The Taliban Strikes Back - Q-News July 2006, Issue 367

As the colour returned to the trees and the snow melted on the mountaintops, so too did the violence and insecurity spread. When nature came back to life in Afghanistan this spring, people started getting killed at a rate not seen since the 2001 invasion. Chris Sands reports from the frontlines of a security situation spiralling out of control.

“The only thing they can do is fight against the government and I am telling them they can do that. They can pick up a gun and fight against the government,” said Abdullah, a Kabul-based imam.

It is almost five years since America began the “war on terror” by attacking Afghanistan with the stated aim of destroying the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. But from Kandahar’s fearful streets to the capital’s rundown mosques, the voice of militant Islam is rising anew.

“It’s a reality, the fighters are getting stronger and stronger because the government is alienating the community and the people,” said Abdullah.

“Real mullahs, imams and anyone with a knowledge of Islam has to say it’s time for jihad. Those people who are fighting against the Americans and the government are doing good, but the government and the Americans say they are terrorists just because they want to give them a bad name.”

When Abdullah and a number of other Kabul-based clerics recently told me that a holy war would soon be raging here, it seemed like the logical conclusion to everything I had been reporting since I arrived in Afghanistan nearly a year ago. When people are killed, lied to, cheated and betrayed, they will eventually fight back.

The Taliban’s spiritual home is in Kandahar, a six or seven hour drive from the capital along a road lined with the graves of martyrs. I travelled there last December, reaching my destination just as a dead body covered with a green shawl was being carried through the streets.

Mullah Mohammed Omar formed his movement of Talibs - religious students - during 1994 to defeat the local warlords who raped and murdered their way into power. Two years later he had captured Kabul, his forces hailed as heroes by a population sick of fighting.

Among those who followed this apparent saviour was a softly-spoken Pashtun I met soon after arriving in Kandahar.

“At that time we were very happy. It was like we were very poor and had suddenly found a lot of money,” said Abdul Mobin.

“Under the Talibs, if we had any problems the government would sort things out very quickly. Now we have to pay a lot of bribes to the government.”

The 25-year-old added: “Mullah Omar has no faults and the Talibs who are fighting have to fight. If they come back to Kandahar to live normally they will be caught by the Americans and sent to Guantanamo. If they go to Pakistan they will be caught. It’s not their fault - they have no choice but to fight.

“I can’t tell you if [the insurgency] will get stronger or not. But I can tell you one thing: No one can defeat them, no one can finish them. All the world can come together and it will not finish them because it is written in the Koran.”

Mobin joined the Taliban soon after the movement was formed. Many westerners might describe him as a terrorist sympathiser or an extremist, but I quickly realised his views are not so radical in Afghanistan.

Abdul Karim works as a carpenter near a Kandahar mosque that was hit by a suicide bomber last June. Body parts littered the place of worship then, with 20 people reported killed in the attack and dozens more injured.

“Life here is like we are living under a knife. The conditions are not good. The economy is poor and everywhere there are explosions,” he told me.

“[Under the Taliban] it was good, everything was okay: the security of the city, the security of Afghanistan, the security of the world. Now in this government there is a lot of corruption.

“I am not against any government. I am against corruption, poor security and troops disturbing the people.”

These are the views we are not meant to hear, the comments our leaders have tried silencing with simplistic and bellicose rhetoric. US President George W. Bush used his 2002 State of the Union address to tell the world that America had “saved a people from starvation and freed a country from brutal repression”. He could hardly have been further from the truth.

After a period of relative stability following the collapse of the Taliban government, security began deteriorating rapidly last year. An estimated 1,500 people were killed as a result of the insurgency during 2005, the highest body count since the invasion. But at the time of writing this article, about 900 people had already died in 2006. Approximately half of them perished in May.

There are many reasons for the spiralling violence. Militants are widely believed to have regrouped just across the Pakistan border and they have clearly adopted tactics used in Iraq, often carrying out suicide attacks. But Islamic extremists are not the only people behind the insurgency. Popular support for armed resistance is also growing among the disillusioned public.

Afghans frequently talk about widespread corruption, economic misery, anarchy and their anger at the international community’s failure to effectively tackle any of these issues. Although billions of dollars has been pumped into the country, the money has not trickled down to the poorer sections of society.

There are few signs of freedom or prosperity in Ghazni. Apart from some children playing football in the dust, the southern city was bereft of happiness when I visited. The roads there are often little more than strips of rubble, schools in nearby districts are regularly attacked by insurgents and Talibs ride through all this misery on motorbikes, their jet black turbans distinguishing them from the rest of the population.

Mohammed Zamin Azimi, a local Shiite scholar, told me: “I do not agree that the Taliban are getting stronger, I just believe that the government and the police are getting weaker.

“Not all the people support the Taliban, but they don’t support the government either. What is the government? The government is the people and if the people hate the government there is no government. That is the situation now, there is no government. Nothing has been done in the country. [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai has been in his position almost five-years and what has been done? Nothing. Lots has been promised, that’s all.”

According to the US State Department, America alone gave more than $10.3 billion to Afghanistan between the fiscal years 2001 and 2006. Billions was also pledged during a summit in London at the end of January, with donors including the US, UK, Japan and the World Bank promising the aid as part of a new five-year reconstruction strategy.

Yet even in Kabul there is only sporadic electricity, children go to school in crumbling buildings peppered with bullet holes and unemployment levels are sky high. Away from the capital, the situation is far worse.

At the time of writing this, Britain is deploying 3,300 troops to the southern province of Helmand - where massive opium production is fuelling the insurgency. The number of soldiers the UK has in Afghanistan as part of NATO’s 17,000-strong International Security Assistance Force will ultimately peak at 5,700. Meanwhile, America has 23,000 troops here.

But it will take much more than military might to stop this country sliding into absolute chaos. The kind of US air strike that killed at least 60 militants and 16 civilians in Kandahar during May only angers a population that has historically always defeated invading armies.

The riots in Kabul later that month were also a warning of the growing hostility towards President Karzai and the international community. I remember heading out from a friend’s house that evening and making my journey home through what seemed like a ghost town. Plumes of smoke drifted into the darkening sky, while the odd beggar sat in the gutter and pleaded for money. Shops were either protected by metal shutters or wrecked by the human hurricane that had swept through the city.

Adam Khan, an old Tajik Mujahideen commander who helped defeat the Russians, was happy when the riots took place. For him, it was another step towards the holy war he is waiting for.

“Every Muslim has to start jihad now. I do not start it because I do not have the ability. If [my family’s] economic situation was okay we would start it now, but we do not have the money. May God bless the Afghans who are fighting now! They are right. May God bless them!” he told me a few months earlier.

“I agree with the suicide bombers. If they accidentally kill my sons, that is no problem. They are allowed. Because America is occupying our country the suicide bombers have no choice.”