Afghanistan

Twenty minutes south of Kabul, along one of Afghanistan's few newly paved roads, lies Logar Province. In another country Logar's desert villages and accessible mountains might be a place city dwellers would use for quick rustication. But in Logar the Taliban are back, coming out at night to burn schools, assassinate liberal imams, launch rocket attacks on government buildings and plant mines to kill NATO soldiers.

The drive from Kabul to Logar is a mind-bending lesson in political geography, showing how badly deteriorated the occupation of Afghanistan has become. It seems the infamously insurgency-torn "south" of this country now extends very far north.

"The Italians call that the Valley of Death," says my local guide matter-of-factly as we pass a lush little cluster of villages wedged between two desiccated slopes. We are still in Kabul Province, the Musayi district: "Six of them were killed there a few months ago, and they never went back in." Then, after a pause: "The green is all pistachio trees."

According to NATO only two Italians were killed, with four wounded. Nor does NATO admit that any area of Afghanistan has been ceded to the insurgents--let alone a valley right outside the capital. Whatever the case, most Afghans are beginning to think that the Taliban are winning. This raises several questions: Who are these insurgents? Why are they fighting? What dynamics fuel their growth? And ultimately, how, when and to whom will the United States and its allies finally leave Afghanistan?

When we arrive at Shaffad Sang, a cluster of villages just off the main road, the tension grows palpably thicker. Our contact, a man named Zibullah Pimon, who works for a foreign construction company, is visibly nervous. Because of the Taliban activity here, Pimon spends all his time in Kabul, returning to his village only once a week to visit his family for a few hours before racing back. We slip into the privacy of his qala, or mud-walled compound, and then into his neatly whitewashed and carpeted guest room, away from the women in the family quarters.

"There were no police here and no Afghan army," explains Pimon. "So the Taliban saw their chance and came in." He says Taliban actions in Logar started about a year ago, when organizers infiltrated from Pakistan, using money and arguments to reactivate networks of former fighters and win over local imams. Opponents were killed or run off with warnings.

Though "Taliban" or "AGEs"--antigovernment elements--are the catchall phrases used to describe Afghan insurgents, in provinces near Kabul like Logar, Wardak and Nangarhar, most of the guerrillas are actually members of Hezb-e-Islami, an old mujahedeen party led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. A pathologically ruthless commander, Hekmatyar got his start throwing acid at unveiled women when he was an engineering student in Kabul. In 1975 he formed Hezb-e-Islami with Pakistani support. First he fought the nationalist President Daoud Khan; then, after the Communist coup in 1978, he received more than $600 million in American military aid to fight the Russians.

Now his forces have reorganized, pledged support to Al Qaeda, made peace with their old foes, the Taliban, and are "blowing back" upon their former patrons, the Americans. Like the Taliban, Hezb-e-Islami is made up primarily of Pashtuns, Afghanistan's dominant ethnic group at more than 45 percent of the population.

"They say this is not a national government, that its positions are controlled by only a few," says Pimon, explaining why some of his neighbors support the insurgents. "And there are no jobs, no development.

"The Taliban have told every family to provide one man, and they say they will pay these fighters," explains Pimon, adding that corruption and opium eradication are also angering people.

In recent months insurgent violence has even started in Kabul. Over five weeks this fall the city suffered four suicide bombings, three of which killed or wounded international troops. One attack hit just outside the American Embassy: Three US Humvees were bombed, killing two GIs and sixteen others; twenty-nine people were wounded. The US military now says there are Kabul-based suicide cells.

September saw numerous IEDs uncovered in the capital and some rocket attacks--including one against the airport an hour after I arrived--while security forces arrested several urban-based Taliban, including a group of university students who were storing rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and propaganda.

In the south, kidnapping has begun: One German and three Macedonian NGO workers were abducted and murdered in Helmand Province this past spring. Their corpses were booby-trapped, and nine Afghan National Police officers died in the recovery effort. In September a Colombian aid worker and two Afghan nationals were kidnapped in Wardak, west of Kabul, then released three weeks later.

This new pattern of political violence is seen as the "Iraqization" of the Afghan insurgency, which some fear could also lead to an Iraq-style meltdown or ethnically based fragmentation. Even the top NATO general here recently warned that most Afghans will soon support the Taliban if development and security do not significantly improve over the next six months.

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