The US is heading on a Vietnam-like historical defeat in Afghanistan.  The American troops are bitten hard in this country, and it shows no oomph left to fight the current surge of guerrilla warfare.  Battlefield testimonies suggest that the American army is much incompetent and yellow-belly in comparison to the Russians.  The only weapon left for the US now are barbaric air-assaults, stealthy attacks and encouraging criminal war lords to kill on its behalf.

The nominal government in Kabul the US installed in 2001 is being run by warlords, mainly from the Northern Alliance.  Criminality is just like an ideology that helped Kabul regime to bind together.  One of such criminals was General Daud Daud, who was murdered by the Taliban recently.  News about his criminal past and his involvement in the Afghan narcotic industry, burglary, murder, rape, pedophilia and kidnapping are resurfacing in the Canadian media.

Mr Graeme Smith, a war reporter from the Canadian Globe and Mail said recently that while he was reporting in Afghanistan saw written evidence of General Daud Daud’s running a narcotic syndicate in Northern Afghanistan.   Mr Smith adds that he was chased by General Daud in Kandahar for publishing reports suggesting General Daud’s major role in drug.  Then he went back to Canada to safety.  After Daud’s murder now Mr Smith feels safe to return to Afghanistan. Here is one of his recent reports.

TAAND

Wedded to the warlords

GRAEME SMITH

 

Globe and Mail: Smoke billows above coils of razor wire after an earth-shaking explosion kills one of Afghanistan’s most powerful generals. The next day, a young officer with a neatly trimmed beard accepts a new job during a brief ceremony in the wood-panelled office of a southern governor.

 

A strongman dies and another rises. The bloody politics of Afghanistan travelled full circle with the death of General Daud Daud in the north and the promotion of Brigadier-General Abdul Razik in the south. The fall of one mirrored the rise of the other, marking the loss of an older generation of warlords and the birth of a new class of often brutal allies to whom NATO intends to start transferring power this summer.

 

The success of that transition depends on characters who might be too unpleasant to deal with under other circumstances. Having failed to establish a working government in many parts of Afghanistan, NATO is increasingly dependent on so-called strongmen, commanders whose power comes not only from their affiliation with Kabul but from militias, tribes and, often, the narcotics trade.

 

The two generals, Daud and Razik, exemplify that strategy. Though from different ethnic groups – Gen. Daud was a northern Tajik while Gen. Razik is a southern Pashtun – much united them. Each gained fearsome authority in his respective territory. Both have been accused of – and denied – drug dealing and heavy-handed tactics. Staunch enemies of the Taliban, both were embraced by the U.S. military and intelligence agencies.

 

When an insurgent’s bomb killed Gen. Daud inside a high-security compound on May 28, his supporters protested in the streets and analysts described his death as a blow to the stability of northern Afghanistan.

 

The next day, when Gen. Razik was named acting police chief for Kandahar province while retaining his old job as the head of the border police in the Spin Boldak district, many welcomed his arrival as a sign that somebody was finally going to take vigorous action to curb the rising insurgency.

 

The cycle of death and promotion suggests a sort of continuity, analysts say. Western-backed strongmen will continue to be set against the Taliban, and the war will continue its trajectory of worsening violence.

 

For those hoping to end the conflict with a negotiated settlement, Gen. Razik’s appointment was discouraging. In his early 30s, wiry and energetic, he is precisely the opposite of an appeasing figure. A member of the governor’s staff in Kandahar once referred to him as an “attack dog” for the government, dispatched for the toughest assignments. When the governor felt himself losing control of Panjwai district in 2006, he sent Gen. Razik’s men on a sweep that left bodies rotting on the main road.

 

He has boasted that he prefers to avoid taking prisoners. Those captured alive who have survived detention in Spin Boldak have complained of grave mistreatment. Abdul Ghafar, a 25-year-old farmer, said he was returning home in 2006 when police halted his bus. They singled him out among the passengers and threw him into an unofficial dungeon in Spin Boldak, where he claimed to have been strung up by his ankles and suspended upside-down for long periods.

 

Gen. Razik could not be reached for comment on the prisoner’s allegation. The Afghan government denies torturing prisoners, and argues that Taliban suspects cannot be trusted to give honest accounts of their time in custody.

 

Gen. Daud enjoyed status in his home province of Takhar. Gen. Daud was among the Northern Alliance figures absorbed into the new government after 2001, partly in an attempt to disarm them. He gave up his tanks and many heavy weapons, but Western experts estimated that he retained the ability to muster a private army of 4,000 to 6,000 men on short notice.

 

A Globe and Mail investigation in 2009 uncovered documents linking Gen. Daud with narcotics smuggling, an allegation he vigorously denied. It was one of several reports linking him with the drug trade, none of which appeared to harm his standing with the international community.

 

The foreigners’ tolerance for such flawed allies has been a recurring source of frustration for some observers.

 

“Daud and Razik are exactly the types of guys you want on your side in a bar fight but eventually you have to raise the level of dialogue to something more productive and sustainable over the longer term,” said a veteran United Nations consultant. “It’s the short-term tactical plan that also doubles as the long-term strategy, since it is easier to work with individual strongmen than it is to build up a more professional institution and players.”

 

Michael Semple, a fellow at Harvard University’s Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy with more than two decades of experience in Afghanistan, said it’s important to distinguish between figures such as Gen. Daud, whose Northern Alliance comrades already had significant power before 2001, and individuals such as Gen. Razik, whose success was born under the new government.

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