CPTnet
January 22, 2002
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN : Security
by Doug Pritchard

[Note: Doug Pritchard and Gene Stoltzfus returned from Afghanistan on
January 16. The CPTnet editor will be working in Hebron for the next three
months and posting releases from that address.]

Afghans whom members of the CPT delegation in Afghanistan met during the
first two weeks of January are uniformly hopeful and excited about the
current opportunity to rebuild their country. They have endured 23 years of
war and devastation driven by outside forces, and now they believe
that the world has seen the folly of feeding such terrorism.

CPT witnessed a joyful reunion while waiting in an office of the Afghan
Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kabul, as colleagues returned from around
the world to take up their posts and create a new government.

But early in every conversation, Afghans also voiced their concerns about
"security." There are still heavily armed men walking the streets of the
cities and maintaining "checkposts" along the highways. CPT's hosts were
unwilling to take the delegation more than twenty kms south or east of
Kabul because of the danger. They were also reluctant to take their own
organizations' vehicles out of their office compounds because many have
been seized. During its week in Kabul, CPT learned of the murders of a
Swedish aid worker and a prominent local businessman. There were seventy
armed robberies in one night alone. When knocking on various gates trying
to find a particular address, the CPT delegation in Kabul found themselves
facing young boys carrying semi-automatic weapons.

For many years, the care and feeding of young men has been in the hands of
"commanders," leaders of gangs of ten to a hundred men in a district. They
in turn are beholden to "big commanders" who may control one or more of
Afghanistan's thirty provinces. The big commanders depend upon the small
ones for their power but cannot feed them all and so give them free rein to
rob and plunder. Some of the biggest commanders, and their foreign backers,
were responsible for many atrocities in the fighting of 1992-1996 but are
now part of the interim government.

"This is our biggest problem," said the director of one Afghan aid
organization. "These men have no education. They only know how to get food
with a gun. We have to get rid of their weapons and find them jobs."

  Leverage over the commanders has been hard to find in the past. However
CPT has learned of a local village that recently sent 100 people to the
Ministry of Defence demanding action after a murder in their area. Afghan
aid groups are seeking funds around the world to educate and employ former
fighters. Many communities are restoring the power of the "shura", or
community council, as a counter to the artificial power of the commanders.
Everyone is watching to see whether commanders will have a lesser role in
the next government, which is to take office in May.
Haji Nasrullah, a leader in the village of Charasyab, twenty km south of
Kabul, returned to his land last year after fifteen years as a refugee in
Pakistan. He told the CPT delegation, "We are not with the Taliban or the
commanders or the Russians or the Americans. We are neutral and just want
peace and to live in dignity. Peacemaking is our way and our mission. We
are ready to sacrifice ourselves and our families to peacebuilding."

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