The Taliban Come to Mazar

Last month, NATO forces ceded this northern city to the Afghan army, calling it safe territory. But insurgent forces are on the doorstep.

BY ANNA BADKHEN | AUGUST 3, 2011



Jaweed, right, and his brothers, Farhad, middle, and Favat, left, tend the stall their father opened in Mazar-e-Sharif 10 years ago. Their father was killed in a bombing on July 20.


MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan — The provincial police spokesman called the bombing "unplanned."

As though the bomb had strapped itself to the back of a bicycle last month and then went off on its own volition in Dasht-e-Shor, a neighborhood of dusty walled compounds in working-class, northern Mazar-e-Sharif. As though this palliates the deaths of the man and three boys who were killed when the explosion ripped through an unpaved intersection.

As though there is anything left to be gained from another year of magical thinking as the Taliban methodically expand their reach in northern Afghanistan.

Since last summer the Taliban have been rapidly gaining control of Balkh province, which until then had been one of the safest regions in the country. Village by drought-stricken village they advanced, virtually undeterred, from the peripheries toward the provincial capital, where the shimmering turquoise tiles of the 15th-century Blue Mosque quiver in diffraction beneath an undulating, sinister billow of smog. Village by village, my friends and hosts told me of masked motorcyclists who arrived at night, summoned the elders, and announced their dominion over the withering cornfields, the parched orchards, the people fatigued by a lifetime of violence that torments their land.

Several days before I last left Balkh, in June, the Taliban claimed sovereignty over villages just a few miles outside of Mazar-e-Sharif.

Last month, initiating a gradual transition that, according to the Obama administration's plans, should somehow wind down America's war in Afghanistan by 2014, NATO troops transferred responsibility over security of Mazar-e-Sharif and six other provinces and cities to Afghan forces. NATO officials have picked Mazar-e-Sharif because they consider it safe.

* * *

I returned to the city last weekend. My bus from Kabul, the 2:30 to the Blue Mosque, crept through the granite scallop of the gorge at Balkh's southeastern border, zigzagged past the ancient pomegranate orchards of Kholm, and wheeled out onto the alkaline Khorasan plains. Cauterized desert unscrolled before us and curved toward the northern horizon. Hot air throbbed under the merciless summer sun.

I called my friends.

"The situation is not good," said Mohammad Alemi, one of the country's leading psychiatrists who runs a psychiatric hospital in Mazar-e-Sharif, immediately after we exchanged the mandatory long, synchronic string of polite Farsi greetings. "But we have to live here."

"Security is getting bad," said Amanullah, a hunter in Oqa, a village about 35 miles north of the city. "There are lots of Taliban."

"It is not safe as it was before," said Qaqa Satar, who works as my driver, as I climbed into his beat-up Toyota Corolla. "Even in Mazar-e-Sharif things are bad."

Shir Jan Durani, the provincial police spokesman, said the transition has gone "well." When I asked about the bicycle bombing in Dasht-e-Shor, which took place on July 20, three days before Afghan officials took over security from German-led NATO troops stationed in the city, he replied:

"Things like this happen even in developed countries. There was an explosion in Norway recently, too."

Anna Badkhen

 

Anna Badkhen is the author of Peace Meals and Waiting for the Taliban. She is writing a book about timelessness. Her reporting from Afghanistan is made possible by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

FLYINGONE

12:39 AM ET

August 4, 2011

hmm, recently, a New York

hmm, recently, a New York Times journalist (like this journalist) asked a fruit seller from Kabul what he thought about the violence? The journalist was selective and only mentioned the Taliban/ all over Afghans who are opposed the US occupation as the source of violence. The journalist in keeping with delusional bias, conveniently forgot to mention the thousands of Afghans killed by US airstrikes and night raids, as well as those who are tortured and killed by Kill Teams. Interesting.

Well, to cut the story short, the fruit seller said that the Afghans fight because they are against the foreign occupation of their country. This is no suprise as Afghan history is a testament to such resentment.

So the facts are is that the US presence is the cause for all the violence.

The US drone attacks are also as counterproductive.

This geopolitical war has been lost. Obama was desperately trying to force Afghans to accept permanent bases, and they will never accept this.

We need to understand that people resent our wars against their countries, and stop spinning propaganda which tries to support war against the Afghan people.

