Thugs and Crooks Rule City in Taliban's Wake
C.J. Chivers New York Times Service
Monday, January 7, 2002
JALALABAD, Afghanistan The middleman with the dark sunglasses and beard met the Afghan soldiers at the gate and was allowed access inside the provincial security station. He reappeared minutes later with a bag containing two videotapes, an Albanian passport, a Moroccan identification card and nine computer disks. .
He set the prices: $1,600 each for the videotapes, $400 each for the passport or identification card, and $400 for the disks. All were terrorist materials taken from inside Qaida caves in nearby Tora Bora, he said, or from terrorist houses inside the city. He said that they were being offered for sale by a local intelligence chief, who would have to remain hidden for now. "If you buy all of these today, then he will have the very important passports to sell," said the middleman, who identified himself as Dr. Kamran, a surgeon working for Jalalabad's senior warlord, Hazarat Ali. "Two passports of jihad men from Saudi Arabia. They can be yours, too." When Dr. Kamran found no takers, he returned to the station and came out empty-handed. "Maybe tomorrow?" he asked, with a conspiratorial smile. This is Jalalabad, a city in the hands of thugs and crooks. The city, Afghanistan's first stop on the Grand Trunk Road, which links the nation to India, had been a smugglers' den for centuries, providing shelter and like-minded company for the bandits, traders and thieves who traveled the soaring mountain passes nearby. But in recent years, as the Taliban enforced their severe brand of Islamic law with public executions or dismemberment for criminals, crime declined. Now the Taliban are gone, and the city and the surrounding Nangarhar Province is run once again by warlords and guerrillas, whose rackets have almost instantly turned the place into Afghanistan's version of Shakedown Street, the land where almost everything is corrupt. Markets sell bootlegged copies of Hollywood releases ("Lord of the Rings" is already available) and brown pucks of hashish, and in one shop there was even the skull of a snow leopard, one of the world's most endangered cats. The corruption runs unchecked through what counts as the local government, which is essentially a group of ill-tempered guerrilla brigades. The guerrillas welcome outsiders with threats and extortion, steal food from aid convoys and simultaneously insist that they are helping Green Berets gather intelligence materials in the mountains while trying to sell the same items on the street. "Everywhere people are trying to sell these Al Qaida things," said Abdul Ghaffar, the newly appointed interim mayor. "Some of it is real, some of it is fake. It is all a great shame." Green Berets continue to work with the Eastern Shura, the loose coalition of three warlords who rule the province. But it is not clear whether they are paying the guerrillas for their assistance. Not all of Afghanistan is so corrupt. In several northern provinces, ethnic Tajik generals have tried to craft a responsible government and are sending signals that they want a society based on fairness, tolerance and rights. In Jalalabad, however, the unsettling games begin from the moment visitors arrive. Upon crossing the city line, new visitors are informed that they must reside in hotels controlled by the Eastern Shura. And visitors at the Spin Ghar Hotel, run by Mr. Ali, are not allowed to leave the grounds unless they use a driver that he selected. The charge is $100 to $150 a day, even if the drive is only 100 meters (330 feet). Similarly, Mr. Ali recently circulated a note in his hotel that contained a veiled threat: It warned visitors that they must also hire his translators, otherwise their safety could not be assured. These charges also begin at $100 a day and rise as high as $250. (Two exceptions were made last week for journalists who arrived with their own drivers and translators, but then the local bosses demanded 25 percent to 50 percent kickbacks from the Afghans already in the journalists' employ.) New rules are introduced almost daily. For instance, once inside the Spin Ghar Hotel, visitors cannot change residences, as was made clear last month when a New York Times translator who tried to help an Associated Press photographer move into a rival hotel was struck in the head with a rifle butt. Mr. Ali, who properly bears the title of provincial security commander, now and then appears to speak. On Friday, for instance, he said that he did not know who was stealing the rice from the local Red Crescent Society, even though the sacks were somehow being used to feed his own troops in their garrisons throughout the city. Eight sacks bearing the Red Crescent logo showed up at his hotel, where the security commander is now in the position of charging his Western guests to eat the food his men have seized from the poor. "All of our soldiers are the same - robbers," said a hotel employee, who was ordered by the soldiers to carry the big sacks into the hotel kitchen. The corruption continues in the neighborhoods and countryside, where soldiers flagrantly steal. The guerrillas also try to sell access to news. Last month, a commander at Tora Bora sent notice to network television crews that they could interview wounded prisoners, but only if they would pay $5,000. NBC News declined the offer on ethical grounds and left.