License Plate Roulette

As with most things involving traffic in Afghanistan, the system for assigning license places to vehicles is mired in chaos and controversy, leaving both motorists and officials confused and frustrated.



Efforts to impose order have only muddied the waters further, and some say it is now easier than ever for insurgents and suicide bombers to move around the country by car.



The current problem started in 2004, when the government decided to start issuing new license plates with numbers, letters and the community where the vehicle was registered written in both Dari and English.



That meant that there were now four kinds of number-plate in use in Afghanistan: the new ones, the older version with the script in Dari only, temporary plates with black script on a tan background, and impromptu “plates” consisting of letters and numbers scribbled on pieces of paper are affixed to the windscreen and rear windows.



As part of the changeover, the Afghan Traffic Department, which is a division of the interior ministry, signed a ten-year contract with Afghan Traffic Signs and System Services, an Afghan-German company that was to produce and distribute the new plates, and also overhaul the entire vehicle registration system.



The company had issued about 30,000 plates when the interior ministry stepped in and abruptly cancelled the contract, claiming the terms were too favourable for the company’s foreign investors.



Instead, the traffic division handed the manufacturing side over to the finance ministry, which has overall responsibility for producing government seals and documents. The blank plates will still be supplied by the Afghan-German firm.



But plans to computerise car registration, restructure the regional traffic departments, and train the traffic police - all part of the original contract - have fallen away, and the registration system remains as irrational as ever.



Under the old system, cars were registered without the owner being named. An import company could simply purchase a batch of plates at about 300 US dollars each and put them on the vehicles they sold. That made it almost impossible to determine who a particular vehicle belonged to if it was subsequently used in a crime or an attack.



The new system stipulates that cars are registered under the name of their first owner, who pays about 500 dollars for the plates. But if the car is sold, the plate stays with the car, with no obligation to notify the traffic police of the transfer. So ownership can quickly become obscure, given the Afghan habit of selling and reselling cars.



Having so many different varieties of license plates in circulation among the approximately one million vehicles on the road is not only annoying for the traffic police, it also poses a potential security threat. Since it is almost impossible to track cars via the present registration system, some officials say the growing number of insurgents – including suicide bombers – are finding it much easier to slip into major cities and travel freely around the country.



In the past three months alone, there have been more than 20 acts of violence involving vehicles, including suicide bombings, armed attacks, and the kidnapping of two aid workers. Law-enforcement and military experts believe the registration chaos is contributing to the deteriorating security situation.



“The enemies of peace and stability are taking advantage of this situation, and using untraceable cars for terrorist actions and kidnappings,” said General Abdul Shakoor Khair Khwa, the chief of Afghanistan’s traffic police.



General Zahir Azimi, spokesman for the defence ministry, agreed that insurgents and other anti-government forces are able to operate more freely because of the confusing license-plate system. He said the defence ministry has decided to help the traffic police control the movement of vehicles.



“We now are using the national army to stop suspicious vehicles in southern provinces such as Kandahar and Paktia, and take them to the traffic department,” he said.



Yousuf Stanikzai, a spokesperson for the interior ministry, acknowledged the problem and said his ministry was determined to take action.



“There is no doubt that the use of differing license plates is dangerous for security,” he said. “We are therefore going to try to make them all plates uniform.”



But Abdul Jabbar Sabet, a legal advisor to the interior ministry, challenged the link, saying, “We have not received any reports that license plates contribute to a lack of security. Those who seek to cause trouble are perfectly capable of changing a license plate.”



Meanwhile, law-abiding citizens are eager to see the problem resolved. Many have been waiting for months to receive official plates.



Ashraf Khan, 38, a resident of Kabul, was standing in front of the traffic department when he spoke to IWPR. He said he has spent the past two months trying to get plates for his car, but is being fobbed off with empty promises, “They keep telling me to come back tomorrow. I am sorry I bought the car. I can’t sell it. I bought a car so that I could drive, not waste all my time trying to get a plate for it.”



Wahidullah Amani is an IWPR staff reporter in Kabul.