Obama was never interested in peace, and well it is clear why we have lost, and are on our way out.

http://blogs.rediff.com/mkbhadrakumar/2011/07/31/what-annoyed-obama-about-mullah-omar/

 

US ARMY VET

12:27 PM ET

August 4, 2011

Wrong answer

"So the facts are is that the US presence is the cause for all the violence."

You could not be more wrong. Before the US presence the Taliban killed all in their way. They are no longer having a free hand, so your statement could not be more wrong.

Kill Teams? What are you getting your information from, a video game? If you are going to cite facts, then show the support for your claims, otherwise you really don't know what you are talking about.

The truth is elusive in a combat area, I know because of personal experience, but to say the war is lost is to accept defeat when the record shows that in a battlefield confrontation the Taliban always have had to retreat due to superior US combat power. Every time there has been a fight between our forces and the Taliban, the US military wins. How we will lose this war is by listening to defeatist attitudes like yours and voluntarily withdrawals before the job is finished. First win the war and then keep the peace - that is how wars have been conducted since before Alexander the Great, and it is the only way to bring peace to Afghanistan and its people.

 

MARTA12

12:31 PM ET

August 4, 2011

Good article.

Good article. thanks!!!!

____________________________________
http://www.linguarde.com/de

 

JAYDEE001

1:50 PM ET

August 4, 2011

A failed endeavor -

The US mission in Afghanistan is already a failure if defeating the indigenous Taliban is the goal. I don't recall that it ever was the goal - the goal was to capture or kill OBL (done!) and to prevent al Qaeda from using the country as a base for future terrorist activities against the US and western allies. From last accounts, there are perhaps 100 al Qaeda operatives in the entire country. Al Qaeda now resides in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and other places. I rather doubt the Taliban will welcome them back in Afghanistan, given what it cost them before.

The Taliban - and most of the rest of the Afghanis simply want the US out of their country. We need to oblige them. Pipe dreams about achieving some miraculous 'victory' in Afghanistan and Pakistan and building a stable society in Afghanistan deny the reality that this is a country made up of primitive, tribal areas that has not had anything resembling civil society for over forty years. We don't have the time or the money to achieve such goals, especially given the recent budget depate in the US.

It is not a matter of lacking the will-power, but it is a matter of lacking the resources (manpower and financial) to continue to fight extended wars in distant lands that debiliate or defense forces and deplete our treasury. if our so-called leaders were rational - and not focused on the next election - they would realize that Osama bin Laden may be laughing from his watery grave over how we took the bait and did exactly what he intended - became engaged in a long-running military occupation of two third world states which would gain us little in terms of security and cost us dearly in terms of our young and our national pocketbook.

 

SHAAMYL77

2:03 AM ET

August 5, 2011

@ US Army Vet

Let us not forget that

AMERICA HAS WON ALL THE WARS ......BUT IN MEDIA!!!!!

 

WILLWISH

2:57 PM ET

August 5, 2011

Again...

The truth is elusive in a combat area, I know because of personal experience, but to say the war is lost is to accept defeat when the record shows that in a battlefield confrontation the Taliban always have had to retreat due to superior US combat power. Every time there has been a fight between our forces and the Taliban, the US military wins. Heck, if you ask me, I'd say let's leave this place alone with their ak47s, food, handmade jewelry, and all that other stuff and come back home. How we will lose this war is by listening to defeatist attitudes like yours and voluntarily withdrawals before the job is finished. First win the war and then keep the peace - that is how wars have been conducted since before Alexander the Great, and it is the only way to bring peace to Afghanistan and its people.

 

HELLEHOU503

3:07 PM ET

September 2, 2011

The Taliban Come to Mazar

Last month, NATO forces ceded this northern city to the Afghan army, calling it safe territory. But insurgent forces are on the doorstep. hmm, recently, a New York Times journalist (like this journalist) asked a fruit seller from Kabul what he thought about the violence? The journalist was selective and only mentioned the Taliban/ all over Afghans who are opposed the US occupation as the source of violence. The journalist in keeping with delusional bias, conveniently forgot to mention the thousands of Afghans killed by US airstrikes major depression You are absolutely correct Doctor. There needs to be a coordinated large scale operation with combined arms (infantry, artillery, armor, air support and the drones) in order to eliminate these people. They do not negotiate, they do not understand truce, and they operate outside the limits of our forces. This administration on the other hand seems to lack the resolve to mount such an operation. The.