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Longtime foes
revive struggles for power
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After sending away
Taliban, old mullah calls factions to city
Publication: Baltimore Sun
Date: 11/18/2001
Author: Dan Fesperman, Sun Foreign Staff
Jalalabad, Afghanistan - The victors
began to divide the spoils here yesterday, and already
there are hurt feelings, the sort of game-face grumbling
that in the past has always preceded major eruptions in Afghanistan.
Which is why, in the weeks to come, events in this market
town in the western end of the Khyber Pass may say a lot
about how deeply, if at all, peace can take root in the
wake of the Taliban's collapse.
The succession of power here occurred much as it did in
dozens of other Afghan cities and towns in the past week.
As Taliban forces retreated, old commanders from past
fights returned home to reclaim power, only to find
former rivals doing the same.
To say that Jalalabad was
"liberated" is to stretch the truth. Half the
men here still stroll the streets with Kalashnikovs and
grenade launchers slung across their backs. Few men
shaved their beards, and few women cast off their
head-to-toe burqas. Beards and burqas were part of the
ethnic Pashtun style long before the Taliban's Mullah Mohammed Omar made
them mandatory.
No one had to dig out their old televisions either. They
had never stopped watching, and some residents even
flaunted rooftop satellite dishes.
But the most important holdover from Taliban days is the
reigning power broker. That would be Yunis Khalis, an
elderly mullah who made his name battling the Soviet
invaders in the 1980s, and now lives in the hills a few
miles out of town.
Khalis got rid of
the Taliban much in the way a CEO dismisses a suddenly
unpopular board of directors. He politely informed them
on Wednesday that it was time to go. Most complied
without a shot, unless you count the handful of Arab and
Pakistani fighters killed on their way out of town.
Taliban fighters who grew up around here joined the new
order simply by trading their black turbans for white
caps.
But as old Taliban foes raced into town, some arrived
from exile by coming across the Pakistani border. Khalis was faced with
the challenge of keeping the power grab from turning into
a well-armed wrestling match. Far more than town rule was
at stake. Jalalabad is
capital of Nangarhar province, astride a strategic
trading route that has been fought over for centuries. Khalis' immediate
answer was to gather the various contenders late
yesterday morning in Jalalabad's
grandiose governing palace for a three-hour jirga, a sort
of glorified town meeting.
The top job of provincial governor went to Haji Abdul Qadeer,
a longtime Khalis
ally. That didn't sit well with two challengers.
One was Haji Muhhamen Zaman, a guerrilla commander who
fought it out in the Jalalabad
area in the chaotic years leading up to Taliban rule.
Zaman had arrived Thursday in a convoy of buses and vans
brimming with armed supporters and foreign journalists,
but that wasn't enough to sway Khalis's jirga.
Zaman's consolation prize was being named provincial
military commander, not bad until one realizes that most
of the armed men in the streets are loyal to Qadeer, and
that Zaman's new base of power is a bombed Taliban
building on the outskirts of town where his men
industriously manned a checkpoint in the first night on
the job.
Hazrat Ali, who led the Wednesday shootout that killed a
few of the departing Arabs, complained openly that the
top job should have been his, insisting, "I should
be governor. I liberated the town."
Lest any of the runners-up get out of hand, Qadeer had
taken his own pre-emptive steps. Four days ago he
summoned a loyal military commander, Abdul Lateef
Nahzatyar, to bring his 300 men down from the hills.
"We are here to secure the town, to provide some
order," Nahzatyar insisted calmly. He was surrounded
by 20 of his men on the concrete steps of a local
guesthouse, where his fighters trooped to their rooms
carrying rocket grenades like milk bottles.
Technically part of the Northern Alliance, the men from
Nahzatar's unit are not from any of the main ethnic
groups in the alliance - Tajik, Uzbek or Hazarra - that
the local Pashtun find objectionable.
Nor, like most of the local power contenders, are they
Pashtun. They are Pashai, and come from a remote region
north of here called Nuristan.
"We're a gentle people, a peaceful people." he
said - a tough sell when you've been at war for the past
22 years.
But Nuristan does offer a certain isolation. It is a land
of bad roads and little electricity, sealed from its
neighbors by 14,000-foot peaks and the lack of a major
highway.
All of that seems to make its fighters the perfect fit as
the local version of a peace-keeping force.
"We are highly respected and appreciated by the
local Pashtun people here," said Nahzatyar, who
besides being college-educated - a rarity if you're from
Nuristan - also shows the knack of a PR man for knowing
the diplomatic thing to say in a touchy time of
discontent.
When asked about possible local discord, he shakes his
head and said, "I think it will be peaceful. In Afghanistan there are many
tribes, many castes, and many different types of people.
And the best type of option would be to let them get
together. They all have the right to be involved in
governing."
For Further Reading: RugNotes
Guide to Rugs & Books
Thanks and best wishes,
J. Barry O'Connell Jr.
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