Afghanistan's best hope is for controlled warlordism

The Taliban are losing the battles but winning the war. The prognosis is wretched, yet we must sustain military ai

Max Hastings The Guardian, Monday 13 October 2008 Article history

While most of the world spent the weekend trembling for its wealth, in Afghanistan the Taliban busied themselves dying in quite large numbers, during an ill-advised assault on Helmand's provincial capital, Lashkar Gar. Around 50 insurgents were killed, for no loss to Nato and Afghan security forces.

This fits the war's pattern. Almost every time the Taliban fights a battle, it loses to overwhelming firepower. Unfortunately, such western successes are strategically meaningless. Nato is absent from vast areas of this intractable country, where the insurgents prosper. There is greater gloom about the conflict than at any time since the Taliban was ousted in 2001.

I spent a week in Afghanistan in September, and was shocked by the deterioration since my last visit two years ago. The British army, which justly prides itself on its "can-do" philosophy, has been sobered by recent experience. Its casualties are acceptable within a context of progress. But they become dismaying against a background of growing Taliban influence and slumping confidence in the Kabul government.

President Bush has decreed an American troop "surge" in Afghanistan. Some 10,000 additional troops will be committed under General David Petraeus, the Iraq "miracle worker" who now runs US Central Command.

Petraeus, the most impressive soldier America has produced since Colin Powell, is a clever and charismatic leader who might one day emerge as a presidential candidate. But he is well aware that Afghanistan is not Iraq. It is a far more primitive society, whose people find it hard to perceive the merits of any central government - least of all one as corrupt as President Hamid Karzai's - and which is now trapped in a narco-economy.

It is almost impossible for westerners, military and civilian alike, to engage with Afghans. Almost none speak the language. It is only possible to travel outside heavily fortified bases in helicopters or armoured vehicles. Afghan gratitude for the creation of a few schools and hospitals is outweighed by the simple fact that, in a diplomat's words: "Seven years ago most of the population felt safe. Now they don't."

He added brutally: "The British army has been irresponsible in suggesting that it could do the business in Helmand. We should never have taken it on. It's much more than we can handle."

The only bright spot in an overwhelmingly dark picture is the growing effectiveness of the Afghan army. Its troops are fighting well, as Afghans usually do, whoever they happen to be shooting at. Smart westerners argue that we should abandon any notion that Nato can win this war with its own troops, instead concentrating on helping Afghans to defend their own government - if they are willing.

The Kabul regime is pitifully short of credible people to run the country. I met Barna Karimi, the deputy local government minister, a 34-year-old former exile who spent 17 years in California before returning here to work for Karzai. Unsurprisingly, he talks the language of US business schools: "We have developed a strategic framework," he says. "We are constantly evaluating the performance of our governors and district governors. We have formulated a social outreach programme which revives the traditional role of the community. You guys" - he means westerners, of course - "don't have the problem of lacking a system. I am trying to create a system without qualified people."

Listening to this fluent but unmistakably Californian young social engineer, parachuted into Afghanistan from an unimaginably alien culture, I found it impossible to believe that Afghans relate to him as one of themselves.

The newish governor of Helmand, Gulab Mangal, is much more convincing. He is 52 years old and a former commissar in the Afghan army in Russian times; he was a businessman and ruler of two other provinces before he was transferred to Helmand during the summer. The British are much in love with Mangal, whom they perceive as one of the country's only honest and able officials. Their enthusiasm is dangerous, however. It feeds Karzai's morbid suspicions of him as a prospective rival.

When I told Mangal how much his efforts are admired, he said wryly: "Nobody in Kabul seems to appreciate them." He acknowledges that more than half of Helmand is today under Taliban control. "When government can't deliver," he said, "people think it better to have no government. We need to convince people that we are working for them. If we cannot do that, it would be better to go."

I found it easy to understand why foreigners are so impressed by Mangal's poise and courage. There are few people in Afghanistan whom more people want to kill. Every time he goes out to walk in a bazaar, there is a real chance that he will come back dead.

The British are desperately impatient for the impending US change of government. They believe that an Obama presidency will recognise the impossibility of military solutions in Afghanistan. It might throw its weight behind finding a substitute for Karzai and talking a way out of this shambles.

On these pages Simon Jenkins has said from the outset that the Afghan war is unwinnable. I have always shared his dismay about western blundering. Yet it seems to me that we must keep trying, though the odds against success are greater than ever. It is futile to escalate the Nato troop commitment. The only slender chance of stabilising Afghanistan lies in sustaining military and economic aid for Afghans to help themselves.

