KABUL: Afghanistan's US-backed government faces its greatest challenge yet from powerful regional strongmen bent on preserving provincial fiefdoms before landmark parliamentary and presidential elections in September.
As Washington focuses on turmoil in Iraq, violence plagues Afghanistan nearly three years after US-led forces defeated the Taliban militia. Factional battles rage in the north and west and a deadly Taliban-led insurgency racks the south and east.
President Hamid Karzai, his national army of 10,000 troops overstretched in a land of 29 million people, is struggling to extend his authority beyond Kabul and to rein in regional commanders who oppose his vision of a strong centralised state. Simmering rivalries have erupted into bloody violence in northern Faryab and Balkh provinces and in western Herat.
"In recent weeks, Afghanistan's warlords have displayed a greater willingness to challenge the authority of the Karzai regime," said Mark Sedra, a researcher at the Bonn International Center for Conversion think tank.
Commanders such as General Abdul Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek veteran of Afghanistan's long years of war and known for his frequent switches of allegiance, want to preserve their autonomy and are pressing Karzai for Cabinet or ministerial positions.
NOMINAL ALLIES: Described as warlords in a country scarred by decades of fighting, the commanders are deeply unpopular. But without a radical redeployment of NATO-led peacekeepers out of Kabul and into the provinces, Karzai and his people will struggle to fend them off, analysts say.
Nominally allied to Karzai, the powerful commanders run private armies and operate with relative impunity. Some benefit from the rampant opium trade, using the money to buy arms and to finance their militias, diplomats and analysts say.
Private jails are common. Rights groups blame militia commanders for a long list of abuses ranging from extorting money from businesses to breaking into homes, stealing property, smuggling cars and drug trafficking.
"Lack of intervention on the part of the (US-led) coalition and peacekeepers to bring in line these commanders and warlords will be extremely dangerous for Afghanistan's future and the current regime," said Wadir Safi, a Kabul University professor.
A 6,400-strong NATO-led international peacekeeping force is stationed mostly in the capital Kabul, while 15,500 US-led foreign troops are hunting Taliban and Al Qaeda in the south, leaving the provinces at the mercy of such commanders.
The government has announced plans to disarm 40 per cent of an estimated 100,000 militia fighters by June. Analysts say this looks overly ambitious because most commanders can just buy more guns in a country awash with freelance fighters.
FACTIONAL FIGHTING: Recent unrest underscores the scale of the problem. Forces loyal to Dostum fought those of rival strongman Ustad Atta Mohammad on the outskirts of the main northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif last weekend, killing at least two people and wounding several.
That came two days after Dostum's forces briefly overran Maimana, capital of Faryab, forcing the provincial governor to flee and prompting Karzai to deploy 750 troops to the area.
The militia withdrew from the town on Saturday but remains in Faryab province in defiance of an order from Karzai. In the bloodiest incident, a cabinet minister and son of powerful governor of western Herat province Ismail Khan was shot dead on March 21 by forces loyal to a pro-Karzai commander. That triggered fierce factional fighting in Herat.
Karzai sent in 1,500 troops after scores had died but the animosity lingers. The hardline Khan, who holds sway again in a region he has ruled on and off for many years, is at odds with Karzai and controls much of Afghanistan's trade income.
Tensions often run along the ethnic fault lines that have fractured Afghanistan for decades. Many local commanders, such as Dostum, are drawn from ethnic minorities such as the Tajiks and Uzbeks and won positions of power for helping the United States to oust the Taliban in 2001. -Reuters
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