Afghanistan Abandoned -- Again

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TALIBAN REVIVING STRUCTURE IN AFGHANISTAN
Associated Press / The Guardian
Monday April 7, 2003

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2538845,00.html

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) - Before executing the International Red Cross
worker, the Taliban gunmen made a satellite telephone call to their superior
for instructions: Kill him?

Kill him, the order came back, and Ricardo Munguia, whose body was found
with 20 bullet wounds last month, became the first foreign aid worker to die
in Afghanistan since the Taliban's ouster from power 18 months ago.

The manner of his death suggests the Taliban is not only determined to
remain a force in this country, but is reorganizing and reviving its command
structure.

There is little to stop them. The soldiers and police who were supposed to
be the bedrock of a stable postwar Afghanistan have gone unpaid for months
and are drifting away.

At a time when the United States is promising a reconstructed democratic
postwar Iraq, many Afghans are remembering hearing similar promises not long
ago.

Instead, what they see is thieving warlords, murder on the roads, and a
resurgence of Taliban vigilantism.

"It's like I am seeing the same movie twice and no one is trying to fix the
problem," said Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghanistan's president and
his representative in southern Kandahar. "What was promised to Afghans with
the collapse of the Taliban was a new life of hope and change. But what was
delivered? Nothing. Everyone is back in business."

Karzai said reconstruction has been painfully slow -- a canal repaired, a
piece of city road paved, a small school rebuilt.

"There have been no significant changes for people," he said. "People are
tired of seeing small, small projects. I don't know what to say to people
anymore."

When the Taliban ruled they forcibly conscripted young men. "Today I can say
'we don't take your sons away by force to fight at the front line,'" Karzai
remarked. "But that's about all I can say."

From safe havens in neighboring Pakistan, aided by militant Muslim groups
there, the Taliban launched their revival to coincide with the war in Iraq
and capitalize on Muslim anger over the U.S. invasion, say Afghan officials.

Karzai said the Taliban are allied with rebel commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar,
supported by Pakistan and financed by militant Arabs.

The attacks have targeted foreigners and the threats have been directed
toward Afghans working for international organizations.

Abdul Salam is a military commander for the government. Last month he was
stopped at a Taliban checkpoint in the Shah Wali Kot district of Kandahar
and became a witness to the killing of Munguia, a 39-year-old water engineer
from El Salvador.

After stopping Munguia and his three-vehicle convoy, gunmen made a phone
call to Mullah Dadullah, a powerful former Taliban commander who happens to
have an artificial leg provided by the Red Cross.

Mimicking a telephone receiver by cupping a hand on his ear, Salam recalled
the gunmen's side of the conversation.

"I heard him say Mullah Dadullah," he said. "I heard him ask for
instructions."

When the conversation ended the Taliban moved quickly, Salam said. They
shoved Munguia behind one of the vehicles, siphoned gasoline from the tanks
and used it to set the vehicles on fire.

Munguia was standing nearby. One Taliban raised his Kalashnikov rifle and
fired at Manguia.

Then they told the others: "You are working with kafirs (unbelievers). You
are slaves of Karzai and Karzai is a slave to America."

"This time we will let you go because you are Afghan," Salam remembered them
saying, "but if we find you again and you are still working for the
government we will kill you."

In the latest killing in southern Afghanistan, gunmen on Thursday shot to
death Haji Gilani, a close Karzai ally, in southern Uruzgan province. Gilani
was one of the first people to shelter Karzai when he secretly entered
Afghanistan to foment a rebellion against the Taliban in late 2001.

International workers in Kandahar don't feel safe anymore and some have been
moved from the Kandahar region to safer areas, said John Oerum, southwest
security officer for the United Nations. But Oerum is trying to find a way
to stay in southern Afghanistan. To abandon it would be to let the rebel
forces win, he says.

The Red Cross, with 150 foreign workers in Afghanistan, have suspended
operations indefinitely.

Today most Afghans say their National Army seems a distant dream while the
U.S.-led coalition continues to feed and finance warlords for their help in
hunting for Taliban and al-Qaida fighters.

Karzai, the president's brother, says: "We have to pay more attention at the
district level, build the administration. We know who these Taliban are, but
we don't have the people to report them when they return."

Khan Mohammed, commander of Kandahar's 2nd Corps, says his soldiers haven't
been paid in seven months, and his fighting force has dwindled. The Kandahar
police chief, Mohammed Akram, said he wants 50 extra police in each district
where the Taliban have a stronghold. But he says his police haven't been
paid in months and hundreds have just gone home.

"There is no real administration all over Afghanistan, no army, no police,"
said Mohammed. "The people do not want the Taliban, but we have to unite and
build, but we are not."