American officers claim elders are unwilling or unable to stand up to the Taliban, writes Ben Farmerin Zhari
AMERICAN soldiers who have this autumn cleared Taliban fighters from their heartland are finding it more difficult to court a suspicious and fearful population to prevent the insurgents’ return.
Elders and village leaders in the cleared district of Zhari in Kandahar province are either unwilling or unable to stand up to the Taliban, American officers complain.
Operation Dragon Strike, the set-piece offensive of the year, has pushed thousands of US and Afghan troops into the valleys where the Taliban movement arose, west of Kandahar city.
American generals under pressure to reassure politicians and a public weary of a war entering its 10th year describe the operation as a Taliban rout.
In a repeat of previous operations, the rebels faced overwhelming force and largely fled south into the Reg desert or stashed their AK-47s and grenade launchers to melt away.
In the jargon of counter-insurgency doctrine, soldiers of the American 101st airborne division have moved from the clear phase to the hold phase of their mission.
Whether the Taliban will re-infiltrate, as in previous offensives such as February’s operation in Marjah, now depends on efforts to end the marginalisation, poverty and neglect that allowed the insurgency to thrive.
"If you don't get straight from the security piece to the governance piece, you will lose the ship," Lt Col Johnny Davis, commander of the first battalion, 502nd Infantry, told The Irish Times. "You have got to get straight on that and that's what we are doing."
A month after Operation Dragon Strike began, Taliban attacks have fallen by two-thirds and hundreds of Afghan workers now queue daily for paid labour with the Americans.
Taliban resistance is limited to occasional pot shots and scores of homemade landmines planted in paths, walls, orchards and vineyards.
The Taliban had enjoyed total control for at least three years, raising taxes from the population and executing or torturing their opponents in a compound in the Kandalay suburb of the main town of Senjaray.
Capt Lorne Grier, who leads a company of soldiers in Kandalay, said: “The population are telling us that the big groups have left. Now we have the local sympathisers that may or may not want to come over to us.”
“[The Taliban] might come back to look, but if we have a strong security posture and a good relationship with the locals, I would hope they can’t get back,” he added.
However officers are finding relationship difficult to forge, with elders caught between a foreign army, an Afghan government they find distant, and ruthless rebels.
A series of grenades thrown by teenagers at American patrols in Senjaray’s maze of mud-brick alleyways had highlighted the difficulty.
Two days after a grenade had peppered a young sergeant with shrapnel in his thighs and groin, the Americans called a shura, or meeting, at their Senjaray outpost.
Labourers earning €4.80 a day dredging canals for the Americans had begun informing where Taliban booby traps could be found, but the appointed elders were unwilling or powerless to hand in, or drive out, the grenade-throwers.
“Right now we are in a position to make something great happen in this town,” Capt Nick Stout told the 45 turbaned elders sitting cross-legged in a plywood army hut.
“Suddenly over the past 72 hours we have had two more grenade attacks. You know what that tells me? That tells me that all those efforts are completely unappreciated, that tells me that for the most part, you guys don’t give a damn,” he said, his anger rising.
Malik Aminullah, the men’s appointed spokesman replied with their own demands. They wanted the Americans to stop rounding up townspeople at random after the grenade attacks and to stop daytime town patrols.
“What do you want us to do?” Aminullah said.
“We cannot stand against you and we cannot stand against the Taliban. Please don’t come into our villages everyday.”
Arrests or patrols would not stop until attacks had ended, the Americans countered. An hour of debate through interpreters resulted in stalemate. A fifth of the elders refused to eat with the Americans at lunchtime.
“Why should we eat with you? What have you done for us?” one asked.
“I think what you saw today was a lot of people come up here with an agenda, whoever sent them. They want us to stop patrols.” said Capt Stout afterwards.
The Taliban had pressured elders to demand the same in other towns, Lt Col Davis added. Just keep going at them, he told Capt Stout, ramp it up.
The impasse had raised the possibility the elders are unrepresentative, powerless, aligned with the Taliban, unable to control their young men, or some mix of all four.
The Taliban thrive in such situations, where they have broken age-old hierarchies by assassinating or driving out rivals for influence, Richard Berthon, the civilian director of stability operations in southern Afghanistan said.
“The Taliban thrive where you have got no leadership left whatsoever and they have tried very hard to break up communities,” he said.
“The Taliban has made quite a concerted effort to get into the skin of Senjaray and break apart what was a reasonably secure and stable place.”
The Americans in Zhari know their success relies on finding that leadership quickly.