As Taliban nears Kabul, shadow gov't takes hold

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(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-12-28 15:44

WARDAK PROVINCE – Two months ago, Mohammad Anwar recalls, the Taliban paraded accused thieves through his village, tarred their faces with oil and threw them in jail.

The public punishment was a clear sign to villagers that the Taliban are now in charge. And the province they took over lies just 30 miles from the Afghan capital of Kabul, right on the main highway.

This June 26, 2008 file frame grab from television footage reportedly shows Afghan militants holding weapons next to the burning wreckage of a vehicle in Wardak province, Afghanistan. Over the past year in Wardak province alone, Taliban fighters have taken over district centers, set up checkpoints on rural highways and captured Afghan soldiers. [Agencies]

The Taliban has long operated its own shadow government in the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan, but its power is now spreading north to the doorstep of Kabul, according said a dozen government officials, analysts, Taliban commanders and Afghan villagers. More than seven years after the US-led invasion, the Islamic militia is attempting — at least in name — to reconstitute the government by which it ruled Afghanistan in the late 1990s.

Over the past year in Wardak province alone, Taliban fighters have taken over district centers, set up checkpoints on rural highways and captured Afghan soldiers. The Taliban in Wardak has its own governor and military chief, its own pseudo-court system and its own religious leaders who act as judges. Bands of armed militants in beat-up trucks cruise the countryside, dispensing their own justice against accused spies and thieves.

"After night falls, no police drive through here," the 20-year-old Anwar said, urging an AP journalist to return to Kabul before the militants drove into view.

Two miles down the road, a policeman named Fawad manned a checkpoint, wearing the traditional shalwar kameez robe so he could pretend to be a simple villager in case of a Taliban attack.

"There are more and more Taliban this year," said Fawad, who like many Afghans goes by only one name. "The people of the villages are not going to the government courts. The Taliban are warning them that no one can go there."

In a growing number of regions, insurgents have put in place:

• Militant commanders who serve as self-described governors and police or military chiefs of provinces.

• A 10 percent "tax" — a forced payment at gunpoint, Western officials say — on rich families, or donations by poorer families of food and shelter for fighters.

• A military draft that forces fighting-age males to join the Taliban for months-long rotations.

• A parallel judicial system run by religious scholars who impose such punishments as tarring, public humiliation and the chopping off hands.

• The closing of Afghan schools or the forcing of schools to replace science with more religious study.

• Manned Taliban or militant checkpoints to demand highway taxes and search vehicles for government employees or foreigners.

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