WashingtonPost.com Article
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."
...
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."
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