Afghan City, Free of Taliban, Returns to Rule of the Thieves
By C. J. CHIVERS
JALALABAD, Afghanistan, Jan. 5 - The middleman with the dark sunglasses and
beard met the Afghan soldiers at the gate and was allowed access inside the
provincial security station. He reappeared minutes later with a bag containing
two videotapes, an Albanian passport, a Moroccan identification card and nine
computer disks.
He set the prices: $1,600 for the videotapes, $400 each for the passport or
identification card, and $400 for each disk. All were terrorist materials taken
from Al Qaeda caves in nearby Tora Bora, he said, or from terrorist houses in
the city. He said they were being offered for sale by a local intelligence
chief, who would have to remain hidden for now.
"If you buy all of these today, then he will have the very important passports
to sell," said the middleman, who identified himself as Dr. Kamran, a surgeon
who works for Jalalabad's senior warlord, Hajji Hazarat Ali. "Two passports of
jihad men from Saudi Arabia. They can be yours, too."
When Dr. Kamran found no takers, he returned to the station and came out
empty-handed. "Maybe tomorrow?" he asked, with a conspiratorial smile.
This is Jalalabad, a city in the hands of thugs and crooks.
The city - Afghanistan's first stop on the Grand Trunk Road, which links the
nation to India - had been a smuggler's den for centuries, providing shelter and
like-minded company for the bandits, traders and thieves who traveled the
soaring mountain passes nearby. But in recent years, as the Taliban enforced
their severe brand of Islamic law with public executions or dismemberment for
criminals, crime declined.
Now the Taliban are gone, and the city and the surrounding Nangarhar Province is
run once again by warlords and guerrillas, whose enterprising rackets have
almost instantly turned the place into Afghanistan's version of Shakedown
Street, the land where almost everything is corrupt.
Markets here sell bootlegged copies of Hollywood releases ("The Lord of the
Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" is already available), pucks of brown hashish
and in one shop the skull of a snow leopard, one of the world's most endangered
cats. The corruption runs unchecked through what counts as local government,
which is essentially a group of ill-tempered guerrilla brigades.
The guerrillas welcome outsiders with threats and extortion, steal food from aid
convoys and simultaneously insist that they are helping Green Berets gather
intelligence materials in the mountains while trying to sell the same items on
the street. "Everywhere people are trying to sell these Al Qaeda things," said
Abdul Ghaffar, 44, the city's newly appointed interim mayor. "Some of it is
real, some of it is fake. It is all a great shame."
Green Berets continue to work with the Eastern Shura. But it is not clear
whether they are paying the guerrillas for their assistance.
Not all of Afghanistan is so corrupt. In several northern provinces, ethnic
Tajik generals have tried to craft a responsible government and are sending
signals that they want a society based on fairness, tolerance and rights. In
Jalalabad, however, the unsettling games begin from the moment visitors arrive.
Upon crossing the city line, new visitors are informed that they must reside in
hotels controlled by the Eastern Shura, the loose coalition of three warlords
who rule the province. And visitors at the Spin Ghar Hotel, run by Mr. Ali, the
region's most powerful general, are not allowed to leave the grounds unless they
use a driver selected by Mr. Ali. The charge is $100 to $150 a day, even if the
drive is only 100 yards.
Similarly, Mr. Ali recently circulated a note in his hotel that contained a
veiled threat: it warned visitors that they must also hire his translators, or
else their safety could not be assured. Those charges also begin at $100 a day,
and rise as high as $250. (Two exceptions were made this week for journalists
who arrived with their own Afghan drivers and translators, but then the local
bosses demanded 25 to 50 percent kickbacks from the Afghans already in the
journalists' employ.)
New rules are introduced almost daily. For instance, once inside the Spin Ghar
Hotel, visitors cannot change residences, as was made clear last week when a New
York Times translator who had tried to help an Associated Press photographer
move into a rival hotel was struck in the head with a rifle butt.
Mr. Ali, who properly bears the title of provincial security commander, now and
then appears to speak. On Thursday, for instance, he said he did not know who
was stealing the rice from the local Red Crescent Society, even though the sacks
were somehow being used to feed his own troops in their garrisons throughout the
city.
With something like comic timing, eight sacks bearing the Red Crescent logo
showed up Friday at his hotel, where the security commander is now in the
position of charging his Western guests to eat the food his men have seized from
the poor.
"All of our soldiers are the same - robbers," said one sorrowful hotel employee,
who was ordered by the soldiers to carry the big sacks into the hotel kitchen.
The corruption also continues in the neighborhoods and countryside, where
soldiers flagrantly steal. Atiqullah Mohmand, the local program director for the
United Nations refugee agency, said he kept his personal car several provinces
away, in Logar, because it would not last here.
"If I came into the city with it, I would have to watch the armed men get in and
drive it away," he said.
Mr. Mohmand has enough problems already: a band of local soldiers has moved into
the United Nations compound, living like bored and listless squatters among the
relief agency's staff.
The guerrillas also try to sell access to news. In one case late last month, a
commander at Tora Bora sent notice to network television crews that they could
interview wounded prisoners, if only they would pay $5,000. "It seems to be an
increasing problem," said Ned Colt, a correspondent for NBC News, which declined
the offer on ethical grounds. "To do much in this area, the soldiers want you to
pay."
NBC News left the province today.
In another case last week, a group of guerrillas on the road to the ridgeline
near Tora Bora demanded $1,000 to let vehicles pass.
"You've got these mujahedeen on the roads around here using their power and guns
to demand money or denying you access to information," said Jacob Sutton, 47, an
Associated Press television cameraman who politely declined to pay the toll and
turned his truck around. "I personally resent this blatant corruption, and I
can't help thinking this is an eye- opener for how this country has been run in
the past. And it does not bode well for the future."
The examples go on and on. One CNN crew member left his tent at Tora Bora and
returned to find an Eastern Shura soldier wearing his leather jacket. In
another, a photographer for The New York Times had two digital camera disks
stolen by soldiers, one of whom later made the rounds in the photographer's
hotel, offering to sell them back for $500 each, an offer that was declined each
time.
Tensions have escalated as journalists have departed, in disgust or for other
assignments, shrinking the supply of fresh dollars and making each Westerner an
even richer target for shakedowns and threats. The scene today as a CNN team
left for Pakistan was particularly menacing.
As the crew packed its gear, the hotel management summoned a group of about 50
armed soldiers, who gathered outside the door or took posts on the steps. Then
the hotel manager began to list his demands before the team could exit: in
addition to paying the hotel bill, plus one extra night for each guest, CNN
would have to leave behind a color television, a refrigerator, a satellite dish
and an encoder.
Ingrid Formanek, the CNN producer, negotiated with the manager for more than
hour, and was finally allowed to leave for the price of the extra night and the
television set. No stranger to the peculiarities of corporate accounting in a
war zone, she managed to extract a signed receipt from the manager that even
included a $220 charge for "pure extortion."
She was furious. "It's thuggery," she said. "It's everyone for themselves and
God against all."
The thuggery had not yet ended. CNN had left behind two large boxes of dried and
canned food for the team of Afghans who had assisted their news gathering in the
mountains. As the Afghans tried to leave with their reward, Eastern Shura
soldiers stole that, too.
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Macdonald Stainsby
Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion.
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