Anticipating Afghanistan's other war

Rory Carroll, Guardian News Service, Islamabad

There are two wars in Afghanistan. The American-led campaign against Islamist guerrillas proceeds in the mountains and deserts bordering Pakistan, chasing up a rocket attack here, gunfire there. Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters have yet to show they can inflict serious damage.

News from the second war is not so good for the allies because there is not supposed to be a second war. Waged mostly in the north and east, it turns bloodier by the week. Several days ago more than 300 rockets rained into the town of Gardez, killing and wounding more than 100 civilians. Yesterday (Wednesday) shooting and shelling continued near the towns of Shulgara and Sare Pul where fighting has left 12 dead and wounded.

Despite the body count this second conflict receives less attention because it is an internal affair: rival Afghan warlords battling each other for territory and influence, without malice for the west. Usually the combatants swear loyalty to the Americans and offer to help hunt for the Islamists.

In fact the two conflicts threaten to spill into each other in a way harmful to the U.S. and British mission. The more mayhem the warlords spread, the more political and military conditions will improve for the guerrillas. Western diplomats in Kabul fret that it was factional fighting which paved the way for Taliban's rise in 1995.

Gardez is a case study in the dilemma facing the allies. A rickety town 120 miles south of Kabul, it had escaped unscathed from Washington's war on terror but in the space of four hours last weekend a rocket barrage tore into residential areas and hit the hospital. At least 25 people died.

The artillery belonged to Pacha Khan Zadran, a Pancho Villa lookalike who sports a dyed moustache and ammunition belt across a broad chest. He was appointed governor of Paktia province in January by Afghanistan's interim government but when his forces approached Gardez, the provincial capital, they were attacked and lost 40 men.

Some villages support Zadran but in Gardez he is regarded as a bandit and many inhabitants were happy that a rival warlord repulsed his forces. The interim government appointed another governor, Taj Mohammad Wardak, who was more acceptable to Gardez.

Zadran has spent the past four months preparing an assault. Interviewed by the Guardian some weeks ago at his base, he promised to regain his job and punish the usurpers. Wardak, the governor, says: "He has a terrible reputation, a lot of blood on his hands even before all this business." After the rocketing he gave Zadran 10 days to end the stand-off or be hanged.

American forces based on a hill outside the town have urged Zadran to back off, a US military spokesman said, but they avoided close involvement since their priority was to fight Islamist guerrillas, not guarantee security. It was up to the interim government to resolve the problem.

That makes partial sense. Warlord clashes in Afghanistan tend to be within, not between, ethnic groups, with the conflict dynamics buried in tribal and personal issues all but impenetrable to outsiders. In Gardez for instance the warring parties are all Pashtun, the country's largest ethnic group.

It suits the Tajiks who dominate the government in Kabul to let Pashtuns fight in the run-up to next month's loya jirga, a traditional assembly, because that way the more united Tajiks stand a better chance of retaining power.

Expecting the government to resolve the fighting, therefore, is deluded, especially since Zadran is leader of a powerful Pashtun tribe and brother of the minister for tribal affairs. Even if Kabul did want to rein him in, the national army (currently 600 hastily trained men) is years away from effectiveness.

The American allergy to nation building, combined with European reluctance to risk soldiers and spend money, means U.N. calls for peacekeepers to be deployed outside Kabul will go unheeded.

The Americans do have leverage over Zadran. Recognizing his control over the countryside, they have plied him with money and satellite phones and trained 400 of his men to bolster the hunt for al-Qaeda, despite evidence that he called in air strikes against rivals falsely identified as guerrillas.

They used some of his men to attack rebels dug into the cave complex at Shah-i-Kot, during Operation Anaconda in March, figuring their local knowledge was invaluable, and Royal Marines from the U.K. deployed near the Pakistan border have been guided by Zadran's commanders.

Last month Wardak said the Americans had stopped supporting Zadran. He looked crestfallen when told that a few hours earlier I had seen one of the warlord's English-speaking brothers joking with Americans in a Humvee. While rival warlords are hurling rockets it is not safe to go hunting guerrillas and it is bad luck for the allies that the heaviest fighting is taking place in areas where the guerrillas are thought to be hiding.

A more serious consequence is ebbing popular support for the allied campaign. The Taliban gave the people of Gardez peace after two decades of war. Their successors have wound the clock back to the era of civil war and all the allied soldiers do is watch from their hilltop base.

Noor Ahmed, whose brother died in Saturday's rocket attack, was furious. "The Americans talk about the Taliban and al-Qaeda. What is al-Qaeda to me? This is my home, my children, my land and it is all in danger because of these fighters who are with the Americans."

Wardak was ominous: "People's patience with everyone is running out, with the government, with the Americans. They are unhappy with all of us. If this keeps happening there will be something against the Americans."

As the warlords come to resemble the mujahidin who squabbled and fought, so the allies, in local eyes, will come to resemble those other outsiders who stoked mayhem, the Russians.