Afghanistan is too unsafe for the army

Soon, 100,000 Western soldiers will be in Afghanistan -four hundred of them Belgians. Nonetheless, year after year the insurgency gains terrain. Nato is running the military operation in Afghanistan and would like to hand itself a victory, as a present for its sixtieth anniversary later this year. In reality, the organisation has to pull all strings to camouflage a complete humiliation. Gie Goris went to Kabul and Kandahar to listen to what the Afghans themselves think of it all. Not embedded.
  • gie goris ISAF forces guard a site near to Kandahar Airfield where a roadbomb hit a white SUV gie goris
“This is the royal hall of Mazdahdah.” Mauladad says it without a trace of irony, even though the low, clay bunker of two on three meters in wich we squat has nothing royal to it. For Malaudad and the other men who hunch down on the earthen floor, this is the only place where they are safe for the cold and the rain of winter in Kandahar. But their families are much too numerous to shelter here, let alone to live. They still have to count on the improvised little tents on the waste land they call Mazdahdah – as in the garage that is going to be built on it. They are squatters on this terrain.

Mauladad is a shepherd. Sheeps and goats he knows as no other, but he was driven out of the Northwestern province Herat by the combination of hunger and violence between warlords, Taliban and police. It brought him, together with dozens of family members, to this improvised refugee camp in the middle of the town. It’s a black hole, he says. “Our kids are being sent away from school because they are too dirty and we cannot take care of them because there are no jobs to be found anywhere. No one looks after us. Not the governor, not the United Nations – even though they inspected this camp twice –, not the central government, and certainly not the warring factions.”
In the enumeration of powers not looking after them, Malaudad doesn’t even mention the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). For him, the foreign Nato-soldiers belong to the warring factions he had to flee, not to the authorities to which he looks for help.
During an interview in Charahi Qambar, a refugee camp for some 5,000 people at the outskirts of Kabul, ISAF is very much part of the conversation. “There is a small dispensarium, but almost no medicines. The mayor of Kabul has locked the only manual water pump and impedes the building of toilets, to prevent us settling here permanently,” Abdelmalek says. He’s from the province of Helmand and fled the bombs of the international force. “During one night of bombings by the ISAF 150 people died,” Abdelmalek maintains. That’s why he and a whole lot of other families left their wheat- and poppy fields to look for the relative safety of the city. But the dead end street in which they ended up deeply furrows his brow. “Why don’t they just kills us?” Mohammed Jemah asks himself. “Surely we don’t want to live in this way, without dignity.” Several inhabitants say that they would be better of if they joined the rebels. “For they pay you, and they protect the poppy fields of their allies.”

wrong priorities


Afghanistan is listed as one of the five poorest countries in the world, even though it is well nigh impossible to find reliable data. The World Bank, for instance, estimates the gross national product to be around 11,6 billion dollars. But one isn’t sure of that, for more than fifty per cent of it comes from the – obviously illegal – drugs production and trade. Mister Safi, director of the Kandahar office of the Afghanistan International Bank knows that “they just didn’t invest enough in the agricultural economy.”
Agriculture is responsible for eighty per cent of the employment and fifty per cent of the gross national product, but of all the help Usaid has provided over the past years, only four per cent went to agricultural projects. Safi: “The money the international community invests in Afghanistan mainly goes to the security sector – the protection of foreigners. In the meantime, farmers are hardly able to get to their fields. They certainly can’t take their produce to the market, and industrial production has virtually come to a complete stop. 120 factories have been built in Kandahar since 2001 – only two or three of them are still active today.”

Safi’s complaint is echoed in all conversations with human rights activists, poets, NGO-workers, entrepreneurs, village elders, civil servants and even western soldiers: not enough attention is being paid to development and the fight against poverty, and the military operations cost far too much money. Acbar, a platform of aid organisations in Afghanistan, published the raw data in Falling Short. Aid Effectiveness in Afghanistan (march 2008).
The reports claims that the American army spends each day 100 million dollars on the Afghan war, while the whole international community comes up with no more than 7 million dollars per day for aid programs. The Belgian expenses too show this distorted relation: in 2009, the military presence would cost Belgium at least 42 million euro, while development co-operation provides about 7 million euro for Afghanistan.

On top of all that, only 15 of the 25 billion dollar that has been promised as foreign aid since 2001 has effectively being released. And no less than forty per cent of that money returned to the donor countries in the form of wages of consultants and profits of private corporations. The American company BearingPoint for instance hired fifty foreign consultants to renovate the department of Finance. The costs of that operation: up to 500,000 dollar per consultant per year, security costs included. Acbar also observes that aid is being used for the realization of military objectives: the control of the whole country by the Karzai-government and the expulsion of the Taliban and other rebel groups linked to al-Qaeda.
In particular, the knowing mixture of reconstruction with intelligence and military operations in the Provincial Reconstruction Teams is denounced. These military PRTs “have in many cases impeded the emergence of effective government institutions and crossed out many other civil development processes,” the report reads.

