Nir Rosen - Aftermath

Some NGO officials were not surprised. In 2006 Mullah Omar had issued a twenty-nine-article order that did not prohibit attacks against NGOs, which meant that in practice it allowed them. A former Taliban government official from Logar explained to me that if the Taliban abducted Afghans working for NGOs, then surely they would abduct internationals. Abductions were used to help finance their operations or for prisoner exchanges with jailed Taliban members. In the case of the IRC women, he said, “they were foreigners, that’s reason enough.” He explained that the Taliban had cars with armed men on standby. When they heard that a high-profile SUV with tinted windows was coming, they waited on the main road to ambush them and then simply returned to the villages. The same thing had recently happened in Logar’s Muhammad Agha district, which was even closer to Kabul, on its southern border. The Taliban ambushed a police convoy and simply drove into their villages afterward, and the police didn’t dare follow them “because everyone likes their life.” The government remained in control of the main urban centers. But the Taliban had little need to take Kabul; it wasn’t relevant, and it never fell even in the Soviet days. “But once you leave the city, how safe do you feel?” a senior UN official asked.

During this visit to Afghanistan I spoke with Western diplomats, security experts, former mujahideen commanders, former Taliban officials, NGO officials, and senior UN officials. All agreed that “things are not going well,” that the situation was “incredibly bleak.” Many told me that “what we’ve got to try and make happen is a fresh start” or “we have to start from zero again.”

“I’m not optimistic,” a longtime NGO official told me. “You can’t help getting this increased uncomfortable feeling that you are waiting for something terrible to happen.” Taliban confidence reminded him of the mujahideen he had known in the Soviet days. Another senior Western NGO official who had recently left Afghanistan with his family spoke of a “loss of hope” and told me that “Afghans with money want to move their families to Dubai or India—they’re looking at an exit strategy. I’m increasingly unsure about the way forward except that we should start preparing our exit strategy. We’re not up to the task of success in Afghanistan.”

“At the center is an extremely weak president,” said a European ambassador, “a corrupt and ineffective Ministry of Interior, an army that will fight but has no command or control, a dysfunctional international alliance.” The “enlightened” Afghan elite who lead the government have little in common with the majority of rural Afghans, who are the sea where the Taliban swim. There had been small successes in health, education, rural development, roads, bridges, dams, and wells, but these were ephemeral, a senior development official told me, and it would be easy to blow them up. “From the beginning I’ve been very worried and negative,” the European ambassador told me. “The analysis of our intelligence people is that things are getting worse. CIA analysts are extremely gloomy and worried. The administration in Washington is not fit for the purpose.” But there was a divide between the analysts and the trigger pullers. The British army did not accept the negative prognosis provided by that country’s intelligence and continued to insist that things were not getting worse.

“Last month was the worst ever and the month before that was the worst ever until then,” a senior UN official told me in August 2008. “The UN has 50 or 55 percent access in this country—in some parts we have zero.” UN maps divided the country into green areas for safety and red areas for danger. But the maps were misleading, he said: “Herat is green, but only essential staff are allowed there and only in the capital of the province. It’s actually 97 percent off-limits. In Kandahar we have plenty of international staff, but they are all hiding behind the doors.” The UN had declared Afghanistan to be in phase three out of its five phases of safety, with five being the worst. But in practice it was treated as phase four. “It’s a political decision,” he said. “They cannot say it’s phase four because ‘we are winning the war, we are controlling the situation. ’ We are thinking things will get much worse. There is a political interest in not acknowledging the situation. If they recognize that there are humanitarian issues, then they have failed.”

Following the Taliban’s speedy defeat by the Americans in 2001, there was a wholesale handover of government to the warlords and no institution building. NATO forces were restricted to Kabul, and the focus of the mission was counterterrorism. The Americans built up the warlords and let them become entrenched. They would find weapons caches and give them to the warlords. Those who had been responsible for atrocities in the past were given renewed legitimacy. The parliamentary elections of 2005 then legalized the legitimacy the Americans had bestowed upon the warlords. The Parliament was led by warlords; they served as governors and ministers. “The American intervention issued blank checks to these guys,” one longtime NGO official told me. “They threw money, weapons, vehicles at them. Anyone willing to work with the Americans was welcome. The warlords haven’t abandoned their bad habits. They’re abusing people and filling their pockets.” When President Karzai appointed governors and police chiefs, his options were limited. American-backed warlords were already in charge in many places, and Karzai had no choice but to appoint these same people—and he began to lose credibility.

“I thought the Americans and international community could succeed in 2001,” a former mujahideen commander and Taliban government official told me. “I thought we would get rid of all these warlords, but in the first six months they supported the warlords and put them in power. Then there was hope for the elections, but warlords won. In 2002 the warlords were nervous about the justice process. Now they are in Parliament, ministers, deputy ministers. The main mistake was the agreement between the Northern Alliance and the U.S. before Bonn and the fall of the Taliban. In Kandahar drug gangs were appointed police chiefs and district administrators.”

The UN, the U.S. embassy, and Karzai undermined justice and refused to take the warlords on because it would threaten stability. They ended up fundamentally undermining the process of creating a government that would be legitimate in the eyes of the population, who at best had an ambivalent view of a government that had done nothing to protect them. At the same time the American-led coalition dropped bombs on Afghans and shot them on the roads at greater and greater numbers.

“The amnesty bill gave all members of Parliament and warlords immunity from prosecution,” the intelligence officer said. “Karzai was under pressure from the UN and international community to block it. I felt the ambience of Kabul change after the bill. There was increasing cockiness and a sense of impunity, corruption increased, there were more cash-in-transit robberies.” But many of these warlords had violated the terms of the amnesty by maintaining their private militias. “The issue isn’t who the combatants are,” he said. “It’s the elders and government members who have secret handshakes with local Taliban. That corruption is the absolute way of life here, from your smallest villager dealing with his melon crop to your minister.” As the situation worsened, “there is desperation setting in among the government: ‘Let’s shove this into our pockets, because it won’t last.’ Government departments demand bribes.”

The intelligence officer singled out the general who headed the Interior Ministry’s Criminal Investigation and Terrorism department. The increased abuses coincided with the general’s rise, he said. “He’s a psychopath, that’s the only way I can put it. He’s a mafia don, a mini Al Capone, a nasty piece of work, the scum of the earth, a fucking hoodlum.” Police harassment of foreigners also increased, he said. “The international community proved to be a paper tiger. The police will raid foreign companies, even security companies, and just steal everything: iPods, money, weapons, radios. They even tried arresting foreigners for not having passports on them, which is not illegal. Afghans connected to the government who have security companies wanted them out, they wanted their business. Afghan security teams were moonlighting as bank robbers. There is no respect for laws in this country whatsoever—it’s meaningless. In my view this whole governance piece is the most critical part, but you have utterly disgusting people in power. People might hate the Taliban, but they hate the government just as much. At least the Taliban have rules. This government, they’re parasites fucking with you on a deal. If you go through the legitimate process, you haven’t got a chance.”