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Afghan City, Free of Taliban, Returns to Rule of the Thieves http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nyt/20020106/ts/afghan_city_free_of_taliban_returns_to_rule_of_the_thieves_1.html Sunday January 06 03:11 PM EST By C. J. CHIVERS http://rd.yahoo.com/Dailynews/nyt/inlinks/*http://www.nytimes.com The New York Times The Taliban are gone and Jalalabad has once again turned into a place run by warlords and guerrillas where almost everything is corrupt. JALALABAD, Afghanistan, Jan. 5 The middleman with the dark sunglasses and beard met the Afghan soldiers at the gate and was allowed access inside the provincial security station. He reappeared minutes later with a bag containing two videotapes, an Albanian passport, a Moroccan identification card and nine computer disks. He set the prices: $1,600 for the videotapes, $400 each for the passport or identification card, and $400 for each disk. All were terrorist materials taken from Al Qaeda caves in nearby Tora Bora, he said, or from terrorist houses in the city. He said they were being offered for sale by a local intelligence chief, who would have to remain hidden for now. "If you buy all of these today, then he will have the very important passports to sell," said the middleman, who identified himself as Dr. Kamran, a surgeon who works for Jalalabad's senior warlord, Hajji Hazarat Ali. "Two passports of jihad men from Saudi Arabia. They can be yours, too." When Dr. Kamran found no takers, he returned to the station and came out empty-handed. "Maybe tomorrow?" he asked, with a conspiratorial smile. This is Jalalabad, a city in the hands of thugs and crooks. The city, Afghanistan's first stop on the Grand Trunk Road, which links the nation to India, had been a smuggler's den for centuries, providing shelter and like-minded company for the bandits, traders and thieves who traveled the soaring mountain passes nearby. But in recent years, as the Taliban enforced their severe brand of Islamic law with public executions or dismemberment for criminals, crime declined. Now the Taliban are gone, and the city and the surrounding Nangarhar Province is run once again by warlords and guerrillas, whose enterprising rackets have almost instantly turned the place into Afghanistan's version of Shakedown Street, the land where almost everything is corrupt. Markets here sell bootlegged copies of Hollywood releases ("The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" is already available), pucks of brown hashish and in one shop the skull of a snow leopard, one of the world's most endangered cats. The corruption runs unchecked through what counts as local government, which is essentially a group of ill-tempered guerrilla brigades. The guerrillas welcome outsiders with threats and extortion, steal food from aid convoys and simultaneously insist that they are helping Green Berets gather intelligence materials in the mountains while trying to sell the same items on the street. "Everywhere people are trying to sell these Al Qaeda things," said Abdul Ghaffar, 44, the city's newly appointed interim mayor. "Some of it is real, some of it is fake. It is all a great shame." Green Berets continue to work with the Eastern Shura. But it is not clear whether they are paying the guerrillas for their assistance. Not all of Afghanistan is so corrupt. In several northern provinces, ethnic Tajik generals have tried to craft a responsible government and are sending signals that they want a society based on fairness, tolerance and rights. In Jalalabad, however, the unsettling games begin from the moment visitors arrive. Upon crossing the city line, new visitors are informed that they must reside in hotels controlled by the Eastern Shura, the loose coalition of three warlords who rule the province. And visitors at the Spin Ghar Hotel, run by Mr. Ali, the region's most powerful general, are not allowed to leave the grounds unless they use a driver selected by Mr. Ali. The charge is $100 to $150 a day, even if the drive is only 100 yards. Similarly, Mr. Ali recently circulated a note in his hotel that contained a veiled threat: it warned visitors that they must also hire his translators, or else their safety could not be assured. Those charges also begin at $100 a day, and rise as high as $250. (Two exceptions were made this week for journalists who arrived with their own Afghan drivers and translators, but then the local bosses demanded 25 to 50 percent kickbacks from the Afghans already in the journalists' employ). New rules are introduced almost daily. For instance, once inside the Spin Ghar Hotel, visitors cannot change residences, as was made clear last week when a New York Times translator who had tried to help an Associated Press photographer move into a rival hotel was struck in the head with a rifle butt. Mr. Ali, who properly bears the title of provincial security commander, now and then appears to speak. On Thursday, for instance, he said he did not know who was stealing the rice from the local Red Crescent Society, even though the sacks were somehow being used to feed his own troops in their garrisons throughout the city. With something like comic timing, eight sacks bearing the Red Crescent logo showed up Friday at his hotel, where the security commander is now in the position of charging his Western guests to eat the food his men have seized from the poor. "All of our soldiers are the same robbers," said one sorrowful hotel employee, who was ordered by the soldiers to carry the big sacks into the hotel kitchen. The corruption also continues in the neighborhoods and countryside, where soldiers flagrantly steal. Atiqullah Mohmand, the local program director for the United Nations refugee agency, said he kept his personal car several provinces away, in Logar, because it would not last here. "If I came into the city with it, I would have to watch the armed men get in and drive it away," he said. Mr. Mohmand has enough problems already: a band of local soldiers has moved into the United Nations compound, living like bored and listless squatters among the relief agency's staff. The guerrillas also try to sell access to news. In one case late last month, a commander at Tora Bora sent notice to network television crews that they could interview wounded prisoners, if only they would pay $5,000. "It seems to be an increasing problem," said Ned Colt, a correspondent for NBC News, which declined the offer on ethical grounds. "To do much in this area, the soldiers want you to pay." NBC News left the province today. In another case last week, a group of guerrillas on the road to the ridgeline near Tora Bora demanded $1,000 to let vehicles pass. "You've got these mujahedeen on the roads around here using their power and guns to demand money or denying you access to information," said Jacob Sutton, 47, an Associated Press television cameraman who politely declined to pay the toll and turned his truck around. "I personally resent this blatant corruption, and I can't help thinking this is an eye-opener for how this country has been run in the past. And it does not bode well for the future." The examples go on and on. One CNN crew member left his tent at Tora Bora and returned to find an Eastern Shura soldier wearing his leather jacket. In another, a photographer for The New York Times had two digital camera disks stolen by soldiers, one of whom later made the rounds in the photographer's hotel, offering to sell them back for $500 each, an offer that was declined each time. Tensions have escalated as journalists have departed, in disgust or for other assignments, shrinking the supply of fresh dollars and making each Westerner an even richer target for shakedowns and threats. The scene today as a CNN team left for Pakistan was particularly menacing. As the crew packed its gear, the hotel management summoned a group of about 50 armed soldiers, who gathered outside the door or took posts on the steps. Then the hotel manager began to list his demands before the team could exit: in addition to paying the hotel bill, plus one extra night for each guest, CNN would have to leave behind a color television, a refrigerator, a satellite dish and an encoder. Ingrid Formanek, the CNN producer, negotiated with the manager for more than hour, and was finally allowed to leave for the price of the extra night and the television set. No stranger to the peculiarities of corporate accounting in a war zone, she managed to extract a signed receipt from the manager that even included a $220 charge for "pure extortion." She was furious. "It's thuggery," she said. "It's everyone for themselves and God against all." The thuggery had not yet ended. CNN had left behind two large boxes of dried and canned food for the team of Afghans who had assisted their news gathering in the mountains. As the Afghans tried to leave with their reward, Eastern Shura soldiers stole that, too. _____________________________ Copyright � 2002 Yahoo! Inc., and The New York Times Company. All rights reserved http://www.yahoo.com http://www.nytimes.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send FREE video emails in Yahoo! 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