Kabul's calm masks chaos

By MARK MacKINNON
From Saturday's Globe and Mail (August 2, 2003)

Kabul -Major Zamarai must have thought that he was among friends, that he could relax.

Although he was chief of police for Kabul's rowdy Hawza Panj district, he went everywhere with a bodyguard, knowing he was an unpopular figure with the area's burgeoning organized-crime rings.

The bodyguard was with him, riding in the back of their marked police pickup truck, on a hot afternoon late last month. Major Zamarai asked the driver to stop as they drove through a market, apparently having spotted someone in the crowd to whom he wanted to talk. Signalling for the bodyguard not to worry, he climbed down out of the pickup alone.

Moments later, Major Zamarai, the bodyguard and the driver were all dead, victims of an execution-style hit carried out in front of dozens of witnesses, at 3:30 p.m. in the capital city's bustling Kher Khan bazaar. Each was shot several times in the head and chest. The assassins then melded into the crowd.

This is the Kabul that 1,800 Canadian soldiers will be asked to police starting later this month. It's an ostensibly calm city that lulls a visitor into a false sense of security, but one that can quite literally explode at any moment. In one 36-hour period in July, seven homemade explosive devices were found planted across the capital, many of them in areas frequented by Westerners. A Dutch peacekeeper was injured when one of the bombs went off.

On the surface, the city is undergoing an exhilarating renewal. With the Taliban gone, music now blares from restaurants, shops and passing cars. The years of curfews are over, and newly opened 24-hour pizzerias compete with all-night Internet cafés for the attention of the city's emerging red-eyed set.

There are German, Thai and Indian restaurants, and for a while there was even an Irish bar, until the number of threats to bomb the place exceeded the number of customers willing to risk their lives for a pint. Most of the time, it's safe to walk the city's streets, provided you can put up with the hordes of children trying to sell you the same English-language city guide book on every corner.

But incidents like the killing of Major Zamarai are far from unique. The United Nations counted 30 major incidents of violence in the city over a three-month period earlier this year. Included in that number are four rocket attacks and 11 other events that fall under the category of "bombings, mine and grenade explosions." In such a seemingly peaceful city, things have an alarming tendency to blow up.

Many in Kabul say that the calm is a deceiving one, and that this tormented capital has yet another period of violent anarchy in its future.

"This city is not safe. Nobody can control it," said the man promoted to take over from the deceased Major Zamarai as Hawza Panj's police chief. Colonel Mangal -like many Afghans, he goes by only one name -commands a detachment with just three vehicles and 200 officers, many of them without guns, to patrol a sprawling area that is home to 30,000 people.

"The people who attack us have very modern weapons. They can do anything they want. The people who live here are afraid to leave their homes," he said.

It remains unclear who is behind the spate of attacks. Although the interim Afghan administration and the United States government like to blame al-Qaeda for every stone thrown in Afghanistan, Col. Mangal says a lot of the attacks are the work of ordinary gangsters. Others point the finger at the ousted Taliban, and worry that the Canadian army may be joining the International Security Assistance Force at a time when the going is about to get tough again in this war-torn country.

A few weeks ago, as construction on the fenced-in compound that will serve as the main Canadian base was rushing to a finish, two men in the trademark white robes and black turbans of the Taliban were spotted watching the work from the shadows of the nearby Darulaman Palace, a bullet-riddled ruin that overlooks the Canadian camp. When approached, the two men refused to be interviewed, but a nearby fruit vendor had no question in his mind about who they were.

"They are people who are bathed in the blood of Afghanistan," said Hamayon, 42. "There are people in Kabul who will attack the Canadians and ISAF -bad people who are against the government."

Hamayon, whose ramshackle shop sits beside a destroyed Soviet army ambulance, said he wishes the Canadian soldiers well, but warned that as long as Afghanistan remains mired in poverty, there will always be guns for hire.

"They will be attacked not because they're Canadians, but because the people here are very poor. They need money, so if someone gives them money to go and put a land mine next to the Canadians or ISAF, they will do it."

As the Boeing 727 circled over Kabul, Habib leaned over for a better look out the window at what had become of his country. Even from a height of several thousand metres, it was apparent how much destruction has been wrought in the capital's southern half. As the Ariana Afghan Airlines flight got closer to the ground, the wreckage of more than two decades of warfare became clearer. South of the dried-up basin of the Kabul River, the city is little more than a collection of piles of rubble where schools, mosques and apartment blocks once stood -reminders of a failed state.

Habib, a businessman who left Afghanistan and moved to Russia in 1990, shortly after the Soviet withdrawal, fought to hold back tears. "My country, my poor country," he said softly. "It has nothing. What did everyone want with it?"

Despite its troubles, Kabul is a relative oasis of security and progressive thought in Afghanistan today. Eighteen months after U.S. air power cleared the way for Northern Alliance soldiers to enter the capital, most of the rest of the country is fast sliding back into the chaos that precipitated the rise of the Taliban in the first place.

As they did in the early 1990s, when they stepped into the power vacuum created by the Soviet withdrawal, warlords now control most of the country, and President Hamid Karzai, so lauded abroad for his bridge-building style, is isolated and derided at home as the "mayor of Kabul."

But at least in the cities, the warlords are able to provide a modicum of security to the aid agencies who have taken on the massive task of rebuilding this country. On the highways in between, it's the rule of the gun.

Foreigners have been particularly singled out. Earlier this year, Ricardo Munguia, an aid worker for the International Red Cross, was executed by Taliban gunmen on the highway between Kabul and Kandahar, the regime's former stronghold. Apparently, the killers talked by satellite phone with their commander before pulling the trigger, suggesting a deliberate policy rather than a random act. A few weeks later, an Italian tourist was shot dead on the same road.

