In Afghanistan, a battle of hearts and minds gone awry

Monday, March 05, 2007

By Kathy Gannon

In Afghanistan’s tribal society, a single death — no matter if NATO labels the person an ‘enemy’ target — can create scores of sworn foes. And NATO, like the Taliban, has killed hundreds

ABDULLAH Shah and his son made a pilgrimage to the holy Muslim city of Mecca this January, courtesy of the Afghan government. President Hamid Karzai himself arranged the trip to Saudi Arabia.

The invitation came after Shah’s wife, two daughters and three other sons were killed by a wayward NATO bomb in Lagarnai, a village near here in southern Afghanistan.

Shah, in his 70s and wearing the white turban of a religious man, accepted the trip, but not the message.

Before the deaths, “I wasn’t with the Taliban and I wasn’t with the government,” he said. “But, I tell you, now I am Talib.”

In the sixth winter since the US-led ouster of the Taliban government, the radical Islamists are making a comeback. Their bold confidence was apparent last week, when a suicide bomber killed 23 outside an air base during Vice President Richard Cheney’s visit there.

There are many factors. But citizens like Shah, the Afghan government and key NATO commanders agree on this: The use of force is sometimes excessive and errant. In Afghanistan’s tribal society, a single death - no matter if NATO labels it “enemy” - can create scores of sworn foes. And NATO, like the Taliban, has killed hundreds.

The US-based Human Rights Watch estimates that more than 100 Afghan civilians died as a result of coalition assaults in 2006. An AP tally, based on reports from Afghan, NATO and coalition officials, puts the overall death toll of civilians in 2006 at 834, most from militant attacks.

“Killing Taliban is not going to get this country sorted out. That is not going to fix the problem,” said Brig Gen Tim Grant, commander of Canada’s 2,500 troop force, stationed in southern Kandahar, heartland of the resistance to Karzai’s government. What’s needed, he says, is an Afghan army.

While troops go after Taliban fighters, Grant says that’s not a priority for ordinary Afghans; they are frustrated by insecurity and lawlessness, which they blame on a corrupt and inept government whose police extort, threaten and make them feel less secure.

The international troops are there to support Karzai’s government. When they do that aggressively, even in response to deadly Taliban tactics, they are seen as brutes protecting an unpopular regime, he said.

“Are we stuck between a rock and a hard place? Yes. We are here at the request of the government and the government has issues and corruption is leading amongst them,” said Grant.

The head of an Afghan human rights advocacy group, Nader Nadery, told The Associated Press that Afghans are turning away from the government and the international forces.

Yet most Afghans don’t want the foreign soldiers to leave, he said. They keep local warlords and commanders - some now in government - from turning their guns on each other. Such feuds killed thousands of Afghans in the 1990s, destroyed much of the capital, Kabul, and eventually gave rise to the Taliban.

Grant said his priority, higher than chasing Taliban, was training and equipping Afghan forces to provide security on their own by 2009, when the Canadian mission ends.

There’s much work to be done.

Wali Mohammad is a police officer in Kandahar, looking smart in his gray woolen hat and pants. He told the AP that a policeman’s salary of US$60 a month is so low it drives police to corruption.

“There is no discipline among the police, no direction,” he said. “We are given nice uniforms and weapons but that won’t feed our family. We are compelled to be corrupt.”

The police chief of Zabul province, Noor Mohammed Paktin, earlier told the AP that criminal gangs abetted by the police and military are as big a threat in some parts of Afghanistan as the religious militia.

With the spring thaw, fighting is sure to intensify. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates promises NATO and coalition forces will go after the Taliban rather than wait for them to strike.

“What we want to do this spring is have this spring offensive be our offensive,” he said.

But aggressive action risks a backlash.

In 2006, NATO and coalition forces mounted blistering offensives, including the strongest called Operation Medusa in Panjwayi district of southern Kandahar.

Residents of Spirwan, a village in the heart of the district, fled before last year’s operation and had only recently returned when the AP visited this January.

Mohammed Khan, a villager in his 50s with dirt-caked hands from scrounging through the rubble of his home, screamed abuse when he saw a Westerner approach.

“What are these foreign soldiers doing?” he said. “One day they are dropping bombs on us and then they come with three or four dishes of food. What is that? What do they think?”

The offensive against the Taliban left the common people with nothing but problems, he said.

“We hate the world community. We hate America. We hate NATO,” he said. “What good are they doing for us? What good is our government doing?”

In what appeared to be the only concrete structure in the otherwise mud-brick village, local elder Dur Mohammed warned that the bombing of villages was creating more Taliban. He sat in the corner of the room, smoking and stroking his artificial leg, lost in the 1980s war against the invading Soviet Union.

“People don’t like the Taliban coming into the villages, because then the bombing will come,” he said. “But why are they (NATO) killing the Taliban? They are from this country. Why should the foreigners come and kill Afghans?”

Grant said the war is lost if the international community loses the hearts and minds of Afghans. More foreign troops aren’t the answer, he said, and when assaults are needed they must be accurate.

A study of the Afghan war released Tuesday by the US-based Jamestown Foundation reached a similar conclusion.

“As coalition troops continue to use close air support and superior artillery firepower to flush Taliban insurgents out of provinces like Kandahar, the real contest for the hearts and minds... may well hinge on the competing sides’ “collateral damage” statistics,” it said.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies, another Washington-based group, said that NATO and the US military were wrong to emphasize their ability to kill Taliban. “The ensuing collateral damage in a culture that emphasizes revenge has created ten enemies out of one and has disillusioned most Afghans,” it said.

Grant says there is more anger today toward the foreign soldiers than in 2005, when he also was stationed in Afghanistan. To turn around that perception means taking risks, he said.

“I tell the troops that there are 55,000 drivers in Kandahar city and maybe five among them are suicide bombers. But if we treat all the other 54,995 drivers like they are all suicide bombers then we have lost,” he said.

Some, like Abdullah Shah, who lost so much of his family, can’t be won back.

“I don’t care. They can kill me. What are the foreign soldiers doing but killing us?” he said, recounting the day his wife and children were struck as they tried to flee. His youngest child, a 10-month-old baby, died with his mother.

“From whom can they protect us? The looters? The looters are the government and they are with the government.” ap