A Tolerant Taliban in Kunduz Province Collaborates with U.S.A.I.D.

Finally, after many months, I finished reading Ann Jones' Kabul in Winter (2006). The book is terrific, a first-person account of Jones' experience working for a women's rights NGO in Kabul in the first years after the U.S. toppled the Taliban; she uses her own encounters as a device to unwind the history of Afghanistan. 

The takeaway from Jones' book is the U.S.-led international development effort that followed the defeat of the Taliban was corrupt from the very beginning, never sincerely committed to rebuilding a country torn apart for decades by foreign-supported conflict and that by 2005 had lost the hearts and minds of Afghans.

What took me so long to finish Kabul in Winter is just the basic difficulty of reading books when you work a full-time job requiring a long daily commute. I could read many more books if I stopped reading the newspaper on the train and took a book with me to read instead. But since I choose to try to keep up with what is being reported in the "newspaper of record," this means that with the arrival of regular season football in September I only have Saturday to read in an unimpeded fashion.

As I see it the worker running the normal 9-to-5, Monday-thru-Friday rat race deals with a two-day week: one long long-day of 120 hours and one short long-day of 48 hours. The long long-day is all about routines and basic survival of the work week; free time is doled out in 15-minute increments. The short long-day of the weekend, for me at least, is about exercising and watching the NFL on Sunday, leaving several hours on Saturday when I can read what I wish.

Anyhow, there is another informative story this morning by the Gray Lady's Azam Ahmed, "Taliban Are Rising Again in Afghanistan’s North." The Taliban are now not only a dominant presence in the south and east of Afghanistan but the north as well where they are actually governing in several sections of Kunduz Province. What is noteworthy about this is that the Taliban are governing in a less totalitarian fashion; they are even allowing some girls' schools to stay open:

Leading the charge for the Taliban is Mullah Abdul Salam, a native of Kunduz Province who was the insurgents’ shadow governor before his arrest by the Pakistani authorities in 2010, officials said. He was set free in a negotiated prisoner release between the Afghan High Peace Council and the Pakistani government in 2013. 

Under his leadership this summer, it appears the insurgents have been trying new tactics, showing a flexibility in governing rather than relying on fear, according to interviews with more than two dozen locals and officials across the province. 

Residents and an aid official said that local commanders had been allowing schools to stay open and even distributing pens and notebooks — including at girls’ schools, which were often targets for violence under the Taliban’s rule in the 1990s. They said the insurgents had even given their blessing to international development projects in some areas, which would once have been unthinkable. 

“They have a parallel system to the government, one that approves the development projects,” said a stabilization adviser for a U.S.A.I.D. contractor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he works in Taliban areas. “We can’t do anything without the Taliban approval.” 

Some residents said that Taliban justice had already proved more attractive than that offered by the government. 

“Their justice is quick, and they do what they say,” said Mohammad Nazar, a local elder who works for the government community development council in Chahar Dara.

If U.S.A.I.D. is collaborating with a newly tolerant Taliban, this strikes me as another enormous barrier to the success of the Ghani administration in Kabul.