The highest aspiration must be for controlled warlordism, not conventional democracy. A civil war may prove an essential preliminary before some crude equilibrium between factions can be achieved. If this sounds a wretched prognosis, it is hard to find informed westerners with higher expectations.

Face to face with the Taliban

Qomendan Hemmet sat cross-legged under a window of the mud-walled room. His shoulder, sunk in an old military jacket, rested against the wall and a radio antenna stuck out of his pocket. Next to him sat his deputy, wrapped in a big blanket, silent and sleepy. Around the room sat his men, their faces contorted by years of fighting and poverty, dressed in shalwar kameez and magazine pouches, eyes dark as the kohl lining them. Radios crackled, phones rang non-stop, and more fighters came, drank tea and left with orders.

"Salar is the new Falluja," declared Qomendan Hemmet emphatically. "The Americans and the Afghan army control the highway, and five metres on each side. The rest is our territory."

Salar district in Wardak province is 80km (50 miles) south of Kabul. The ­Kandahar-Kabul road that passes through this district is a major supply line for US and Nato troops. The road is reminiscent of the road from Baghdad to Falluja: littered with IED [improvised explosive devices) holes and the carcasses of burnt-out Nato supply trucks and containers.

The frequency of Taliban attacks is higher this year than at any time since 2001. Four British marines were killed last week, three of them when a 13-year-old boy blew himself up in Helmand province. Meanwhile, the area controlled by the Afghan government is shrinking to the fortified islands of the cities.

A day earlier, I stood with a dozen Afghans, watching the Qomendan and his men in action. A man straining his eyes to watch had declared in an authoritative voice "janghi" ("war") and the sky had echoed with thuds and explosions.

A couple of pick-up trucks packed with rocket launchers and Afghan militiamen, hired to provide security to the supply convoys, sped away from the battle leaving a cloud of dust. Down the road three American armoured trucks filled the air with the crackle of heavy machine guns.

It was the end of an hour-long battle and as the sun sank deep into the horizon, the shooting became more intermittent. A low-flying, dark grey F-16 shot past, leaving behind two columns of smoke in the horizon. The Americans moved towards a village on the side of the road, the Afghan men jumped into their buses and taxis, and the traffic moved on over a carpet of bullet casings.

The road to Hemmet's compound is a single dirt track passing between high mud walls and orchards. A young Taliban scout led us to the compound, his Kalashnikov hidden under a blanket. In the distance the fortification of an Afghan army and police post was visible.

"Yesterday I had only 18 fighters," the Qomendan said, his unwavering gaze fixed on a point somewhere in the middle of the low-ceilinged room. "You saw how many mercenaries and Americans were there. With the blessing of Allah, the fighting is changing. When I started in this area, three years ago, I had six fighters, one RPG and two machine guns like these." He pointed at the BKC machine guns that lay idly on the door. "Now I have more than 500 fighters, 30 machine guns and hundreds of RPGs.

"The Americans have installed hundreds of Afghan policemen, they patrol the street all the time, but they can't control it. Last week they came by helicopters, searching the area because they can't drive their vehicles here. They never come with tanks, the whole area is mined."

Sporting a long thick moustache and a neat, well groomed beard, Qomendan Hemmet is a Taliban veteran. He started fighting when he was 17 in the Shomali plains north of Kabul against the Northern Alliance forces in the mid-90s. He went into hiding after the capital fell, and became the commander of the Salar district after the death of the previous commander three years ago.

"When we fought the Northern Alliance we fought face to face. This war is more difficult, the enemy controls the skies and they have lots of weapons. Sometimes I am scared, every human being gets scared. But we yearn for fighting the kafirs [unbelievers]. It's a joyful thing."

Hemmet's lieutenants sat around the room. One of them spoke perfect Arabic with a thick Saudi accent that he had acquired from "fighting alongside the Arab brothers". His Kalashnikov, decorated with green and red tape, was laid on the floor between us. "My brother," he said, "those police and army, they are like the blind, they don't see anything."

Hemmet and other Taliban commanders I met explained the Taliban's sophisticated network of military and civilian leadership. Each province has its own Taliban governor, military leader and shura [consultation] council. Below them are district commanders like Hemmet, who in turn divides his force into smaller units. Many say the civilian apparatus of the Taliban-run districts operates a more effective justice system than the government's, which is corrupt and inefficient. Nominally, all the councils look to Mullah Omar for guidance. In reality each province and district has its own dynamics.

