Remember Afghanistan?

Monday, Mar. 08, 2004 By BY TIM MCGIRK | KABUL AND MICHAEL WARE | KANDAHAR
ON GUARD: A U.S. soldier with the 10th Mountain Division patrols in Kandahar, former Taliban country
KATE BROOKS/POLARIS FOR TIME
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For all that, the U.S. has only a rough idea of where bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, are hiding. A Pakistani tribal elder told TIME he believes bin Laden may be holed up somewhere in a sprawling, mountainous swath of territory that extends from Khost, in eastern Afghanistan, south to Angoorada, in the Waziristan region of Pakistan. According to diplomats in Kabul, the area's unique vegetation was seen in bin Laden's latest videotaped statement. The tension in the border region is already high. On Saturday, Pakistani soldiers shot up a bus that tried to force its way through a checkpoint in South Waziristan, killing 11 people.

Is Karzai in Charge?
Many Afghans wonder whether Karzai is tough enough to rule a land long defined by tribal rivalries and blood feuds. "Karzai?" says a waiter at a kebab restaurant in Kabul. "He's too nice. He should be a schoolteacher." Educated in India, the President, 46, says he was influenced by Mohandas Gandhi, which may account for his conciliatory style. He seems more at ease asking questions than he does issuing orders. "No one is close to having Karzai's control and popularity," says Khalilzad. "He has moral authority, and he's not seen as ethnically prejudiced." But that's different from being fully in charge of the nation.

At best, Karzai's government has managed to restore dignity to parts of the country brutalized by the Taliban's tyranny. The sky above Kabul is filled with kites, which were banned as un-Islamic under the Taliban. Giggling teenagers pack the capital's 40 or so Internet cafes. Since 2002, some 3 million new students have enrolled in Afghan schools, partly as a result of the lifting of the Taliban's ban on education for girls ages 10 and older. A few young women in Kabul have shed the burqas that were the most obvious symbols of the Taliban's oppression, replacing them with jeans and overcoats. As a result of the lifting of sanctions and the infusion of $5 billion in foreign aid, the Afghan economy has grown more than 20% in each of the past two years. "After two years, people are more confident in the government," says Abdul Jamil Sapand, a radio broadcaster in Kandahar. "They feel more free to complain."

That said, there's still plenty to complain about. Afghanistan is years away from stability. The new national army has enlisted just 5,700 soldiers and last year suffered a 22% desertion rate, according to NATO officials. It doesn't venture far outside Kabul. In an interview with TIME, Karzai acknowledged that he needs help. "Afghanistan is not yet capable of standing on its own feet, of defending or sustaining itself," he says.

Rise of the Warlords
For now, political power in Afghanistan is concentrated in the hands of people like Hazrat Ali. On a typical day, Ali chats with visitors while nibbling sugared almonds in the garden of his two-story house in Jalalabad. A few gunmen wearing wraparound sunglasses prowl outside. Ali is stoop-shouldered and has an affable air that belies his steeliness. Since December 2001, when U.S. forces gave Ali control of an area of Jalalabad in exchange for his assistance in the siege of the al-Qaeda stronghold of Tora Bora, Ali has steadily expanded his power, refusing to brook challenges to his authority. Last month, when Ali was the dinner host of a brash young Taliban-friendly commander named Ismatullah, his men opened fire on Ismatullah's bodyguards, killing five of them. Ali now controls town hall, pays salaries to traffic cops and settles land disputes. "Before, I was commander of 100 men, and now I'm in charge of a city of 1 million," he says. "It's not easy."

For the Afghans and the Americans, the rise of warlords like Ali has proved one of the most vexing obstacles to progress. There are more than a dozen major regional warlords, all former commanders in the mujahedin who defeated the Soviet army in the 1980s. The most powerful ones, like Ismail Khan in Herat, lead armies of as many as 40,000 men, with old Soviet tanks and artillery pieces at their disposal.

America's role in supporting the warlords has been mixed. Many, like Ali, owe their power to the patronage of the U.S., which handed control of swaths of territory to local commanders after the fall of the Taliban. That decision was born of necessity: the U.S. never intended to commit a military force big enough to secure the entire country, and Karzai still doesn't have much of an army. "It seemed a reasonable thing to do," says Khalilzad. "If we went in with a large force, then the Afghans might have thought we were behaving like the Soviets." A senior U.S. military official says, "A lot of these guys are doing the right things. They are paving roads and building schools. The rule is this: You don't mess with me, and I won't mess with you."

But that strategy has come with costs. Afghans say the warlords have engaged in behavior almost comparable to the abuses of the Taliban. The Kabul-based Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission last year documented dozens of forced marriages, scores of illegal land grabs in Kabul and several executions committed by Afghan commanders who at some point received U.S. support. Last month the governor of Helmand province allowed a mob of 500 in the village of Kajaki to put on display the corpse of a Taliban fighter.

The Karzai government has attempted to rein in recalcitrant warlords. Most recently Karzai appointed Kandahar strongman Gul Agha Sherzai, a U.S.-installed warlord who has been dogged by accusations of corruption and nepotism, to a Cabinet position in Kabul as a way of keeping him under close watch. But Afghan officials say Karzai is wary of cracking down too hard for fear that the warlords will lash back. In Kabul alone, militias loyal to former President Burhanuddin Rabbani and current Defense Minister Mohammed Qasim Fahim number nearly 50,000. That's enough to overwhelm, if they wanted to, the 6,000 NATO peacekeepers and take over the presidential palace. Government officials outside the capital are even more outmanned. "The warlords still have guns, they still have men, and until that changes there's nothing we can do," says a senior police officer in Kandahar. "The areas they capture are theirs to exploit."