on safe heights


The only reason lieutenant Erik Eennaerts yells to me is because a Belgian F-16 and a French Mirage stand side-by-side, warming up for a possible mission. Eennaerts is very amiable and willing to help. All Belgian soldiers on the Kandahar air force base are men and women who have no desire but that their four-month stay in the dust desert that is Kandahar Airfield helps to create a better future for Afghan citizens.
But how life looks like for those Afghans– they have no idea. No one leaves the base, and the most concrete image they get of the life as it is, is via the technology in the four F-16s active here since September 2008. Even from a safe seven kilometres high a pilot can see how many people are running around on premises. On the same screen, the target of laser-guided bombs can be determined. These technological gadgets are meant to prevent mistakes. Eennaerts is convinced that it works flawlessly. The Afghans aren’t.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) stated in September 2008 that of the 1633 Afghan citizens that died in 2007 in war violence, 434 died in ISAF- or US-actions – of which 321 in aerial attacks. Of the 173 victims HRW counted in the first months of 2008, 119 were killed in aerial attacks. The possibility that civilians die in aerial bombings is much higher than in ground operations – all technology notwithstanding. And the number of aerial bombardments is rising exponentially with the rise of violent encounters between the rebels and the international forces: in the months of June and July 2008 almost as much bombs were dropped as in the whole of 2006. How many bombs Belgian combat planes dropped in 2008, the Ministry of Defence refuses to disclose.

Lal Gul, head of the Afghanistan Human Rights Organisation, does not mince his words in his office in Kabul. He no longer speaks of violations of human rights, but of war crimes. “The foreign troops bomb to kill. They invade villages at night to destroy our cultural and religious customs and habits. They lock up innocents to install a reign of terror over the people.” He is a passionate defender of human rights, but sees more benefits in a dialogue with the Taliban than with the Western-oriented international community.
Many people I encounter go some way towards the view so extremely put by Gul. Vahid Mojdeh, for instance, confirms that the international force has lost its – between 2002 and 2004 certainly present – credit by walking with dirty boots through the cultural household of Afghanistan and by unnecessarily killing far too many civilians in their military undertakings. Today, Mojdeh is a dealer in building materials, but in a former life he was a high-positioned civil servant in the Taliban-governments, and before that in the administration of Rabbani that preceded the Taliban.

fuckistan


Qatub is a strong, Pathan entrepreneur sitting next to me on the flight to Kandahar. Shortly before take off he proudly states that his clan name is Popalzai. The same clan as president Karzai. Enchanted. He tries to teach me a few basic sentences Pathan; furthermore he wants to make me aware of the fact that all evil present in Kandahar and the rest of the country emanates from Pakistan. To which his father, who up to that point sat unmoved in his seat staring at the bare mountains below adds, “Not Pakistan, but Fuckistan.” Roar of laughter. Pathans are not very renowned for their subtle humour.

Qatub’s conviction is remarkably widespread in Afghanistan. That has deep historical roots. The minister of Foreign Affairs only recently said, for instance, that Afghanistan has no international border with Pakistan. He means: the 2,500 kilometre long boundary was forced upon Afghans by British colonial rule but, to this date, never recognised by Afghanistan. But the anti-Pakistan attitude has also very actual reasons.
In 2001, the Taliban and their international companions of al-Qaeda fled across the border to the tribal areas in Pakistan, where they could regroup unhindered and prepare for their resounding return since 2004. Pakistan journalist Ahmed Rashid describes it comprehensively in his most recent book, The Descent into Chaos. One example: already in the summer of 2003 the Taliban bought about 900 motorcycles in Quetta, and they imported hundreds of satellite phones from the Gulf States.

But not everyone believes that only Pakistan plays double game in this international war. Vahid Mojdeh: “Don’t believe anyone who tells you they are only interested in the wellbeing of the Afghan people. Not the West, not the Taliban, not the Karzai government with its warlords, but also not the neighbouring countries.” The United States are suspected of wanting to impose a permanent presence in Afghanistan so they can watch the neighbouring countries more closely. On the other hand, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, China and India all have their own political or economical reasons to strive for a failure of the American occupation project. And so, Mojdeh believes, all these regional players will find a way to finance or support the insurrection.

The government is absent in the rural areas, the international forces are rejected there, and the insurgents are in control.
glossy paper tiger


For NATO, the war in Afghanistan is in the first place an exercise to look for and circumscribe its own future. A high-placed NATO-officer, who speaks freely on condition of not being named, confirms that. “The West cannot wait until the terrorists strike again; we have to be free to intervene everywhere on earth to deny terrorists a safe haven and to stabilize failed states.”
The officer, involved in strategic planning of the military alliance, underlines that such actions – like the ISAF-mission in Afghanistan – have to be conducted under the leadership of the United Nations or a similar regional alliance, not under the unilateral command of the United States. And NGOs and civil organisations have to be enlisted in a unified strategy. And no, he does not see why this would be viewed as a new imperialistic project, even though it is true that the NATO is an American-European alliance, and that NGO’s should in principle operate independently. But in times of war other laws are in force, he muses.

