May 30, 2003	Friday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 27,1424

WASHINGTON: A year and a half after US troops invaded Afghanistan and toppled its Taliban rulers, Afghanistan is sliding backward into factional fighting and lawlessness, amid rising opium production and signs of new oppression of women, according to United Nations officials and human rights groups.

Regional warlords again control much of the countryside, just as they did after Soviet forces withdrew in the late 1980s, engaging in struggles for local dominance as they have for centuries. The Taliban, whose forces slipped away in late 2001 when their top leaders disappeared, are regrouping, experts say.

Nearly a year after his inauguration as president, the man hailed by the West as a national unifier, Hamid Karzai, is struggling to exert government control beyond the capital, Kabul.

Last week, Karzai stripped a powerful northern warlord, Abdul Rashid Dostum, of powers that had allowed him to play a dominant political role. Earlier in the week, Karzai had announced an agreement by regional warlords to put the customs revenue that their troops collect under government control.

But Karzai lacks the physical force to make his decisions stick. The national army is in its infancy, police lack training, and neither the 9,000 US troops in the country nor the 5,000- member International Security Assistance Force are prepared to attempt to provide security across the country.

Fighting among Afghanistan’s various ethnic groups and factions and violent criminal attacks are impeding practically every aspect of the country’s difficult transition to a stable democracy, from election preparations and road-building to the revival of girls’ education and child immunization.

The issue of “security arises at every turn,” Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN special envoy for Afghanistan, told the Security Council on May 6. “It casts a long shadow over the whole peace process and, indeed, over the whole future of Afghanistan.”

While US military spokesmen say much of the country is relatively safe, numerous accounts from human rights groups and UN officials paint a different picture. Scattered elements of the Taliban and Al Qaeda have regrouped and are attacking central government targets in the southern and eastern parts of the country, they say. Also on the attack is Hezb-e-Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

“Rivalries between factions and local commanders, impunity for human rights violations, and the daily harassment of ordinary Afghan citizens by both commanders and local security forces are all too common,” Brahimi told the Security Council.

Ethnic and factional fighting and looting are on the rise, claiming 50 victims recently in Badghis and Faryab provinces, including 15 women and children who drowned in a river while fleeing their attackers, Brahimi reported.

“Violence, stealing, looting, rape are the result of scores of thousands of unprofessional, untrained and undisciplined troops running wild,” said John Sifton, a researcher on Afghanistan at Human Rights Watch.

In parts of the country, aid groups are cutting back activities as a result of attacks on their vehicles and explosive devices being hurled into their offices and compounds. In the south, UN workers don’t travel by road without armed guards.

“The outreach of aid beyond Kabul is not that great,” said David Lockwood, deputy director for Asia and the Pacific for the United Nations Development Programme. Some areas are inaccessible because of security problems. In others, the central government has restricted aid because its leaders don’t want warlords to get the credit, he said.

A disturbing byproduct of the general lawlessness is a surging drug trade. In late 2001, as US forces and the Northern Alliance drove out the Taliban, the Bush administration mentioned the goal of eradicating drug production as second only to that of wiping out terrorism. In fact, Afghanistan had sharply cut drug production during the Taliban’s final year in power.

But last year, Afghanistan reclaimed its position as the world’s No. 1 producer of opium poppies. It now supplies nearly three-fourths of the world’s opium, and the drug trade accounts for 20 per cent of the Afghan economy.

These aren’t the Afghanistan statistics the Bush administration prefers to cite about Afghanistan. Welcoming Karzai to the Oval Office on Feb 27, President Bush instead mentioned the two million refugees who had returned home and the millions of children who had gone back to school.

But the UN refugee agency warned last month that the trend of high numbers of refugees returning to Afghanistan could be reversed if security were not improved in the countryside.

After an initial lifting of restrictions on women after the ouster of the Taliban, there are signs of a return to oppression. In January, an Amnesty International official described a “pervasive threat of harassment” against women.

US military officials insist that reports of security problems are exaggerated.

“We understand the concerns expressed by some members of the international community,” said Col. Rod Davis, public affairs director for the Coalition Joint Task Force at the military base in Bagram. “However, after almost 24 years of continuous conflict, Afghanistan is far more stable today than a year ago by almost any measurement.”

The number of firefights and explosive devices that US forces encounter “are all down” and neither Al Qaeda nor the Taliban has sanctuary in Afghanistan, he said.

Certainly, strides have been made by the United States and other countries in working with the Karzai government. For one thing, international donors are fulfilling their pledges.

“It’s true to say the government is now functioning. There are Cabinet decisions. Legislation is being passed,” Lockwood said. A number of programmes that were conducted by aid groups are being taken over by the central government, “which enhances people’s view of government effectiveness,” he said.

But many see these gains as fragile and endangered. If something were to happen to Karzai, the country could slip back to the level of fighting and chaos seen after Soviet forces left, said Stephen P. Cohen, a South Asia specialist at the Brookings Institution. “One of the strongest players will be the Taliban, no question about it,” he said.

The response that many have repeatedly called for is to expand the International Security Assistance Force nationwide.

Such an expansion would require tens of thousands of soldiers and a major commitment by the United States to support it with airlift, logistical help and intelligence. So far, neither the United States nor the countries leading the international effort have been prepared for such an investment of troops and money.—Dawn/The LAT-WP News Service (c) The Washington Post.