[In Kabul and other Afghan cities, the United States will be remembered for enabling two decades of progress in women’s rights, an independent media and other freedoms. But in the nation’s hinterlands, the main battlegrounds of America’s longest war, many Afghans view the United States primarily through the prism of conflict, brutality and death.]
There are white flags there, too.
Together, they’re reminders of the
legacy the United States has left in many rural areas across Afghanistan.
“Everyone here hated the
Americans,” said Zabiullah Haideri, 30. His shop was shattered by an airstrike
in 2019 that killed 12 villagers. “They murdered civilians and committed
atrocities.”
In Kabul and other Afghan cities,
the United States will be remembered for enabling two decades of progress in
women’s rights, an independent media and other freedoms. But in the nation’s
hinterlands, the main battlegrounds of America’s longest war, many Afghans view
the United States primarily through the prism of conflict, brutality and
death.
Here in Wardak province, 25 miles
southwest of the capital, the U.S. military, the CIA and the ruthless Afghan
militias they armed and trained fought the Taliban for years. Trapped in the
crossfire were villagers and farmers. Many became casualties of U.S.
counterterrorism operations, drone strikes and gun battles.
[Afghans
bury paintings and hide books out of fear of Taliban crackdown on arts and
culture]
A visit to Sinzai and the
surrounding Nerkh District offered a glimpse of life in a post-American rural
Afghanistan, home to nearly three-quarters of the population, where peace has
emerged after 20 years of war. The visit offered clues to how the Taliban will
govern the country and helped explain how the militants were able to seize power
across the nation so swiftly.
They were abetted by the harsh
tactics of U.S. forces and their Afghan allies and by the corruption and
ineffectiveness of the U.S.-backed Afghan government. Exacting any justice or
compensation from the U.S. military or the government was elusive. So the
killings of their relatives and the lack of accountability drove many villagers
to support the Taliban.
To be certain, the Taliban
controlled the villagers through fear, intimidation and their own brand of
viciousness. But rural Afghan society is largely conservative, and residents
mostly agreed with the militants’ harsh interpretation of Islam.
The villagers never got to see the
other face of America: its generosity. Hardly any of the billions of dollars in
U.S. aid that poured into Afghanistan reached Sinzai, less than two hours’
drive from Kabul. Reconstruction efforts outside the capital were thwarted by insecurity,
corruption and inefficiency, the U.S. government’s own watchdog agency
concluded. Homes in Sinzai and nearby villages still don’t have electricity or
running water.
“The Americans left us nothing,”
said Khan Mohammed, the 32-year-old owner of a shop outside an abandoned U.S.
military compound in the district center. “Only that empty base.”
[As
the Taliban bars some girls from school, their mothers’ dreams are also
shattered]
Still, with the departure of U.S.
forces and the fall of President Ashraf Ghani’s government, there’s now a calm
unlike any the villagers have experienced in two decades. With the conflict
ended and the Taliban in control, the violence has stopped.
“The major change is there is peace
and security now, and the killings of the people have stopped,” Mohammed Omar,
the village imam, said in front of a mosque peppered with bullet holes. “You
can move freely now anywhere. Death has disappeared.”
But any sense of relief is tempered
by new woes. The Taliban takeover triggered freezes in funds in Afghanistan’s
central bank and humanitarian aid; international charities have pulled out of
the district, and the economy is in free fall.
“There are no airstrikes, no night
raids, no bombings,” said Haideri, tall and wiry with a black beard and wavy
hair. “But the problem now is there is no work and no money. People here are
facing hunger.”
A history of deadly raids
Years before the airstrike that
destroyed Haideri’s shop and 16 other businesses, the people of Wardak were
seething with resentment.
Nationwide protests erupted in 2009
after U.S. soldiers allegedly burned a Koran, Islam’s holiest text, during a
raid in Wardak. The accusation was denied by the U.S. military. An Army Special
Forces A-team was accused of killing at least 18 Afghan civilians between 2012
and 2013, prompting President Hamid Karzai to order the A-team out of Wardak
and the Pentagon to launch an investigation.
By then, Wardak was the site of the
U.S. military’s greatest single loss of life in the war. On Aug. 5, 2011,
Taliban fighters shot down a Chinook military helicopter in the Tangi Valley,
killing 31 U.S. military personnel, seven Afghan National Security Forces
members and an Afghan interpreter.
By 2015, U.S. forces were no longer
based in the province. Still, the fighting intensified. U.S.-backed Afghan
national and village-based forces, including at least one militia directed
by the CIA, were battling the Taliban in Nerkh, aided by U.S. airstrikes.