Such incidents have frightened the international aid organizations stationed in Kabul, and several -among them Mercy Corps, Médecins sans frontières and Save the Children -have cancelled or scaled back their relief work in the southern part of the country. Many groups do little or no work outside the ISAF-protected capital city.

"Reconstruction has been seriously curtailed because of the insecurity. Expectations were higher than reality allowed," said Sally Austin, acting country director for Care International. And every setback to aid workers is a blow to Mr. Karzai's credibility in the countryside, since it leaves the impression that life is getting worse under his stewardship, instead of better.

"There are people who are not happy with the current government, and they know that one way to get at the government is through its Western influences," Ms. Austin said. "ISAF, coalition forces and aid workers are all targets now."

Most damaging of all has been a series of recent attacks on demining workers. Without being cleared of the millions of land mines that still litter this country, entire areas of Afghanistan will remain inaccessible to outside aid. Attacks on deminers recently forced a prolonged halt to all work on rebuilding the Kabul-Kandahar highway, the country's most important road, which remains impassable to all but the most resolute travellers.

"The whole future hangs on the international community's ability to deliver security," said Ahmed Rashid, the bestselling author of several books on Afghanistan and Central Asia. "If you don't have security, you can't have development. And without development, the security situation will continue to get worse."

Many Afghans are getting tired of the same pattern of promises, followed by delays, followed by more promises. In early 2002, the international community pledged $4.5-billion (U.S.) in aid to Afghanistan. It was far short of the $20-billion Afghan officials had been asking for, yet to date donors have been slow to deliver on even that amount.

Many fear that this impatience will feed further unrest as Afghanistan enters a particularly sensitive time in its postwar development.

At the end of this month, the country will convene a loya jirga (council of elders) that will be tasked with drawing up a new constitution. It will be a tough task that will see liberals, who want to enshrine disarmament and women's rights in the document, pitted against a large conservative faction that will fight to make sure the country stays true to its Islamic roots.

Likely even more divisive will be the country's presidential election, which must be held next year according to the process instigated in Bonn two years ago. Although most of the international community wants Mr. Karzai to stay on, he has made noises suggesting he doesn't want the job any more -hardly surprising considering that there has already been one attempt made on his life, which he survived by a mere hair.

Since the assassination attempt, which the United States blames on Taliban remnants but which many here believe was the work of his own Defence Minister, Mr. Karzai has been unable to trust his own Afghan bodyguards and now goes everywhere in the company of American Special Forces troops. It reminds many of how the president of the Soviet-backed regime, Mohammed Najibullah, used to travel at all times with Russian bodyguards at his side.

Even if Mr. Karzai does run again, he's far from sure of victory. Pashtuns, who form the country's largest ethnic group, may put up their own presidential candidate, one whom many see as too close to the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance. If they do, the Tajiks -particularly Defence Minister Mohammed Fahim -could also be expected to challenge Mr. Karzai's rule, potentially setting the stage for a campaign fought along tribal lines.

"The elections are creating a lot of instability. There isn't the security to hold an election right now," said one aid worker, who asked not to be named. "In some ways, it would be better if they were delayed longer."

Camp Julien, the main Canadian base in Kabul, is a hive of activity. Ensconced in a dry valley among dirt-brown mountains, a tent city has sprung seemingly out of nowhere during the past three months.

Now, generators hum, lights glare and fresh soldiers arrive by the day at what will be their home for much of the next 12 months. A layer of pebbles has been poured over the ground to keep the whipping dust down. The Maple Leaf flies high overhead and a light armoured vehicle acts as a lonely sentinel on a nearby hill.

The Canadian soldiers are well aware of the looming election, and of the chance that some groups may choose that time to make trouble.

"This country was at war for the past 30 years. There are all sorts of organized gangs out there. Are there elements trying to destabilize the government? Absolutely," said Colonel Marc Pouliot, who headed the advance team that prepared the ground for the 1,800 Canadian troops now arriving.

"Once you establish the interim authority, you're going to upset some of the warlords. These people are currently the good guys, and they're not going to be very happy."

The devolution of the country during the past 18 months seems to many a chilling replay of what happened here in the wake of the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. Then, as now, the warlords moved in to fill the power gap, forming a similar government of national unity -although Mr. Karzai is clearly an improvement on the ineffectual Burnahuddin Rabbani, the most prominent of the post-Soviet presidents.

The cobbled-together government of the early 1990s soon collapsed into factional infighting, and later full-fledged civil war, as it became clear that fighters who had worked together against the Red Army had little else in common.

Now, a similarly loose mixture of Pashtuns and Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks, moderates and fundamentalists have been thrust back together by their U.S. sponsors.

Once more, opium production controlled by the warlords is the country's primary source of income. The country is in grave danger of becoming a Columbia-style narco-economy.

As tensions rise, some say another implosion like the one a decade ago is not far off. "We have a lot of mujahedeen commanders inside this government. People from foreign countries want to diminish their power. This will cause a violent reaction," said Mullah Hamid, who heads a mosque in southwest Kabul. "There will be another war. I guarantee you 100 per cent that it is coming."

If so, that could force the U.S. troops in the region to either intervene or once more give up on Afghanistan. Up to now, the 11,000 U.S. soldiers stationed in this country have been content merely to stay on their two main bases at Bagram and Kandahar, fighting a narrow war against remaining Taliban and al-Qaeda cells that have adopted the tactics they once used -with American backing -during the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s.

Mr. Hamid, for one, doesn't see the Americans or ISAF providing the answer to Afghanistan's problems.

"When the Russians came, they built structures and large compounds. Still, we got rid of them in 10 years. The U.S. and ISAF, they're just in tents. It seems they won't stay for long."