‘The Taliban Are Closing In’

Chris Sands, Foreign Correspondent
Last Updated: February 02. 2009 9:30AM UAE
February 2. 2009 5:30AM GMT
Courtesy Of The National (Abu Dhabi Media Company)

KABUL// As provinces across southern Afghanistan began to fall into the hands of the Taliban, Abdul Jabbar Naeemi realised that sooner or later the unrest would hit closer to home.

“The thing was coming from that part of the country with a very powerful wind. We stopped it for almost two years, from the end of 2006 and the whole of 2007,” he said.

“In 2008 [the situation was] a little bit disturbed, now I don’t know what’s happened.”
Mr Naeemi is the former governor of Maidan Wardak, a province bordering Kabul that is among the most dangerous areas in the country. It is a place that has come to symbolise the strength of the insurgency, with Afghans in the nation’s capital quick to point out that the Taliban are only a few kilometres away.

The trouble has not developed overnight, though. While the world is finally waking up to the seriousness of events, people here have been watching the bloodshed edge nearer for quite some time.

Speaking in English, Mr Naeemi, 41, said insecurity had spread gradually throughout the south.

First the rebels gained a foothold in one province, then another and another, until the momentum was finally with them.

“Just think. Helmand, then Uruzgan, Farah, Kandahar, Zabul, Ghazni. I remember in 2007 one of the closest border districts of Ghazni fell to the enemy at around 4 o’clock. The next morning, at around 10 o’clock, I was in my district close to that area, meeting 400 or 500 people and trying to offer support that this place would not be affected.

“But unfortunately, at the time when I was visiting, there were only seven police responsible for looking after my district,” he said. “In 2007 that happened, so for how long could we keep that situation peaceful?”

Having been Hamid Karzai’s election campaign manager for Afghan refugees in Pakistan, Mr Naeemi was appointed governor of Maidan Wardak in March 2005.
Soon afterwards, during an interview at his office in the provincial capital, he warned that young men disillusioned with the occupation were starting to join the resistance.
Today, at home in Kabul, he is adamant that security was not high on his agenda then. Instead, his priorities included tackling poppy cultivation, improving human rights and establishing some kind of tribal unity.

“Security was a problem, but not the biggest issue. At that time, we would hear some names [banded around] but it was criminals, nothing to do with the Taliban or Hizb-e-Islami. Even if they were using those names, they were always criminals.” No foreign soldiers were stationed permanently in Maidan Wardak then. An American provincial reconstruction team was based in neighbouring Ghazni and occasionally its representatives would make the short journey north.

Day-to-day security, however, was in the hands of men who remain distrusted even now. “The big problem for us at that time was our own police. There were no trained police and, unfortunately, some people were complaining a lot about them,” Mr Naeemi said.

“Some police were assigned to search houses for criminals, but they were disturbing honest people and even stealing jewellery from the women, which gave a bad name to our culture and our government. In the whole system, if anybody is involved with this kind of activity then the government is marked.”

Maidan Wardak is a mountainous area that has borders with five other provinces. For the future of Kabul’s own security it is, said Mr Naeemi, one of the three “most important” provinces in Afghanistan.

When the Taliban’s influence had clearly started to grow there, he claims to have asked for more soldiers and weapons.

He was turned down by the central government because all governors were making the same demands.

US forces finally established a small permanent presence in Maidan Wardak during mid-2007 and it is set to become a key battleground in the US surge planned for this year. Already, reinforcements have arrived in the area.
“If the coalition troops are coming with a strategy, then yes, it probably will become a peaceful place. But if they are coming without a strategy things will probably be worse,” Mr Naeemi said.

Mr Naeemi left his post in May 2008 having survived a number of assassination attempts. He seems reluctant to take responsibility for what has happened in Maidan Wardak, saying his main mistake was failing to engage with religious scholars and younger members of the local population.

His future and that of his country are both uncertain. He describes 15 or 16 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces as being “in trouble” and does not know if, or when, he will return to politics.

Asked what can be done to stop the bloodshed spreading, he said: “The situation is getting worse and worse. The sooner we understand each other, talk to each other and forget our differences [the better]. We are all Afghans, we are all living in Afghanistan and we have to think about our people and our country.”

csands@thenational.ae