The mullah
Mullah Muhamadi, one of Hemmet's men, arrived later wearing a long leather jacket and a turban bigger than all the others. "This is not just a guerrilla war, and it's not an organised war with fronts," he said. "It's both." He went on to explain the importance the Taliban attached to creating a strong administration in the areas it held: "When we control a province we need to provide service to the people. We want to show the people that we can rule, and that we are ready for the day when we take over Kabul, that we have learned from our mistakes."

Muhamadi said his group aimed to carry out around three attacks a week, but they did not always have enough ammunition. "We get intelligence that Americans or government people are coming and we hit them. Each area has a different strategy, here it's attacking the main road, but everywhere in this province the countryside is in our control."

He opened his dusty black bag and pulled out a laptop. The other fighters gathered around the screen, and watched a short film shot by Muhamadi of one of the attacks. It showed a few fighters, their faces concealed. The mullah pointed at one of them and announced that this was Qomendan. They stood under foliage on the side of the road. As a green police pick-up truck passed, the men opened fire.

Also on the computer they showed pictures of an American soldier. In one he was sitting in a makeshift wooden office in front of a computer screen, two other soldiers behind him all smiling into the camera. In another he was outside with an Afghan interpreter. "We killed him and captured his computer," the mullah told me. "He had served in Iraq."

The new Taliban
The city of Ghazni lies 145km (90 miles) south of Kabul down the same highway. Its only connection to the modern world is a few electricity poles, the police pick-up trucks, and the wreckage of an old Russian tank perched on the edge of the ruins of the 13th-century citadel.

In a hotel overlooking the bazaar square I met a young Taliban fighter. In his early 20s and with three years of fighting experience, he is part of the new generation of the Taliban who joined the movement years after they were toppled by the Americans, a symbol of its resurgence.

Qari Amanullah stretched his legs on one of the beds in the shabby room and rested his torso on his elbow. The smell of grilled meat and the sound of music wafted from the window. Amanullah explained that he came from a family who ran a small farm. When the Taliban were still in power he joined a local madrasa where he spent 12 years studying the Qur'an and religion. After he had memorised the Qur'an and acquired the title qari ("reader'), he abandoned his studies and joined the fighting.

"I joined the fight because I am resisting the kafir occupation," he said. "There are old Taliban, but most of the fighters in my unit are new. We joined after the fall of the Taliban, but the leadership is the same."

Amanullah explained how his village shared the burden of fighting the Americans and the government seen as its proxies. Each family devotes one of its sons to the jihad, while the rest of the men work in the field, "like in the madrasa, one son goes to study religion and the others work, it's the same with jihad: one son fights and the others work".

He dismissed the claim made by the government and US that the Taliban fights for money. "These are all lies. In the last few weeks we captured lots of trucks and government cars – if we were fighting for money why do we burn them?"

A few hours later there was a knock on the door and two men came in. One was wearing a red motorcycle helmet and wrapped in a blue sheet. He removed his helmet and revealed long hair, and a smooth beard that went down to his chest. Apart from his shalwar kameez, or gown, he could have been a 1960s hippie. He explained that he was the commander of a small unit, with around 100 men.

Mawlawi Abdul Halim, a mosque leader, who divides his time between fighting and his job as a preacher, said the insurgency was chaotic at first, with each group fighting on its own. It wasn't until 2005 that the fighters became well organised. "I was in a madrasa when the Taliban were in government and I only joined them after the American occupation. Lots of Talibs in madrasa have joined the fight but that doesn't mean we stopped learning."

Like Qomendan, Mawlawi Abdul Halim talked about the Taliban strategy of controlling the countryside, establishing an alternative administration and squeezing the cities by eroding the government control. "In the areas where there are government or international forces, they only control their posts and 1km around, and we control the rest. If we cut off the countryside then the cities will come under our control — we know that from our experience with the Soviets."

Lunch was spread out on a long plastic sheet. The waiter threw a few flat loaves of bread at us, and brought dishes of qabuli, rice and mutton, and few plates of stew. "The main two problems we deal with in the Taliban courts are bandits and land disputes," Abdul Halim went on. "When we solve these problems we win the hearts of the people. We went from the jihad to the government and now we are in the jihad again. We have learned from the mistakes we committed. Lots of our leaders have experience in the jihad and in the government. The leaders are the same leaders but the fighters are new and they don't want to be like those who ruled and committed mistakes."

He said the failure of a recent voter registration drive in Ghazni showed how effectively the Taliban was cutting off the countryside. "We stood at road intersections and prevented people from registering for the coming elections — even if the planes were flying above our heads that didn't prevent us from manning checkpoints. And some of our men followed the people to the market to make sure they wouldn't register. Now registration has almost stopped in our province." But why were they determined to prevent people from voting? "It's better for them. Most of the people know that this new government won't help them but those who don't know we prevent them."

