Perhaps the most colorful of the warlords who fought in the Great Jihad, General Abdurrashid Dostum, is the northern Uzbek warlord who controls much of Mazar-e-Sharif, which exists under an uneasy peace with the Tajiks controlled by General Uftad Ata and the Hazaras led by General Haji Mohammad Mohaqiq. In the meantime, Dostum has begun to consolidate power in the North. Just last week, his forces claimed to have wrested control of the Qale Zaal district, 38 miles northwest of the town of Kunduz, from ethnic Tajiks loyal to Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim. He prints his own version of the local currency, the afghani, which trades at one-third to one-half the rate of genuine notes (about 10 million of which equal about $3.50 US). In a Western-style state, he would be considered a counterfeiter; here he is considered a hard-nosed political entrepreneur.
To the south and west, Herat and much of the border with Iran is governed by Ismail Khan, another throwback to Afghanistan’s war with the Soviet Union. Some allege he is allowing Iranian mercenaries into the country, and there are reports of Iranian arms shipments being spread throughout the southern provinces of Herat, Helmand, Nimruz, and Farah. Reports of major arms smuggling and harassment of local Pashtuns has angered the nearby regime in Kandahar.
General Gul Agha Shirzai, the governor of Kandahar, is a Durrani Pashtun who controls Kandahar with the help of US forces. He has massed as many as 20,000 troops to attack Ismail Khan in Herat. At the moment, Shirzai has an uncertain alliance with interim leader Hamid Karzai, a fellow Pashtun and former deputy foreign minister under Rabbani’s government.
Three minor warlords are scrambling for control over Eastern Afghanistan. In what is commonly called the Eastern Shura, former Northern Alliance commanders Hazrat Ali and Hagi Qadir plot against each other and Aghi Zaman, of the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan, for control over Jalalabad and the surrounding territories.
Jabbar’s father, General Gulam Nassery, is the deputy minister of the interior in charge of peacekeeping in Kabul. After serving as the chief of police under the previous Northern Alliance government, he sees the fragility of the current government. "They will give us money, but what can we buy in Afghanistan?" he asks. "We need men here. Men to protect the roads. Men to protect the women in the streets. Men who believe in a greater Afghanistan. Ultimately, we need men who are not Afghans. We need the blue-helmets and we need tens of thousands of them." When asked if he thought Western nations would donate that many peacekeepers, General Nassery laughed.
To date, there is no reason to question his sense of humor. President Bush did take a step in the right direction by promising interim leader Karzai help in training the police and military, as well as $50 million in credit for private investments in addition to aid already promised. But it will take months if not years before the semblance of a national security force is in place, let alone local security forces. An influx of US forces would most likely anger allies such as Pakistan, but more ground troops from outside the region are needed to ensure that people get fed, and that requires keeping the pilfering of aid to a reasonable level.
ORGANIZED FOOD theft presents daunting problems for organizations attempting to distribute aid to rebuild the country. Much of the trouble stems from the subversion of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) — which are, after all, ostensibly there to help. Some NGOs, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross and the International Rescue Committee (IRC), which began as charitable-relief organizations, date back to the first and second decades of the 20th century. A second wave of secular NGOs arose during and after the World War II to help with the rebuilding of Europe. In the ’60s their focus shifted to the developing world, where they have played major roles in building civil society, often in partnership with the UN and the World Bank.
NGOs such as the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan and the Norwegian Committee for Afghanistan have been working in the region for about 20 years — mostly running schools and clinics. When the United States pulled its aid from Afghanistan in 1994 after the withdrawal of Soviet troops, for example, the Swedish Committee took over the empty schools and clinics.
During the rule of the Taliban, these aid agencies were relatively safe from predation, but the return of the warlords has rendered established NGOs ripe sources of plunder. A new class of Afghan entrepreneurs, backed by the warlords, has also set up local NGOs as fronts for siphoning off UN aid such as grain distributed by the World Food Program. Making matters worse, local staffs of aid agencies in Afghanistan are themselves not immune to pressure exerted by the warlords. Since most international staffs of larger, foreign NGOs were evacuated for security reasons after September 11, local staffs of many otherwise reputable NGOs have gone into business for themselves — joining with local warlords to sell what was meant to be given away.
It is often unclear whether local staffs of international groups enter into business with the warlords willingly or have succumbed to pressure. However, the fine clothes and fancy cars driven by local staff members suggest that, at the very least, they are enjoying the rewards of cooperation. One man showed up at his office with a new wide-screen television set — an unheard of luxury in Afghanistan, where the new government uses pencils because it cannot afford ink.
Jalalabad offers a sickening illustration of just how the system of plunder works. About halfway between Kabul and Pakistan, Jalalabad’s uncertain government is wracked by the struggles of three different warlords competing for power and resources. Food is one of those resources, and life is measured in it. A man can be killed for about 10 pounds of grain.
Because grain distributed by the UN’s World Food Program was virtually the only import into Jalalabad, warlord-sponsored Afghan entrepreneurs formed NGOs to "distribute" the grain themselves on the black market. When these new NGOs couldn’t meet their warlord’s quota by tricking UN officials, they simply had the shipments hijacked. So much grain has been stolen, in fact, that markets in Jalalabad are flooded and prices have dropped by 40 percent.
Outside Mohammed Yousaf’s warehouse in downtown Jalalabad, two policemen fidget with their Kalashnikov rifles. Inside, 50 barefoot laborers — their faces slick with sweat — unload trucks full of blue-and-white sacks of stolen UN grain at a dead run. Others slice open the bags and efficiently repackage them in plain burlap for sale in the city’s bazaars.
Overseeing his operation from a drafty office on the second floor, the fat Jalalabad wheat dealer proclaims, "I can’t make any money buying wheat ... I have to pay the NGOs to get it for me." When asked which NGOs supplied him with wheat, Mr. Yousaf smiled and said, "All of them — if we can’t do business with the directors, then we talk to the drivers."
Truck drivers don’t have much choice. Until now, over 50 trucks a day representing some 1750 metric tons of wheat made the three-hour drive to Jalalabad from Peshawar. Less than half arrived with more than 60 percent of their wheat, interviews with dozens of truck drivers revealed. As one driver said, "Sometimes they [the warlords] stop us outside of Jalalabad with some gunmen and an empty truck, other times I drop my wheat off in Jalalabad and see the same people take the wheat from where we unload it — the NGOs sign for it." Other drivers report that gunmen simply commandeered their vehicles. According to Haneef Ata, an English-educated Afghan serving as deputy director of the IRC in Afghanistan, assassinations over grain and power are a daily occurrence in Jalalabad. "We just try to stay out of it, and that is becoming increasingly difficult," he says. "If things don’t change, I can’t see how we can continue."
