TIME: Making Friends in
Afghanistan
Saturday, June 08, 2002
By MICHAEL WARE / KANDAHAR
The Afghan commander laughed. The way the Americans
were going about doing their work, he thought, was
hilarious. U.S. troops, he said, were finding caches
of documents with Taliban markings and stamps and
using those papers to identify and pinpoint enemy
operatives. A man seated near the commander explained
the fighter's mirth by pulling out his own
identification card: a small passport-like book made
by the Taliban and authorized with a Taliban stamp.
It had been issued April 16, long after the Taliban
fell. But the card is legitimate, and the man isn't
an enemy. The local government just doesn't have
money for stationery and so decrees and documents are
still being printed on existing Taliban stock. If you
must have an I.D., you'll have to be Taliban for now.
But watch out for those Americans.
You can't go by appearances in Afghanistan. Even
military successes must be suspect. Take the raid on
the village of Band Taimore, about 50 miles west of
Kandahar, where the U.S.-led alliance runs an
airbase. On the night of May 24, helicopters roared
into the village, unleashing machinegun fire as they
landed in the wheat fields. The mission was a
success. U.S. forces killed Haji Bajet, a pioneer
supporter of Mullah Omar since way back in 1994. Haji
Bajet, 70, the village elder, was also linked to
Akhter Mohammed Usmani, the man who may be the
designated heir to the still-fugitive Omar. But the
aftermath of the raid is a whispering campaign
against the U.S. presence that is engulfing the
strategically important region around Kandahar, just
across from the sensitive Pakistani border.
On the night of May 24, 55 men were taken prisoner in
the raid. A week later, all but five were released
and allowed to return home. But it is the affront to
the women that has fueled the anger against the
Americans. And the women themselves are not being
quiet about it. Naibo, a middle aged mother with
short cropped black hair under the shawl covering her
face and scored hands and feet from years of labor,
says soldiers used plastic handcuffs and a torn
turban to tie her hands and gag her. "I felt certain
they were going to kill me," she says, "I was
whispering a prayer from the Koran." Other women have
similar claims. A villager produced his daughter
Maba, 7, to act out how she says she was bound. "If
they touch our women again we must ask ourselves why
are we alive; we will have no choice but to fight,"
says villager Shir Mohammed Stad. The U.S. military
denies handcuffing or mistreating the women or
children.
But it is the death of a child — whom the Americans
never even touched — that still stuns the locals.
When little Zarghunah woke next to her brothers and
sisters shortly after midnight on May 24, the roars
of choppers and rat-tat-tat of machine guns
frightened her. The six-year-old ran wildly into the
night. As her confused family scattered from the
outdoor platform where they slept on summer nights
Zarghunah, half asleep, stumbled as fast as she could
across the uneven ground of their mud-brick compound.
She did not see the open well. Her father found her
some time later, nearly 40 feet down a shaft as wide
as the worn tire at its mouth; her body broken and
wet and lifeless. Her family remembers that Zarghunah
loved red dresses and a farm dog taller than she that
she insisted on calling "Puppy." Says her mother,
"She was the laughter of our house."
"They are responsible for this loss of life and must
answer for it," a Kandahar police official says of
the Americans. About 600 people have complained to
Kandahar government officials about the incident. A
gathering of Muslim clerics across the border in
Quetta, Pakistan, last week condemned the American
forces and called for retribution. One villager in
Band Taimore mutters an insult, "We were better off
under the Russians." The raid — a necessary one by
U.S. calculations — is ranked by the Afghans among
other so-called American atrocities: the bombing of a
wedding party in December in Paktia, the slaughter of
21 friendly Afghan troops in Uruzgan in January, and
the killing of three Afghan soldiers near Gardez the
day after the Band Taimore prisoners were freed. Even
allies are urging restraint. "If America continues to
make mistakes, the people will resist. Only two or
three more and their patience will break," says Khan
Mohammed, Kandahar military chief and one of the most
powerful warlords in the region.
At Kandahar airbase American and Canadian forces say
they have been forging better ties with the locals.
Two weeks ago, says Major A.C. Roper, spokesman for
the 101st U.S. Airborne Division, a local farmer
warned a U.S. military patrol of a newly planted mine
on the road they were about to use. "It's an example
of the effectiveness of these relationships," Roper
says. But, he adds, "we also realize not every
villager would have taken that action."