ZANA KHAN,
Afghanistan—Within 30 minutes after the shura—or
community meeting—ended in this village in eastern Ghazni province on Wednesday,
we came under mortar fire from the Taliban.
“We have contact!” shouted the Polish International Security
Assistance Force (ISAF) commander who was escorting us to the helicopter.
“Run!”
Run we did, huffing and puffing under helmets and heavy body
armor, a group of over-aged pretend soldiers—actually, just reporters-- trying
to understand a war that barely seems to exist most of the time. Until all of a
sudden it does, rocketing in from nowhere.
Zana Khan is a fault line in the decade-long conflict in
Afghanistan—one of those dusty, primeval villages where all the money and
U.S.-backed power of the New Afghanistan contends daily with the insidious
forces of the old unreconstructed Afghanistan, a region defined by ignorance and
terror.
“It’s routine,” explained Krzysztof Wojcik, a
retired Polish Special Forces major, as we sat inside an armored medevac vehicle
listening to the “Whump!” of mortars from high in the mountains and the
crackling of return fire from the Polish 30-millimeter guns and Afghan National
Army machine guns. “They [the Taliban]’ knew about the shura. They knew when it ended,” said Wojcik. “They waited
for the people to leave and the helicopters to come, because they knew there
would be VIPs.”
The Taliban’s chief VIP target appeared to be
Musa Khan, the governor of Ghazni, who took off just ahead of us in a Polish
Hind helicopter—an upgraded version of the Soviet choppers used against the
mujahadeen in the ‘80s. The shura, a traditional
gathering of male elders and leading citizens, was Khan’s idea. Through
speeches, gifts and new schoolbooks, Khan was trying to make the case to the
barely literate people of this tiny mountain village in the Taliban-infected
Southeast of Afghanistan that his way, the way of the New Afghanistan—the way of
the international community, America and NATO—was vastly better and more
prosperous than the way of the Taliban, who have kept a NATO-funded new school
from opening for three years.
And he’s very impressive, Khan is. Black-bearded
and black-turbaned, he is eloquent and learned in the Koran, and he has a deep,
sonorous voice that puts you in mind of, say, Anthony Quinn in Lawrence of Arabia. As some 250 townspeople, their faces a
deep reddish-tan from years of exposure, sat squinting quizzically in the sun,
Khan delivered “my message to the Taliban,” saying he and his government were
every bit as religious as the Islamist radicals, observing “all the pillars of
Islam,” and that he delivered justice every bit as well (Khan made a big deal of
his chief judge sentencing two murderers to hang the day before).
Khan also bravely countered the Taliban line that he and the
national government of President Hamid Karzai were merely stooges of America and
the West. “The Taliban are fond of saying that our plans are made up by
foreigners, but the clothes you are wearing are also made by foreigners. The
Toyotas you are driving, these are also made by foreigners,” he said. “The
Taliban are keeping you from the good life and the international community, from
sending your children to school, from paving your roads.”
It all sounded hopeful, and many villagers applauded and
walked away happily down the stony path to their mud-walled homes carrying thick
gray woolen blankets and donated new plastic sandals as gifts. “I think it went
very well,” Khan remarked to me afterward. “The first shura we had only four
people.” Other villagers praised the newly strengthened Afghan police and army,
saying the Taliban was less brazen and weaker than a few years ago, before
President Obama’s “surge” began.
But the mortar attack at the end was an abrupt reminder of
what a number of Afghans attending the shura told me and a visiting group of
reporters privately. “Two hours after you leave, they will be back," said
Mohammad, a 32-year-old farmer. “They will burn those gifts.”
Indeed, what looked like a simple village
gathering on the surface was actually the product of a sophisticated ISAF-led
clear-and-hold operation involving not just Polish troops but, very quietly,
U.S. Special Forces as well, who had come into Zana Khan several days before the
shura to round up any suspects. “I think when we leave
it’s going to fall apart,” said “Moose,” a U.S. Special Forces soldier who said
he and his team had rounded up nine suspects with alleged bomb parts or
fragments in their houses. He was referring not just to Zana Khan but to
Afghanistan. “Their special forces are good, really good, but the regular army’s
kind of lazy. I think it’s going under.”
It’s easy to be as cynical as Moose. If U.S. and international
forces can’t suppress the Taliban in this part of the country now, while still
operating near the height of the Obama ”surge”—which is ending as of this
September—what’s going to happen when we all leave at the end of 2014? Already
ISAF has written off Ghazni’s southern-most district, right on the Pakistan
border, as hopelessly under Taliban control.
And yet there are other strong signs that this is not going to
be 1992-96, when the Taliban gradually and brutally took control of an abandoned
Afghanistan. The new Afghan army and police are expected to get at least $4
billion a year in ISAF funds—most of it from Washington—indefinite training and
help from U.S. special operations, and by most accounts the Afghans are
increasingly competent. The U.S. drone strike program will continue indefinitely
into the future, albeit likely under the CIA rather than the Pentagon, ensuring
that the Mullah Omars of the future will not be eager to show their faces in
downtown Kabul.
Areas like the eastern section of Afghanistan are unlikely to
achieve complete peace. Funded by Pakistan’s intelligence agency just across the
border, and possibly by sympathetic Islamists in the Arab world, the Taliban
have a constant source of replenishment, like a toxic natural spring. But there
is reason to think the Taliban can be contained at least to this troubled corner
of Afghanistan. And that is the case the U.S. is making to its NATO allies at
the forthcoming summit in Chicago—we need to be here for decades in some
fashion, not just for a couple of more years.
“It’s a never ending story,” said our Polish escort, as we
waited out the mortar battle. Earlier in the day, in a round of interviews at
the village, we had asked: Are the Taliban weaker, or just as strong? The answer
was mixed. Yet it was also true that the mortar rounds missed their targets—the
governor, and possibly us--by hundreds of meters. “They are scared; they don’t
come close” enough to be accurate, Wojcik said.
Gen. Daoud Shah Wafadar, the Afghan army
commander in Ghazni province—who also spoke at the shura—told our visiting group of reporters that the Taliban
were no longer a match for his forces. “The enemy is not capable of fighting
with us face to face. The only thing they can do is threaten the people.”
That may be true, but at least in this recalcitrant portion of
Afghanistan, it is a tactic that the Taliban still do very well—and there is
little sign as yet that they can be forced to stop.
No comments:
Post a Comment