Union Tribune September 22, 2002  CROSSROADS IN THE SAND U.S. forces persist in seeking al-Qaeda, but push point of diminishing returns By Marcus Stern  COPLEY NEWS SERVICE  KHUAZA KHEL, Afghanistan – Shar Gul's mother shook him awake one midsummer night saying men with Kalashnikov rifles, tanks and rocket launchers had come in the darkness and taken up positions on the hill overlooking the village. Afghan fighters, most of them arriving in pickups and numbering in the hundreds, circled the village and attacked the home of a religious leader, Mullah Noor Muhammad. Muhammad escaped, according to Gul, a farmer who grows corn and other vegetables. But two villagers were killed and another was injured. Hours after the gunmen left, as the sun was rising, four jet fighters streaked over the village. They dropped two bombs that missed their target but injured 14-year-old Inam Ullah as he was taking his cattle out to graze. U.S. military advisers watched the ground action, according to Gul, who added that the attacking Afghan gunmen said they had come for Muhammad because he was a Taliban commander. Gul insisted Muhammad was not a Talib, but had been the target of a smear campaign by a local rival. "He was innocent," Gul said. "He was a good man and people here liked him. The attack should not have taken place. Innocent people were killed." It's virtually impossible to determine at this point whether Muhammad, who remains in hiding, was a Taliban commander or a local religious leader. Nonetheless, the incident two months ago illustrates the crucial crossroads U.S. forces face as they press their search for al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters in eastern Afghanistan – not far from where the battle of Tora Bora took place – in villages like Khuaza Khel. It's widely accepted here as elsewhere that the allied forces thoroughly routed the Taliban and al-Qaeda at Tora Bora, leaving a few scattered remnants. While most agree that the search for those remnants should continue, they warn that the effort is fast approaching a point of diminishing returns. Support for the United States remains high among Afghans, but it is eroding with each fruitless sweep that results in injury, humiliation or inconvenience to villagers. Observers are concerned that the United States risks moving in the wrong direction on three crucial fronts by alienating villagers, aggravating ethnic tensions and empowering rather than disarming regional warlords. "What the Americans should have done right away is disarm everyone," said Abdul Qadir Fazali, head of Nangarhar Islamic University in Jalalabad. "It could have been done then. It will be very difficult now." What has happened instead, he said, is that regional warlords, many of whom have assumed official security positions like police chief, are seizing weapons to bolster their own arsenals. He said those guns should be turned over to Afghanistan's new army. But as the attack on Khuaza Khel illustrates, the United States is relying on warlords for help going after Taliban and al-Qaeda forces. To make matters worse, the sweeps are occurring primarily in Pashtun areas, exacerbating a feeling among the majority Pashtun that the United States has sided with the country's ethnic minorities. Although President Hamid Karzai is a Pashtun, many of the most sensitive government posts are filled with Persian-speaking minorities. "When the Americans and international forces arrived, I thought the ethnic tensions would subside, but instead they increased," Fazali said. Khan Afzal, 35, sat on a small restaurant porch eating deep-fried carp and looking out over the lake near the city's hydroelectric plant. He recalled the five years between the time the Soviets ended their failed decadelong occupation of Afghanistan in 1989 and the Taliban's conquest. During that period, Afzal said, he was shot twice by gunmen working for former commanders in the anti-Soviet mujahideen. Once in control, they threw up checkpoints that strangled commerce, and many systematically looted and plundered the communities they controlled. Afzal, who trucks produce between Jalalabad and Kabul, showed a large, pulpy scar on one leg that he said was the result of one of the shootings. It occurred at a checkpoint, he said, when he had been too slow in showing the gunmen what was in his truck. Now the former commanders are back in charge and Afzal isn't pleased. "These are the same people," he said. "They are doing the same thing. If the Americans don't disarm these guys, even the Americans won't be safe." Some people consider Haji Ajab Shah to be a warlord. Sitting in his office at the Jalalabad police station, he admitted that many former mujahideen commanders, as they prefer to be called, had committed excesses during the years they were in control between the Soviet occupation and the Taliban. But they are determined not to repeat their mistakes. "We did not treat people the way we should have back then," he said. "Now we are trying to treat everyone right. Our elders have told us we must treat people right." Another former mujahideen commander, Haji Ghalib, is the police chief in the Shinwar District, east of Jalalabad. He said no bad commanders had returned from Pakistan after the Taliban was vanquished, "just the good ones, like me." Ghalib has seized about 300 weapons from residents of his district and passed them out to his police officers, he said, adding that they include anti-aircraft guns, heavy machine guns, mortars and Kalashnikov rifles. "The people want these weapons collected," he said. Residents say he has thrown up checkpoints where armed men demand payments from passing vehicles. The checkpoints clearly are there, but vehicles with foreign passengers are waved through without stopping so it is difficult to confirm. Ghalib denied he imposes road taxes and insisted that no looting or plundering is occurring. But he added that his police force receives no public funding. His men, he said, get fed. But they aren't paid and have no uniforms. "These are my people," he said of the residents of Shinwar District. "It's difficult, but it's my duty." In marked contrast to others, Ghalib said he believes the work of the U.S. military is done. As far as he's concerned, it's time for the foreign soldiers to leave. "In our area, we don't need them anymore," he said. "We have peace and we can handle any problems we have." Not far from Ghalib's crumbling mud compound, tribal elder Haji Taj Muhammad described his frustrations trying to mediate villagers' complaints that the authorities had looted and stolen and were acting heavy-handedly. "Afghanistan cannot be reconstructed until there is peace," he said. "And that won't happen until the guns are removed from the warlords. "If the United States is sincere, it will do that," Taj Muhammad said. "Nobody else can." Previous stories from this series are available online at SignOnSanDiego, the Union-Tribune's Web site, at www.uniontrib.com.