Nir Rosen - Aftermath

Though the Taliban failed to set up a base in northern Helmand in 2004, two years later they succeeded—thanks to the increased popularity they enjoyed as a result of SMA’s abusive attitude and arrogance. The rivalry between Alizais and Ishaqzais also led to fighting. When the government and the coalition began attempting to eradicate poppy in Helmand, the Taliban’s popularity increased. Pro-Taliban songs and sermons could be purchased in Helmand markets. Villagers would act as informers and help the Taliban set up ambushes, and they would throw stones at coalition convoys. Soon districts began to fall under Taliban control. The Taliban recruited from the displaced people’s camps in Helmand. During 2006 the area where poppy was harvested increased by 250 percent, and the next year it nearly doubled. By 2006 the Taliban had the support of the population in Helmand, and most of the fighters were locals. There were reports of the police collaborating with the Taliban against the coalition in Helmand, or even fighting against it. Helmand police would arrest people and demand ransoms for their release. Following six months of fighting in one district alone fifty-two Afghan police were dead. In another Helmand police unit of 350 men, seventy deserted in 2006. The British thought they would defeat the Taliban by the summer of 2006. Instead they realized they were besieged by up to two thousand of them in northern Helmand alone. Although the British had spent nearly ten million dollars on reconstruction projects in Helmand by the end of 2006, nobody seemed to notice. District governors and police chiefs in northern and southern Helmand were targeted. There were failed assassination attempts against Daud. Most districts were abandoned or unable to operate. The Taliban had a logistical base and a clinic for fighters close to the provincial capital that could handle nearly one thousand men. In May 2006 the British launched an operation to take control of Helmand, but in July the Taliban captured the Nawa and Garmsir districts. The British retook Garmsir, and then the Taliban re-retook it.

By the fall of 2006, the British were exhausted in Helmand and negotiated truces with the Taliban via village elders in two districts that allowed the elders to choose the governor, chief of police, and other officials in the district governments. The Afghan government and American military were opposed to this “surrender,” but the UN backed the deal. A few months later the truces ended, with the British blaming the Americans for their demise. Daud had been crucial in negotiating the truces, but he was removed. Relations between the British and Afghan governments deteriorated. SMA maintained his pernicious control. In 2007 only four of the thirteen district police chiefs were appointed from Kabul, with the rest under the control of SMA, who remained close to Karzai. Karzai, meanwhile, complained that if it were not for pressure from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, he would have reinstated SMA. Most police in Helmand were more like a militia, and mostly from the same tribe.

The year 2007 was the first in which the Taliban faced pressure in Helmand, but the situation continued to deteriorate. The Afghan army complained that police in Helmand were demanding road taxes from drivers and stealing private property. That year five hundred kilograms of opium were seized by security forces in the area and divided between the police and the army, with only fifteen kilograms given to coalition forces. The British were opposed to eradication, while Americans pushed for aerial eradication, which only further alienated the population. The British floundered, unable to hold territory or defeat an enemy that fought asymmetrically. On one occasion in 2007, the British responded to a single shot fired by the Taliban with mortars, heavy machine guns, and missiles, and they dropped a bomb for good measure.

In 2008 the deputy governor was assassinated by a suicide bomber while still inside a mosque. That year the U.S. Marines joined the eight thousand British troops. The Marines tried to take Garmsir and also failed. They spoke of implementing COIN, living among and protecting the people, holding the territory they cleared, and winning over the population. It seemed as though every year there was a new plan that was better than the previous one, and when the foreign troops moved on, the Afghans who had made the mistake of working with them would be killed. Although the stated goal of the Western coalition was to extend the reach of the Afghan government, in the past extending the reach of the very unpopular central government had only caused further instability. The Americans and the Taliban had a similar narrative: the Taliban promised to protect people from the Afghan government, and the Americans promised to protect them by extending the government’s reach. By 2009 half of Afghanistan was controlled by Taliban, and Helmand was the province most surely in Taliban hands. “Control” might be overstating the strength of the Taliban in some areas, but at a minimum they could deny the government and international forces the ability to control. In some cases insurgents did not formally belong to the Taliban. They may have been locals who resented the American and British occupation just as they had resented the Soviet occupation. Increased foreign intervention had made the security situation only worse for locals.

In Helmand the security forces were dominated by the Nurzai tribe. Colonel Shirzad, from the Nurzai tribe, served in various security posts in Helmand before being appointed police chief. Abdul Rahman Jan, the first postwar police chief, was also a Nurzai, as was Lieutenant Colonel Ayub, who had served as deputy chief of police following the overthrow of the Taliban. Ayub was known as an uneducated illiterate warlord. Colonel Torjan, the logistics officer, was a Nurzai. The Helmand passport officer was a Nurzai. The Border Patrol chief for Helmand was a Nurzai. General Mirwais, the head of the police in southern Afghanistan, was a Nurzai. The Nurzais were a plurality in the province, especially in its important places. Marja, the district where the Taliban had its strongest hold, had a Nurzai plurality. In 2009 Marja had a bumper poppy crop thanks to Taliban protection. A few months later Marja was the first district targeted for a major U.S. offensive in 2010.

Every police chief in Helmand, including Shirzad, bought his post from officials at the Interior Ministry. Police in Helmand were known to release prisoners for bribes ranging from five hundred to twenty thousand dollars. Shirzad’s predecessor arrested a Taliban commander and was offered fifty thousand dollars for his release, but the Americans caught wind of it, so he couldn’t close the deal. To ease the pressure he was facing to release the prisoner, he asked for the prisoner to be flown to Kabul.

In 2007 a district police commander went to Colonel Torjan to receive his two mandated Ford Rangers, but Torjan demanded ten thousand dollars for each. The Americans took the commander’s report, but two or three weeks later he was killed by an IED. Conducting routine affairs in the Education Department required a bribe. The Justice Ministry in Helmand was particularly notorious. In addition to the poor quality of the police in Helmand, there just weren’t enough of them. Helmand was supposed to have an increase of five hundred police as part of the surge, but so far only 211 had been recruited.

Locals complained that the police charged taxes at checkpoints. “The police know we’re here to watch them as much as fight the Taliban,” said Sergeant Gustafson. “Shirzad is a wily adept politician,” he told me. “He comes with a lot of baggage.” Shirzad was tied to the warlords connected to the poppy trade. Following a large opium seizure in 2009, the drugs disappeared and the trail went cold at Shirzad’s headquarters. It was not that Afghans were corrupt and the Americans would teach them how to govern. The Americans helped bring corruption to Afghanistan by funding warlords, paying off tribes, and creating parallel institutions and a network of foreign and Afghan contractors. They created an infrastructure of unaccountability.