In April, NATO will be celebrating its sixtieth anniversary in Strasbourg. My officer expects that one will choose definitely for this new, global role. To be able to do this with some pomp and circumstance, the pr-machine is already working overtime. And on the glossy paper of the NATO brochures it does work. “Five years ago 900,000 children went to school, now 6,4 million are enrolled – of which 1,5 million are girls. 16 million vaccinations were given, what contributes to a fall of the death rate of children with 26 per cent as against 2002. More than 80 per cent of the people have access to health services, as against eight per cent under the Taliban. Three quarters of the ring road ?connecting Herat, Kandahar, Kabul, and Mazar-e-Sharif? is paved.” These victory bulletins come from Progress in Afghanistan. Bucharest Summit 2-4 April 2008.

When, however, I ask Brigadier General Sher Mohammad Zazai, commander of the 205 Brigade Heroes Afghan National Army, to join a military convoy from Kandahar to Kabul, the general answers that the army no longer uses the road because it is too dangerous. Gousuddin Frotan, director of the Hindara Media and Cultural Foundation in Kandahar, adds: “At least fifty bridges between Kandahar and Kabul are already destroyed. And the Taliban has ordered mobile operators to disconnect their services along the highway between dusk and dawn. Only Etisalat does not back down for that order, but that means that all who are stopped during the night and have a mobile number beginning with 0786 are actually carrying a death sentence. The government is absent in the rural areas, the international forces are rejected there, and the insurgents are in control.”

To a rising degree the same goes for the cities. Syed Abdul Hai, coordinator of the NGO Human Development Resources Agency, gives me a night-letter the Taliban circulate among media people in Kandahar. In that letter, Haj mullah Gulam Gulam gives four telephone numbers that are of authentic Taliban spokespersons. So they can distinguish between false threats and questions for “volunteer contributions” and real ones.

The NATO brochure also states that seventy per cent of all “security incidents” took place in ten per cent of the districts, where only six per cent of the Afghans live. An internal report the Britisch Hugh Bayley wrote for the Parliamentary Assembly of the NATO in 2008 is more worrying: “The safety situation in the beleaguered country is clearly deteriorating.”

incredible democracy


Arghandab is a suburb in the Northeast of Kandahar. Everyone tells me that here, at the shrine of Baba Wali, thousands of people came pick-nicking on Fridays. And always that story is told in the past tense: pick-nick belongs to the time before the return of the Taliban. Today there is regular fighting around Arghandab. Still, work is being conducted on a bridge across the Arghandab-river, and if you see how taxis, donkey carts and other traffic bump over the riverbed in full dry season, you realise the bidge is no luxury.
When asked when work will start on the road further eastward, the startled welder answers that at the end of the bridge-under-construction safety ends too. No one in the right frame of his mind will be going to do infrastructure work there – he points no further than a hundred meters away – because then you will be branded a collaborator. And that is a death sentence.

On the third of January 2009 armed men attack a little office of the election committee in Arghandab. Immediately it is clear what everyone in Kandahar already knew a month before: the presidential elections, of which the constitution says that they have to be held at the last in June 2009, will not be able to take place unless the safety situation will improve dramatically. But no one believes that it will, not even when there would suddenly be a surge of foreign troops. And that surge is certain to come.
Christopher C. Prat of the American contractor Orbis Operations speaks of flourishing businesses on Kandahar Airfield. Other sources too speak of the biggest construction site in South-Afghanistan. Diplomats in Kabul reckon that the elections will be postponed for a few months, just as a rising number of MPs asks [and the election commission confirmed in February]. But whether that will bring solace, is questionable.

The elections will be a complete disaster when they are held only in the safe areas, because that will take away the last bit of legitimacy the Afghan government has in Pashtu regions like Kandahar, Zabul, Paktia and Helmand. Even the -Pashtu- president, Hamid Karzai, never succeeded in convincing his fellow Pashtuns that the government in Kabul is also their government. The presence of – for the most part non-Pashtu – warlords is responsible for that, though the antics of his brother in Kandahar, Ahmed Wali Karzai, do not help. The NATO-officer claims that ISAF has brought forward hard evidence that Ahmed Wali is involved in the drug economy. The president never flinched. When the governer of Kandahar, major-general Rahmatullah Raufi, quitted on the third of December, he motivated his move by stating that he had conflicts with unnamed “powerful persons”. That made it clear to everyone that he was speaking about A.W. Karzai.

“The corruption of the current government drives people right into the arms of the Taliban,” says Javed Ahmed, a freelance journalist in Kandahar with a heavy American accent. “That, the enduring poverty, and the civil victims of the ISAF-bombings.” Javed Ahmed jusgt recently regained his freedom. For eleven months, he was a prisoner in the international prison of Bagram, a place described by Time Magazine begin January as a bigger version of Gunatanamo. His wrong-doing: as a journalist for the Canadian television, he was always so quick to be at the place of assaults that suspicions about him grew. He was released after 150 interrogations – in the beginning the hard way. He was never formally charged, there were no lawyers, nor any process. But Ahmed and his 30 million compatriots still are asked to believe that NATO is here to bring democracy, rule of law, and development. “I’m preparing a complaint and want compensation,” he says. “In the West, laws are in force that are flouted by Western forces in Afghanistan. We don’t take that.”

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