As the mawlawi talked, Amanullah sat by the window pushing the curtain aside a little and peering out into the square. At the far side of the square sat two police cars.

The urban Taliban
Not all of the Taliban have beards. Inside Kabul University Taliban support is mushrooming. In a small filthy hotel in Kabul, I met a group of Taliban-supporting students. The room had two mattresses on the floor, a TV set on a cardboard box and a strong stench from the lavatories next door. From the window came the din of traffic police sirens and the hum of a generator. Around a breakfast spread of cheese, green tea and bread, the young men told their stories.

Luqman's hair is parted in the middle pulled down on his forehead. He is clean shaven, with a pencil-thin moustache. His beige sharwal qameez is pressed and his chocolate jacket is immaculately clean, almost impossible in the dust and fumes of Kabul. He carried a black computer bag and when started to speak it felt he was delivering a speech on the radio. I had to remind him to lower his voice – after all, he was supposed to be an undercover insurgent. Luqman is a self-declared propagandist for the Taliban in charge of updating the movement's website. He spoke good Arabic and better English. He is member of the cultural shura of the movement.

"We monitor the situation and when we see any issue that can provide propaganda to the Taliban, we raise it and create awareness amongst the people: issues like the occupation and how they terrorise the people, the corruption of the government, anything that can help the cause of the Taliban." He said the website was updated hourly. "We have all the tools we need. Most of us speak English, Arabic, Pashtu and Dari."

He had not been a Taliban supporter when they were in power "but when the occupation came and we saw the atrocities we joined the Taliban. Lots of my university friends are with the Taliban not because they are Taliban but because they are against this government and the occupation. No one expected the Taliban to be back, but when the normal people saw the corruption of the government, when they saw that the warlords are back, people started supporting the resistance."

The Threki Taliban [the current Taliban movement] was not the same as the Taliban which had ruled, he said. And its grip on the country is tightening, he insisted: "The Taliban are squeezing the circle on Kabul, and the signs of the collapse of the government are similar to signs of the collapse of all governments that face an insurrection: they only control the cities, the streets are fed up with them and we have our intelligence even in the streets."

Another of the young men, Abdul Rhaman, explained that he studied in the morning at Kabul University and attended a private school, at night. In basic English he described how he worked as a recruiter for the Taliban among fellow students.

"I convince friends inside and outside the university that the Taliban are coming. We use all the facilities we have, our words and our pens to recruit for the movement, in the university, the bazaar and everywhere in the city."

The irony is that in working the cities to recruit for the Taliban, Abdul Rhaman is using the freedom of speech that is provided by the Afghan government. "There is freedom of speech now in Afghanistan and we are not scared of the government. We work cautiously, we talk to the people as if we are talking about political and daily issues. The government is too weak to follow us or monitor us."

A couple of weeks ago I called Mullah Muhamadi again. I wanted to go down and meet Qomendan Hemmet again. "No," he replied in Arabic over the phone. "The weather is too cold now. We are leaving to a neighbouring country. See you next year."

Rosy rewriting of the Iraq debacle will fuel worse disaster in Afghanistan

An inquest into Blair's support for the invasion could fit on a postcard. Eager inquirers should turn their gaze to Kabul

Now they want to bolt the stable door. With British troops at last due to leave Iraq next spring, everyone is for a public inquiry. That is fine. But what about an inquiry into where they are going, straight from the frying pan into the fire, from Iraq to Afghanistan? In Basra the British army had at least a tattered remnant of a war plan. In Helmand the only plan is to be target practice for the Taliban.

The Iraq inquest can be written on a postcard. A British force was sent on the false claim by Tony Blair that Iraq was a threat to Britain. How this made sense was never explained, despite the efforts of Alastair Campbell and his colleagues. It has since emerged that Blair simply could not bring himself to desert the American president, George Bush. That in a nutshell is why 178 British servicemen and women have died in Iraq.

The conduct of the war saw British troops at their professional best. They did not bomb villages, wear lavish armour, or smash their way into women's bedrooms as did the Americans. They were good at hearts and minds. But as months stretched into years, they proved unable to build local leadership and were handicapped by the incompetence and corruption of the Pentagon's provisional executive in Baghdad.

By 2005 they had all but lost control of Basra to local militias. When these started feuding, the British retreated to the airport, leaving Iraqi units (with American help) to achieve an exhausted peace. After five years, Britain has not reconstructed Basra or given it prosperity and stable government as promised. As for finding Blair's weapons of mass destruction, forget it.

