Marjah fears return of warlords
By Mohammad Elyas Daee and Abubakar Siddique
MARJAH - Azizullah Khan might be this town's best example of civic-mindedness.
He is a middle-aged farmer in this area, at the center of a recent large-scale
military effort against the Taliban in Afghanistan's volatile Helmand province.
His dedication to a community under the most trying of circumstances earned him
the respect of Marjah's locals, who long depended on his pharmacy in the town's
dusty bazaar as their only healthcare option.
When news came that Afghan President Hamid Karzai would be visiting on March 7,
following the anti-Taliban operation carried out
by Afghan and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces, it was Khan who
was entrusted to speak for Marjah's residents. With their marketplace in ruins
as a result of the offensive, the feeling was that Khan would be well-suited to
present their demands and concerns based on first-hand experience.
Addressing the president inside the community's main mosque, Khan peppered his
message with salutations and blunt grievances, even reminding the Afghan leader
of his oft-repeated promises to step down if he failed to deliver security and
services.
"We are not asking you to resign, but our patience is running thin," Khan told
the only president that Afghans have ever elected. "For the past eight years
the warlords have been ruling us. Their hands have been stained with the blood
of innocents and they have killed hundreds of people. Even now they are being
imposed on the people in the name of tribal and regional leaders. People are
afraid to convey the real feelings of locals because they sense themselves to
be in danger from all sides."
Khan pleaded for the government to ensure security, remove any military
presence from schools and private homes, compensate locals for losses resulting
from the recent fighting and help rebuild schools, clinics and irrigation
canals.
His most impassioned and telling appeal, however, was for Karzai to avoid
repeating a past mistake: do not hand over control of local affairs to former
militia commanders or other "people with influence".
The plea, met with cheers and nods of approval by the hundreds of locals
assembled at the mosque, highlights a window of opportunity that has been
opened in Marjah, a town that in many ways is a microcosm of what has gone
wrong in much of southern Afghanistan.
Early backlash
War-weary locals initially welcomed the demise of the Taliban regime in late
2001, but their feelings soon began to change. After finding themselves ruled
by former mujahideen commanders installed by the government in 2001, many of
Marjah's youth went to the other side; joining the insurgent ranks who paid
well and protected the opium-poppy crops on which many of the town's farming
families depended.
Kabul and its international backers tried to improve the situation. The
governor, police chief and other key officials were removed and 5,000 British
troops were tasked with controlling the area.
The Taliban, however, filled the vacuum of governance. Many locals welcomed the
development, preferring the stability provided by the Taliban over the chaos of
life under draconian local strongmen. The Taliban enforced hardline religious
edicts and did not tolerate crime or feuds among the communities they
controlled. Justice was cheap, swift and decisive.
But locals were aware of the shortcomings as well. The Taliban offered no
education, healthcare or prospect of future development. The group was seen as
controlled by foreign militants - Arabs and Pakistanis in particular.
Many of those concerns are only coming to light following operation "Moshtarak"
("Together"). If it turns out that locals are confident enough to look past
their fears of a Taliban return and toward a better future, the transformation
could prove to be the joint military offensive's greatest success.
Familiar story
Marjah-area residents appear eager for a fresh start, despite the fact that
25,000 of them have been displaced and scores killed during the recent
fighting. But they are clearly voicing their demand that honest local officials
- untainted by corruption and attentive to their needs - be in control of local
affairs.
The man whose return to power they might fear most is 57-year-old former
Helmand police chief Abdul Rahman Jan. Jan is typical of the powerbrokers
dominating local affairs in rural communities across Afghanistan. Once an
anti-Soviet mujahideen commander, his rise to power in the 1990s and again
after the ouster of the Taliban eight years ago led to local suffering. Members
of his militia pillaged, raped and engaged in the drug trade, according to
locals.
Since 2007, when the Taliban overran his Marjah stronghold, Jan has lived in
Helmand's provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, with his extended family of 12
children and grandchildren. Marjah residents want it to stay that way, but the
bearded patriarch is already hinting that he might soon return to his sprawling
home and farmland in Marjah.
