Taleban Country

The police are increasingly outnumbered across the country as Taleban attacks become more common. We sent our reporter Wahidullah Amani back to his village in Sayed Abad in Wardak province. He’s come back with this alarming tale:



First the good news. The ten-year drought in Wardak is finally over. I’ve never seen the trees so green or the apricots so ripe in my village.



But it was hard coming back. The people are visibly frightened. Most wouldn’t talk on tape. But they described frequent attacks on government buildings, vehicles and police.



Lal Gul, a security guard at a local hospital, described a bold daytime ambush on some visiting German embassy staff. He was escorting the German car back to Kabul, but after travelling 30 kilometres from the hospital they ran into a roadblock.



“We got to a place where there were four people standing in front of our car with RPGs and AK-47s,” he says. “They ordered us to stop, and we started shooting at them. Our visitors were smart and reversed their car. We kept shooting while slowly driving backwards until we reached the Germans’ car.”



No one was hurt in this firefight, but Lal Gul lost his car, which the Taleban later burned.



So where were the police all this time? Lal Gul says he called them but they didn’t come.



District governor Mohammad Ibrahim Sadeq says the police knew they would be outnumbered. The hospital called the chief of police and asked for help. But the police said they couldn’t come because if they did, they’d be attacked as well.



The chief of police would not comment on the incident. The head of the crime department, Nurulhaq, said that he was at home at the time of the ambush, and only came later so as to guard the Germans who were staying at the hospital overnight.



The head of the auxiliary police force, Almas, admitted that the Taleban have free reign throughout most of the district. At night, the police patrol in a ring about four or five kilometres around the town, although the district is over 100 kilometres wide.



I asked him, “If you are patrolling only around three to five kilometres, what about the other 97?” He replied, “We’ll leave that to God.”



Common criminals take advantage of the situation. Villagers say that if a robber is caught in a house, he’ll say he’s Taleban so that the homeowners will be too scared to fight back.





Matiullah, a villager, says he’s never seen it so bad, “There are Taleban and thieves roaming around at night. They wear the same clothes and have the same guns, so we don’t know who is who.”



District governor Sadeq admits no plans have been made to restore order, “They come at night and go back at night. Or else they hide out in the mountains. They don’t tell us they’re coming. If they did, we’d be able to arrest them.”



So until the Taleban decide to let police know what they’re up to, they will be able to roam freely around the district.



For IWPR radio, I’m Wahidullah Amani, in Wardak.