Afghan Governor Strains To Shed Warlord Image
Gul Agha's Rule in Kandahar Dismays Some in Kabul
By April Witt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 15, 2003
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Gul Agha Shirzai, a famed mujaheddin commander turned provincial governor, is trying to recast himself as less of a warlord.
Gul Agha, who captured the Kandahar airport from Taliban and al Qaeda fighters in late 2001, battling shoulder to shoulder with U.S. Special Forces, was appointed governor with U.S. backing of one of Afghanistan's most dangerous provinces.
But now Gul Agha is on a short list of provincial governors who some key players in President Hamid Karzai's administration would like to remove, two high-ranking officials said last week.
"The reason they want to replace him is because he is still -- with all his rather delicate qualities -- considered a warlord," said Yousef Pashtun, the Afghan minister for housing and urban reconstruction. "The general population doesn't want to tolerate warlords anymore.
"He does not know what are the priorities," said Pashtun, a Kandahar native and member of the governor's tribe, who described himself as one of Gul Agha's closest friends in the central government. "On independence day in Kabul, the celebration lasted six or seven hours. In Kandahar, it lasted several days. He had a big celebration with hundreds of musicians.
"I tell him: Give the people some good roads and safe water. He doesn't listen," he said.
"He is trying to conform to the rule of law," Pashtun added, smiling. "He's not 100 percent successful. The rule of law is supposed to be there. But sometimes he, himself, breaks it."
During his tenure in office, Gul Agha , his family and his tribe have benefited visibly from U.S. largess -- while rival tribal leaders seethe and life for Kandahar's poor remains unrelentingly hardscrabble.
A strongman, Gul Agha was supposed to be the go-to guy to help the U.S.-led military coalition accomplish its top priority in Kandahar: bringing peace and security to former Taliban leader Mohammad Omar's home town, the spiritual homeland of the Taliban regime.
Continuing Threats
But that approach has failed and the evidence mounts with each new Taliban insurgence in the region. A Western aid worker with the International Committee of the Red Cross was killed in the province recently. Gul Agha's soldiers and U.S. forces have battled Taliban fighters to the north and south of Kandahar in recent days. Schools are being burned in the night. Western aid workers are fleeing.
"The reason Kandahar hasn't been overrun by terrorists is because of the presence of the American forces there," said Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali. "The only way out is good government, winning the trust of the people. Otherwise, the security situation will continue to deteriorate."
Terrorism isn't the only threat to the peace in this stark desert province on Afghanistan's southern border with Pakistan. Gul Agha has proved to be a poor administrator who exacerbates tribal tensions. He has spent lavishly on large parties and maintaining a muscular private militia loyal to him and helpful to the U.S. forces at a fortified base at the Kandahar airport.
At the same time, he is locked in a dangerous dispute with Kandahar's police chief, who said the governor has refused to pay the salaries of hundreds of soldiers loyal to the central government in Kabul. The governor's militia had a shootout on the street with police a few months ago, and at least two people were killed. The leader of a local women's group, who runs a free medical clinic for the poor, backed the police chief and promised to put 2,000 women on the streets to confront the governor's militia.
"His men smoke the best cigarettes while the rest of the people can't find a used butt to smoke," said Gen. Mohammad Akram Khakrizwal, head of provincial security and an elder of one of the largest tribes in Afghanistan, the Alokozai.
"I told those Americans if you don't watch out, all the tribes will rise to fight him, and maybe we will deliver him back to the airport where he can be a guest of the United States," he said.
Karzai has instructed provinces to send their customs revenue to the central government, but Gul Agha hasn't sent a single afghani. "We are not sending money to them, and they are not sending money to us," said the governor's spokesman, Khalid Pashtoon. "We are not abusing our income, we are spending it back on local construction."
Sitting in a paneled office slurping tea through missing teeth, Gul Agha said he is spending the province's substantial revenue on rebuilding. He has 126 construction projects in the works, none less than $100,000, including an amusement park for children, he said.
Civic leaders say they want accountability. "Nobody knows how much money we collect from revenue here, that's a mystery," said Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president's younger brother, who lives in Kandahar and supports an organization trying to build democracy in the province using traditional tribal structures.
"There is a distance growing between the government and the people," said Ahmed Karzai, who characterized the provincial government as ineffectual. "When there is a problem between the people, they can't take care of that, much less the Taliban."
In its efforts to combat terrorism, the U.S. military has worked so closely with Gul Agha that one of his brothers maintains a compound on the U.S. base, where he and his militiamen have been hired to provide outer-rim security. A relative of the governor also has a contract to sell gravel to the U.S. forces, according to Pashtun, the minister for housing and urban reconstruction, who said he was familiar with negotiations for the deal.
'Microcosm of What Has Gone Wrong'
Sarah Chayes, field director of the Kandahar-based Afghans for Civil Society, said the governor's family company has made it difficult for her group to get stone from public lands to rebuild homes leveled by U.S. bombing. "Our tractors were held up at gunpoint," Chayes said. "Gul Agha told me, 'We're making a cement factory. So my advice to you is make your foundation out of brick with cement.' I took that to mean: Buy my cement and give me money."
To Chayes, the experience was a "microcosm of what has gone wrong in much of Afghanistan since the demise of the Taliban. It's the usurpation of power, and all the financial trappings that go with power, by warlords. They reinvest that power to consolidate their positions rather than investing it in the commonweal."
Some of Gul Agha's friends and foes say the governor has bragged that the United States has paid him millions. Gul Agha denied that.
Pashtun said Gul Agha is participating in a covert U.S. military and intelligence program to buy back antiaircraft Stinger missiles that the CIA widely distributed to Afghanistan's anti-Soviet mujaheddin in the mid-1980s. Those Stingers now pose a threat to coalition forces in Afghanistan, and the United States is willing to pay dearly to get them out of circulation.
"He has confiscated Taliban Stingers and sold them," Pashtun said of the governor. "He is collecting the Stingers. He gives them to the Americans, and the Americans pay him money. He told me something like 8 or 9 million dollars in the last year."
"He's hunting them everywhere," Pashtun said. "I don't think he can find as many as he used to."
Questions for U.S.
Some in Kabul and Kandahar wonder why the U.S. government, which says it wants to help build a strong central government in Afghanistan, is allied with warlord-governors whose fiscal policies undermine the Karzai administration.
" I have told U.S. officials that in many cases their short-term military goals might undermine their long-term political priorities," said Jalali, the interior minister.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the special U.S. envoy, said Friday that the U.S. military has had to work with regional warlords "to solve practical problems." Once the central government and its institutions, such as the Afghan national army, are stronger, there will "be an adjustment to our approach."
Recently, Gul Agha has appeared to be running for reelection -- American style. He no longer blows his nose on the tail of his turban in front of visitors. He squeezes into navy suits for public appearances. He speaks of women's rights and encourages camera crews to film him with female U.S. soldiers to show his support for working women. In radio speeches, he has denounced the Taliban and ordered them to leave the region within 10 days.
"There is a cynical take on this: He is going to lash himself to the Americans as much as possible," one Western observer in Kandahar said. "The Taliban is after him. He's too closely associated with the coalition to run on a trash-the-coalition platform: What have they done for us?"
On a Kandahar street corner one recent afternoon, vendors and shoppers said they no longer believe anyone intends to ease their hard lives. "We have so many problems in Kandahar," said Bahawedin, 30, a car dealer. "We don't have drinking water. The roads are broken. Nobody has helped us. We haven't seen anything here from the Americans. We are not happy. The Taliban are trying to get the power again. Some people are supporting them."
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