Jan has formed a 35-member Marjah shura, or tribal council, in anticipation of
renewed control of Marjah. While his return was made possible by the recent
offensive, which cleared the agricultural town of insurgents, Jan has been
openly critical of the effort's results.
"People were very optimistic that this offensive would free us from the
clutches of the terrorists, but as the offensive advanced hardly any Taliban
[fighters] were killed or captured," Jan laments. "Only two Taliban were killed
and one was injured. There were around 470 [small] Taliban groups but none of
their members were captured. Few weapons or mines were recovered."
His past might help explain his dour appraisal of the military operation.
Formerly allied with Helmand strongman and former governor Sher Muhammad
Akhudzada, Jan was appointed as the provincial police chief after the fall of
the Taliban regime in 2001. After that, Helmand slowly descended into a
downward spiral as the former mujahideen cabal took the opportunity to recoup
financial and personnel losses they had incurred during the Taliban regime,
when Jan was chased across Afghanistan by his Taliban enemies.
Haunted by the past
When thousands of United Nations-mandated British troops moved into Helmand in
2006, Jan was among the first officials fired because most locals were tired of
the excesses of his tribal militia.
During the same period, a reinvigorated Taliban made inroads into much of
southern Afghanistan from their sanctuaries in neighboring Pakistan. Then
Marjah and Nade-Ali, an adjacent district in western Helmand, fell to the
Taliban, who dissipated only after the arrival of 15,000 Afghan and NATO troops
in February.
Locals now see Jan busily lobbying in Helmand and Kabul to be given control of
his former Marjah stronghold in return for having kept the region under nominal
government control while in power. Many suspect him of using his influence
within his Noorzai tribe against the Ishaqzai, who over the years have provided
manpower to Taliban ranks to counter his influence. (Both Pashtun clans are
part of the larger Durrani Pashtun tribal grouping, which populates much of
southern Afghanistan and has played a central role in the country's politics.)
It is clear that when pharmacy owner Khan conveyed Marjah residents' demands to
Karzai, his advice against returning "people with influence" or former militia
commanders to power was aimed squarely at people like Jan.
Karzai, who considers southern Afghanistan his home constituency because he was
born and raised in a prominent ethnic Pashtun lineage in neighboring Kandahar
province, has indicated that he is listening.
In remarks to journalists after hearing complaints from Marjah residents for
more than two hours on March 7, the president appeared to understand their
concerns.
"They felt as if they were abandoned, which in many cases is true, and this
sense of abandonment has to go away," Karzai said. "We have to address their
problems, we have to give them what we have not [given them] so far, and
provide them with the security that they require."
Anxious days
But this new approach to deliver good governance is fraught with difficulty, as
the provincial government's appointment of one of Marjah's own to run the
town's affairs has shown.
The candor of Haji Abdul Zahir Aryan, who was chosen to be Marjah's governor,
appears to have won over the town's residents. The appointment has caused a
stir outside Afghanistan, however, where reports have alleged that he served
four years in a German prison after being convicted of stabbing his stepson.
Largely due to a name variation, the details remain murky. The Washington Post,
which has investigated the reports, writes that the case being cited
corresponds to that of "an Afghan man who went by [the name of] Abdul Zahar"
while in Germany.
Brushing aside any talk of controversy, the soft-spoken 60-year-old Marjah
elder tells RFE/RL that he indeed lived in Germany for years, legally and with
a visa. But he categorically denies having been convicted of or serving time
for such a crime.
Looking ahead, he says the future of Marjah and its residents depends on how
Kabul responds to their demands.
"As far as the issue of the return of the Taliban is concerned, it depends on
the performance of the government," Aryan says. "If the government continues
delivering on its promises and carries on reconstruction and winning over
Marjah's people, then the Taliban will find no space here in the future. But if
the government turns its back on Marjah, as it did in the past, then the
Taliban will rebuild their sanctuary here."
Aryan's message, seconded by people like Khan, clearly carries weight among
Marjah locals. For Afghanistan's international backers, the message - and the
messages of others from a region largely silent in recent years - will be
tainted until they know for sure who is delivering it.
It's a tightrope that Kabul and its NATO allies must walk as they try to
develop a formula that can work not only in Marjah but throughout southern
Afghanistan.
(To view the original article, please click
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