Taliban rule near Kabul

The Guardian's Jason Burke, author of the stand-out book on Al Qaeda, is a respected and resourceful journalist. On assignment in Afghanistan for some time now, he has evidently been able to develop a decent network of contacts, allowing him to write about things most journalists cannot:

Taliban win over locals at the gates of Kabul

MAIDAN SHAH, Aug 24 - While clashes in remote Helmand dominate the headlines, another battle is being waged by the insurgents on Kabul's doorstep. There, the Taliban are winning support by building a parallel administration, which is more effective, more popular and more brutal than the government's...

'The war in the south is basically a tough, bitterly fought stalemate,' admitted one senior Nato officer last week. 'It is around Kabul that the Taliban must now be stopped.' ...

Although news bulletins inside and outside Afghanistan are dominated by bomb blasts or clashes, the real strength of the insurgents lies not in their ability to ambush convoys or plant roadside bombs but in the parallel administration they have managed to establish in huge areas across the south and east of Afghanistan. There they make the law, enforcing a harsh, but sometimes welcome, order while intimidating any dissenters. Their strategy is deliberate and long-term. From this new position of strength, they are building durable networks of support. What has happened in Wardak province shows how they have done it.

The only cases that come before Amanullah Ishaqzai, a government judge in Wardak, are those which require an official stamp or disputes among the province's mainly Shia Muslim Hazara ethnic minority, who have historically suffered at the hands of the Sunni Pashtun tribes who make up the bulk of the Taliban. Most of the province's 800,000 inhabitants, mainly peasants, go to the insurgents for rough but often effective justice...

Every villager has stories of how the Taliban settle the myriad property disputes which mark Afghan society. In scores of cases, Ishaqzai said, he had convened a traditional tribal council with an Islamic scholar as a judge rather than send cases to higher courts...

Last year human rights groups in Afghanistan estimated that the Taliban had executed between 70 and 90 people in the villages they control and punished thousands more for criminal acts.

Often such acts are popular. According to Hotak, the first act of the Taliban in the villages near his home had been to announce that they would take responsibility for law enforcement. 'They said they were responsible for every chicken,' Hotak said. 'People believe them. When they kill a robber, everyone is happy.'

A government minister talked of how in his own village earlier this month a shopowner had complained to the Taliban after being robbed and had got his goods back after the insurgents simply circulated a 'night letter'...

Ismatullah the elder was clear. 'When the Taliban were in power, you could drive all the way to Kandahar [Afghanistan's second city, 250 miles away] with a bag of money and no one would touch you,' he said. 'Now the government are thieves. Since 2001 nothing has changed, except security is worse.' ...

'The police know that, if they stay in their station and do nothing, the Taliban leave them alone and only launch attacks in the next district,' said one elder from the small town of Chak...

In some areas they control, the Taliban enforce their strict interpretation of Islamic law, banning music and television. Men who do not wear long beards are roughed up or threatened. Wedding parties find unwelcome guests arriving to check for 'immoral behaviour' and to help themselves to the food. Schools, especially those for girls, are regularly burnt. In other areas, the local commanders are more lenient, restricting themselves to punishing 'criminals' and 'spies'...

[R]efugees who have fled from the province to Kabul said that exploitation of local communities by the Taliban was rare. 'They ask the landowners for food, but not us,' said Roz Ali, 42. 'Anyway we have nothing to give.' However, taxes are sometimes levied on farm production - including opium...

In some instances, young men are pressured to join the ranks of the insurgents, sometimes for a single operation...

Intelligence estimates obtained by The Observer conservatively place the strength of the Wardak Taliban at about 800 lightly armed men, split into dozens of different factions...

There are signs that the insurgents are penetrating the capital itself. Ten days ago authorities reported a 'rocket strike' on the newly refurbished airport. Only it was not rockets, which have a range of many miles, that were fired at the terminal but rocket-propelled grenades, launched from 200 metres away... (link)

Similarly, the Times reports on the threats to Kabul:

In the past month, [militants] have stepped up attacks on the road from Kabul to Pakistan via Jalalabad - the main supply route for food, fuel and water...

“We're seeing history repeat itself,” said Haroun Mir, co-founder of the Afghanistan Centre for Research and Policy Studies and a former aide to Ahmad Shah Massoud, the assassinated Mujahidin commander. “The Taleban's trying to cut the main roads to Kabul to target supplies for foreign forces, just like the Mujahidin did with the Soviets. If the highways are cut even for two days, it could also create riots in the city.”

Kabul is vulnerable to blockades because it is surrounded by mountains and has to ship in supplies on three roads leading north, east and southwest. The British learnt this the hard way during the siege of Kabul in 1841, documented by Lady Florentia Sale in A Journal of the Disasters in Afghanistan. “Khojeh Meer says that he has no more grain,” she wrote on December 3, 1841. “He also says that the moolahs have been to all the villages and laid the people under ban not to assist the English and that consequently the Mussulman population are as one man against us.” A month later, the British began their retreat from Kabul...

Local officials say that the Taleban, which derive most of their support from ethnic Pashtuns, are enlisting villages around Kabul and feeding off frustration with the lack of development since 2001. They fear that the next target will be the northern routes to the borders of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan... (link)

Related:
August 2007: IWPR reports from Taliban-ruled Musa Qala district in Helmand where the Taliban had allowed schools to operate, allowed men to shave their beards, and other relatively moderate policies.