any resistance.
With most Afghan government troops and Nato soldiers stationed in the country’s south and east, villagers in the path of the Taliban advancing into the once-peaceful north say they are powerless and terrified, confused by the government’s inability to prevail – and are ready to side with the insurgents to save their own lives.
“How did the Taliban get into every village?” asks Israel Arbah, from his mud hut in the Shah Qassim village of Faryab province. “They are everywhere. And they are moving very fast. To tell you honestly, I am really, really afraid.” In the past year, security in northern Afghanistan has deteriorated rapidly as insurgents have seized new territory in provinces such as Kunduz and Baghlan, and even infiltrated the scenic mountain oasis of Badakhshan, where 10 members of a Christian charity’s medical team were massacred this month.
Each new northern base is becoming a hive of activity, with fighters rotating in and out, daily planning meetings, and announcements at the mosque.
For the first time this year, the US military sent 3,000 troops to the north, basing them in Kunduz. A senior Nato official says the soldiers have made progress in Kunduz and commanders are more confident than six months ago that they can halt Taliban progress in the north, but that insurgents still find sanctuary in sparsely populated provinces where Nato and official Afghan forces are undermanned.
The US military does not believe the Taliban has made a strategic decision to target the north to avoid the bulk of Nato forces in the south, according to a US military official. But a former senior Afghan intelligence official based in the north says that is “absolutely” what has happened.
One of those places is Faryab, a swath of rolling desert hills along the Turkmenistan border, where a lone US battalion of about 800 soldiers arrived this spring. Starting in the Gormach district and moving through a belt of Pashtun villages that have tribal links to Kandahar and the south, insurgents have spread to nearly all the districts in the province, according to Afghan officials.
They move constantly on unmarked dirt roads outside cities to ambush Afghan police and soldiers, and kidnap residents. They execute those affiliated with the government, and shut down reconstruction projects.
They plant homemade bombs, close girls’ schools, and take by force a portion of farmers’ crops and residents’ pay.
“This is the new policy of the Taliban, to shift their people from the south to the north, to show they exist everywhere,” says Faryab governor Abdul Haq Shafaq. “They’re using the desert, where there are no security forces at all.”
Before the Taliban invades a village, their arrival is sometimes preceded by a letter.
“Hello. I hope you’re healthy and doing very well,” Mullah Abdullah Khalid, a Taliban deputy district shadow governor, wrote recently to four tribal elders in a Faryab village. “Whatever support you could provide, either financially or physically, we would really appreciate that. We hope that you will not deny us.”
This is just a formality, because the Taliban is coming anyway.
Early last November, the villagers of Khwaji Kinti awoke to the rumble of motorcycles. The next morning, they discovered that 30 to 40 Taliban, armed with Kalashnikovs and rocket- propelled grenades, had taken charge.
Tribal elders pleaded with police to send help. None arrived.
The Taliban was welcomed by a sympathetic mullah, and set to work quickly. From the shepherds they expected zakat, or charity: one sheep out of every 40; and took usher, an Islamic tax, from wheat farmers: 10 per cent of the harvest, according to villagers.
Taliban members shut down the lone girls’ school and demanded shelter and meals at different homes each night. Mohammad Hassan, a wheat farmer, says insurgents knocked on his door about once a week after the evening prayer, looking for food. “We’re afraid of the Taliban and the government,” he says. “We’re caught in the middle; we don’t have any power.”
Taliban members executed a man known as Sayid Arif, whom they said worked for the Afghan government, by pulling him from his car and shooting him.
They left him in the road with a note on his chest proclaiming that for whoever works with the government, “this is the punishment”, says a tribal elder named Abdullah.
The Taliban began to settle disputes with arbitrary punishments – which some consider its main public service.
In one case, a dispute between a pair of brothers and another man escalated until the third man was shot. Without evidence, the Taliban decided one of the brothers, 22-year-old Mahadi, was guilty of the killing, villagers say. The Taliban assembled dozens of people, handed the wife of the victim a Kalashnikov, and ordered her to shoot him, which she did.
“I stood there and watched that,” one villager says.
Not everyone is unhappy with this. The headmaster of the boys’ school in Khwaji Kinti, Agha Shejawuddin, says the Taliban is restoring order based on Islamic law. “The Koran says there should be public punishment,” he says. “I think the situation under the Taliban will be better than this government.”
On August 5th, members of the US battalion from the 10th Mountain Division, along with Afghan police and soldiers, fought the Taliban in Khwaji Kinti. This sparked an exodus, with hundreds of families fleeing town, villagers say. The US soldiers decided to withdraw after three days “to prevent civilian property damage and loss of life and civilian disruption during the holy month of Ramadan”, a military spokesman said.
That left the power balance unchanged, according to villagers reached by phone, and 200 to 400 Taliban members remain. The area “is still under complete Taliban control”, one villager says.
One day, a young Taliban fighter rides up on a donkey. Nek Mohammad (29), hasn’t seen him in years, but remembers him as a fellow refugee. They had both lived in Iran at the time of the Taliban government – two Tajiks in search of work and peace.
They sat by the river to talk.
“How is your life?” Mohammad asks. Since he’d joined the Taliban, the man says, he has earned more than $400 a month. “They are paying me very well,” he says. He asks Mohammad to join the insurgency.
The ranks of Taliban have swelled in Faryab because of such young and jobless men, according to officials and residents.
They profess little allegiance to a government they view as irrelevant, at best, and exploitative, at worst. They trace the insecurity to the presence of Nato forces.
Afghan officials also see a rivalry between Pashtun tribes at work.
“If one tribe, like the Achekzai, creates 10 Taliban in their tribe, then the Tokhi says, we need 12 Taliban to defend ourselves,” says Mohammad Sadiq Hamid Yar, Qaysar district chief.
Extortion provides much of their funding, Afghan officials say, and Taliban leadership in Pakistan provides training, weapons, ammunition and additional income.
Shafaq, the Faryab governor, estimates that at least 500 Taliban members are in his province, although others put the number far higher. The 1,800 police, he says, “are not enough”, and the government hopes to form a 500-man militia to bolster them.
Although the new US battalion has helped, Shafaq thinks Nato troops need a more aggressive approach, including not being afraid to bomb motorcycle gangs as they criss-cross the desert. If the Taliban forces are being allowed such freedom of movement, many residents reason, Nato must not be serious about fighting them.
“Afghans are very familiar with this type of situation. We see which side of the scale is heavier, and we just roll to that side easily,” Mohammad says. “Right now, the Taliban’s scale is heavier.” – (Washington Post service/Bloomberg)