The British army commander, General Sir Mike Jackson, said two years ago that the army's best hope in Basra was "withdrawal with honour". That realistic assessment has just about been realised, but it was refreshing yesterday to hear the Archbishop of Canterbury apply one simple word to the Iraq war: "wrong".

The greatest honour Britain could pay the dead of Iraq is to inquire into why any more should die in Afghanistan. Why wait for the same number of soldiers to be killed (already 134)? Why wait for the same multiple of civilian deaths, the same villages bombed, the same infrastructure destroyed? Why wait for the same bombast to die down and truth-telling and realism to gain the upper hand? Why tip another billion pounds into this craziness, billions that we can ill afford?

British diplomats and military experts returning from Kabul have three performance modes. In public they declare Afghanistan to be tough but winnable. In private they admit it is getting worse not better, but might turn round in a decade if only the Afghans were less corrupt. In totally secret mode, their eyes turn to the sky and they declare the whole business a "total effing disaster".

Which mode is ever communicated to Gordon Brown? He has recently returned from Helmand, where he won plaudits for bravely standing without body armour in a British fort. Nobody asked why it should be brave to stand where Britain has supposedly won hearts and minds for two years - if not seven - and why he could not go anywhere by road. Brown is to be commended for supporting the professionalism and courage of British soldiers, but he owes them more than words. He owes them brutal honesty in reviewing the political and strategic purpose that is now so costly of that courage.

Unless he is enveloped in sycophants, Brown must be hearing the same intelligence as the rest of us hear and read. Hapless spin doctors can point to schools built here, poppies eradicated there, soldiers "trained" somewhere else. But Kabul is ever more insecure and journeys out of the capital are confined to armoured cars or helicopters.

Monday's remarkable report from inside the Taliban by the Guardian's Ghaith Abdul-Ahad showed his hosts clearly able to roam free through 70% of populated Afghanistan, collecting tribute and dispensing favours and rough justice. Taliban units appear to control the Khyber Pass, forcing all supplies into costly convoys. It can only be a matter of time before they acquire the ground-to-air missiles that enabled them to drive out the Russians in the 1980s. British soldiers dying by the week within miles of their Helmand base indicate the failure of a military campaign launched with such bravado two years ago.

Brown's repeated thesis that the occupation of Helmand is vital "to keep terror from the streets of Britain" is nonsense. It fuels an insurgency that sucks guns, money and recruits into this benighted region. Arrested terrorists in Britain may be lying when they invariably cite the war as their rallying cry, but cite it they do. Brown cannot plausibly cite the antithesis, that they are being deterred by the war in Helmand.

As for blaming Pakistan, its regime has been thoroughly corrupted by American aid for a decade and its border with Afghanistan is beyond policing. Earlier this week, Brown registered his "disgust and horror" at the Taliban insurgency using suicide bombers against British troops. This outrage is hardly novel. Child bombers have been used by insurgents since the Vietcong in Vietnam.

What Brown failed to acknowledge, and what is used by Britain's enemies in Pakistan and elsewhere, is Nato's use of cluster bombs and aerial missiles, knowing that they kill civilians, including children, "collaterally". The coalition has almost certainly killed more children in Afghanistan by its reckless use of tactical air strikes than have died at the hands of the Taliban. War is no place for such hypocrisy.

Nato forces in Kabul are now devoid of strategy. The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, is proving adept at the old Afghan game of shuffling warlords and druglords. It is common knowledge that lines of contact are opening on every front with commanders of the "new Taliban", whose role in governing a future Afghanistan is beyond dispute. This leaves Nato's leaders - other than America and Britain - justifiably refusing to throw good troops after dead ones. Afghanistan is proving a classic of sunk cost fallacy, with commanders unwilling to change policy for fear of admitting that the existing one has been a colossal failure.

Frankness continues to be the greatest casualty of these wars. Those who cheered on Iraq and Afghanistan - from left as well as right - dare not admit they might have been wrong. Now a rewriting of the Iraq epilogue as a mission well accomplished is acting as a lethal magnet, drawing British policy to similar disaster and British troops to their deaths in Helmand.

The essence of moral judgment is universality. Eager inquirers should now be turning their gaze to the dusty heights of Kabul. Brown may be relying on the army's spirit of "their's not to reason why; their's but to do or die". That is a soldier's duty, but it is not the duty of a democrat. His duty is precisely to reason why.

simon.jenkins@guardian.co.uk