TIME: Meet The New Boss,
Same As The Old Boss
Monday, January 14, 2002
By MICHAEL WARE
On Wednesday night, the bandits moved from door to
door, brandishing rifles and flashing knives. In the
Kandahar suburb of Manan Medical, 15 men smashed
their way into one mud-brick house after another. A
local businessman named Shir Mohammed waited as they
robbed his neighbors, holding blades to their
throats. By 3 a.m., the thieves were inside his
house, tying up a guest and demanding cash. But Shir
and his relatives fought back and, in a running gun
battle that lasted until dawn, chased the robbers to
their safe house, the local police headquarters.
In this city, where government salaries are not a
reliable source of income, the rogue cops may have
seen the raid as a tax collection. But the violence
did not stop there, because this was a chance to
settle a few scores. Kandahar is a polarized city;
the new governor, Gul Agha Sherzai, has the title but
not all the power. Rival warlords see him as an ally
of Pakistan propped up with U.S. guns and money.
Sherzai has had to use his rivals' troops to fill out
his police and security units, but their loyalties
lie with their commanders, not him.
And so the robbers--non-Kandahari Afghans recruited
by Sherzai in Pakistan--were besieged at 7 a.m. by a
gang of rival soldiers. Kalashnikovs barked back and
forth, joined by salvos of rocket-propelled grenades.
Lurking behind corners or popping out of windows, the
fighters sprayed their rounds, oblivious to the
market shoppers passing by. The skirmish was won by
Sherzai's rivals. Eventually, two men were whisked
away. The crowd dispersed, and the soldiers relaxed.
Sherzai can't afford to do the same. Last time he was
governor, in 1994, lawlessness ruled the province.
People were happy when the Taliban came to power and
he fled to Pakistan. A burly warrior with a taste for
gambling, Sherzai now needs to help the Americans
hunt down fugitive Taliban and al-Qaeda forces but
risks angering his citizens, many of whom still
sympathize with those forces. On the streets, the
foreign al-Qaeda fighters are seen by many as Muslim
brothers needing protection. "If an Arab came to me
for help, I would carry him to the border, no
problem," says a fruit merchant. In the city's dusty
back streets, thousands of graves are marked by small
piles of stones. One cluster lies beneath a forest of
green-and-white flags set atop 12-ft. wooden poles.
This is the "Arab cemetery" for al-Qaeda's dead,
where hundreds pay their respects each day.
So far, U.S. forces have succeeded in rounding up
more than 270 al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners; most
are being held at the Marine base outside of town.
New arrivals are questioned by FBI agents and
military analysts. "We're getting good stuff," a
military source says. "Oh, boy, are these guys
talking. Most of them have simply had enough."
But several wounded al-Qaeda fighters at Mirwais
hospital still have plenty of fight left in them.
Armed with pistols and grenades, they have been
barricaded inside a ward for almost two weeks.
Initially, 18 men from Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Sudan
forced doctors to treat them. As they recovered from
their wounds, nine sneaked out. After dark on Dec.
23, U.S. special forces and Afghan soldiers sealed
the building and then used a doctor to trick one man
into agreeing to a transfer. Carried out on a
stretcher, he was seized by U.S. soldiers. He shouted
a warning to his comrades, who barricaded themselves
in. "They said the holy Koran did not allow them to
surrender; they are fighting jihad," says a doctor.
"They want to kill Americans."
The captured man was taken to the U.S. base, and the
Afghans tried to starve the rest out. The Arabs later
surrendered a man whose amputated limb had become
infected. But the rest have held out, and someone may
be sneaking them food and medicine. No one can be
trusted in Kandahar.