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Warlords bring new terrors War in Afghanistan: Observer special
Paul Harris in Chaman Sunday December 2, 2001 The Observer
It is a hidden war that the world has ignored. But the chaos, rape, murder and pillaging that have swept southern Afghanistan are writ large on the faces of the fortunate few who escape.
Abdul Abdullah was lucky. As an ethnic Pashtun living in a village near Herat, he fled the approach of the Tajik and Hazara forces which captured the city. He headed for the barbed-wire border with Pakistan. His cousin, Aziz Khan, was not so lucky. He and his wife Fatma went west toward Iran but did not make it. They and 20 other Pashtun families were stopped at a checkpoint, one of hundreds appearing across southern Afghanistan. The men, including Khan, were herded up into the mountains and shot. The young women were taken away.
Abdullah will not say what he thinks happened to Fatma. But the truth seems obvious. 'I know they let most of the women go, but they kept the young and pretty ones like Fatma,' he said.
The landscape Abdullah crossed on his trek south is a land of warring anarchy. In many areas Taliban forces are still in control, but in others local Pashtun warlords rule by rape, robbery and murder. Armed gangs rob and kill lorry drivers who are the economic lifeblood of the region. In the skies above US bombers seek targets to destroy.
Noor Mohamed saw the effects of one of those missions. As a wheat trader plying between the Pakistani border town of Chaman and the Afghan city of Ghazni last week, he witnessed a terrible sight. Lying in a burnt-out, twisted mess just north of Kandahar were the smoking remains of a 15-lorry fuel convoy.
The charred remains of the drivers and dozens of unfortunate souls who had bargained a lift from them was a sight Mohamed will not forget. 'I saw all the dead burnt people,' he said. 'How can you be a man if you don't feel something when you see that?'
The south is the Pashtun heartland and the core of Taliban rule. The Northern Alliance, dominated by ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks, cannot march here. Instead, the Alliance and its Western backers are trying to persuade Pashtun tribal leaders and former mujahideen to revolt and overthrow a Taliban regime weakened by US bombing and the presence of 1,000 US Marines on a desert airstrip in the region.
But the policy has created a vacuum of power. Into the void have flooded warlords, based over the border in the Pakistani city of Quetta, who ruled before the Taliban came.
In the villages around Kandahar there is a name that provokes horror and fear. It is not Mullah Omar, nor is it Osama bin Laden. It is Gul Agha, the former mujahideen governor of Kandahar, whose tribal militia is backed and advised by the US.
Ghlume Walli fled from Agha's men near his hometown of Khalat to a makeshift tent at the border. 'Gula Agha's men would have robbed me even of these water bottles,' he said, holding up two dirty plastic cartons filled with brown water.
His friend Mohamed Sami agreed. He had been herding his cattle near Khalat when Agha's militia stopped him at gunpoint and slaughtered his herd.
He draws his finger across his throat. 'They are looters. Everyone is afraid. They killed every last one of the cattle,' he said.
Agha and several thousand fighters crossed into Afghanistan a day after Kabul fell. Police sources in Pakistan believe he is heavily involved in the lucrative opium trade. His followers are drawn mainly from the poor and destitute of the refugee camps. When he governed in Kandahar the city was ruled by warlords who stripped it of everything of value. Rape and robbery were commonplace.
Pakistani intelligence officials say Agha and another Western-backed tribal leader, Hamid Kharzai, have struck a deal to let Agha reclaim his old governorship when the Taliban finally falls.
It is the prospect of such men returning that has many in the refugee camps longing for the Taliban to rule as long as possible. They fled along routes controlled by the Taliban. Many say they owe the religious militia their lives.
For the Pashtuns of the south, the Taliban did not mean oppression and taking away women's rights. They had never known anything different. However, the Taliban did bring freedom from thugs and the rule of the gun.
'In the time of the Taliban I could walk down the street with 30,000 rupees and no one would touch me. But the men of Gul Agha will kill you even if you have nothing,' said Walli.
Such feelings have seen the Taliban win back some ground. Khalat fell for three days to local tribal forces. The bazaar was looted while residents cowered in their houses. Then the Taliban returned and the residents cheered.
Takhteh Pol, a vital town on the road from Kandahar to Pakistan, was also recaptured by the Taliban last week, according to reliable Afghan and Pakistani sources. The town had endured several days of rule by Agha's men, when one of his commanders boasted of executing 160 Taliban prisoners.
'They were made to stand in a long line and five or six of our fighters used light machine guns to kill them,' the commander told a French news agency, adding that US special forces attached to Agha had tried and failed to stop the shootings. The US has denied the massacre happened, but after the slaughter of hundreds of Taliban in Mazar-e-Sharif, the Takhteh Pol killings sounded all too plausible.
The collapse of Taliban rule over much of Afghanistan has laid bare the country's ethnic bones, exposing old hatreds. Hundreds of refugees in the crowded camps near Chaman are from Mazar-e-Sharif. They are all Pashtuns, who have fled rather than live under the rule of the Uzbek soldiers of Northern Alliance General Rashid Dostum.
They tell of ethnic cleansing of Pashtuns in the north and say they had no choice but to flee south to the Pashtun - and Taliban - heartland.
Haji Khira Ghol left behind his vineyard and market stall when he fled a day before Mazar-e-Sharif fell. 'The mercy of an Uzbek is worse than the greatest cruelty of the Pashtuns,' he shouted angrily.
He said 5,000 Pashtuns from his region had fled their homes. Relatives arriving after him near Chaman told him how his abandoned house had been destroyed by Dostum's men and his stall looted of all its stock.
'I can never go back. Not with the Uzbeks there. There is no place for the Pashtun in the north,' he said.
Other stories recounted by Pashtun refugees from Mazar-e-Sharif are similar. Mohamed Aslan fled his farm 10 days ago. He is terrified of the Northern Alliance and their men. He could not stay in the city of his birth. 'They know only war. If they want to they can just kill you and go unpunished,' he said.
Just over 60 miles away from the refugee camps at Chaman, the US flag flies over the Marines' captured airstrip. But the attention of those forces is firmly focused on hunting bin Laden. The ravages going on around them are ignored. Among the refugees fleeing the anarchy, the US has few friends. 'If the Americans had brought peace, that would have been a good thing. But instead they have just brought us war and looting and the men of Gul Agha,' said Aslan. Above him in the bright blue sky the jet trail of a B-52 headed north. Its target was Kandahar. This hidden war goes on.
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