The Taliban, by then, controlled
much of Nerkh. The government was entrenched in the district’s center. The villagers
were caught in between. Even mundane tasks became matters of life or death. If
Haideri shaved, for example, would the Taliban consider him loyal to the
foreigners and the government? If he grew out his beard, would the government
or U.S. forces consider him a spy?
“Whenever we left our homes we told
our families, ‘goodbye,’ ” he said.
“We didn’t know whether we would return home alive.”
The family of Sher Mohammed was
inside their home in the village of Sarmarda in April 2019 when Afghan forces
raided the compound. When his son refused to come out, Mohammed said, they
called an airstrike on the house. His son, his son’s wife, their three children
and two other relatives were killed. The only survivor was his granddaughter,
now 11.
Mohammed said his son occasionally
communicated with the Taliban, like almost every villager, but he was not a
militant. The day after the strike, the Taliban sensed an opportunity. The
villagers were gathered, Mohammed said, and ordered to take the seven corpses
to the provincial capital, Maidan Shahr, to protest the strike.
“Why this? Why this?” some
villagers chanted as they carried the bodies of the children, wrapped in white
cloth, in footage shown on the Kabul News network.
[As
an Afghan newspaper struggles to survive, a brutal beating — and a Taliban
apology]
A month later, in the predawn
hours, airstrikes hit the shops in Sinzai and killed villagers in different
parts of the hamlet. Witnesses described huge balls of flames and large plumes
of dark smoke. By then, villagers said, they knew the sounds of drones and U.S.
bombers circling the sky. “It was the Americans,” Haideri said. “No one else
had such modern airplanes and drones.”
The villagers went to the
governor’s office to make a complaint and seek compensation for the damage to
their shops. They never heard back, they said, adding to their resentment.
The villagers acknowledged that two
of those killed were members of the Taliban, but they said the 10 others were
civilians. That made them angrier.
“Whenever the Americans came here
and conducted raids or any operations against the Taliban, they
indiscriminately fired at anyone,” said Ahmed Khan, who lost his shop in the
airstrike. “That’s why we all supported the Taliban. The Americans were killing
the people while the Taliban protected them.”
Between 2016 and 2020,
international and Afghan airstrikes killed 2,122 civilians and injured 1,855
across Afghanistan, according to Action on Armed Violence, a London-based nonprofit,
which analyzed U.N. data. U.S military figures for civilian casualties are
sharply lower than the U.N.’s data.
Life under the Taliban
In Kabul, Afghans are waiting to
see how the Taliban will govern.
In Sinzai, they already know.
Life is governed by strict sharia
law — which the villagers embrace. “It is acceptable here as it is divine and
according to our Afghan values,” said Omar, the imam.
Girls are educated only until sixth
grade. For decades before the Taliban first came to power in 1996, villagers
said, no woman here had gone to secondary school or a university.
On the rocky, unpaved roads, women
float by in blue burqas that cover them from head to toe. They may be
accompanied by a child in the village, but there are limits. “She can’t go by
herself to the city without her husband or son to accompany her,” Omar
explained.
Music and satellite dishes are
banned, though few people have television sets because the only electricity is
solar-powered and there’s no normal antenna reception. Weddings are segregated,
and only women sing the traditional songs in their section.
“If we listen to music in public
the Taliban will beat us,” said Rohullah, 22, a grandson of Sher Mohammed, who
like many Afghans uses one name.
The Taliban has a three-level court
system and a police force, typically fighters not in uniforms. Thieves who are
first-time offenders are given public whippings. No one can recall a time when
the punishment was amputating a hand, as directed by sharia. The militants tax
the villagers, usually 10 percent of their farm production or store revenue.
The Taliban has been relatively
lenient by its hard-line standards to avoid alienating villagers. Villagers may
listen to music or watch movies inside their homes on smartphones. Some
secretly pop up satellite dishes, Omar said.
The militants have not enforced a
requirement that men grow long beards. The Taliban’s morality police patrol the
village, but they preach about their dictates rather than use force, residents
said.
Now that the Taliban controls the
country, it remains to be seen whether it will clamp down harder in Sinzai. For
now, the militants are basking in their glory.
“The victory is an achievement for
all the people,” said Maulavi Shafiqullah Zakir, 33. A Sinzai native, he was so
enraged by the night raids and airstrikes that he said he joined the insurgency
to wage “jihad” against the Americans. He’s now the Taliban official in charge
of the village. “People who haven’t seen each other in two decades are now
traveling to far-flung areas to see relatives.”
But he acknowledged the militants
face huge challenges.
Poverty, which has always been
deeply rooted here, is worsening. Prices of staple foods are rising. The few
Western aid agencies that provided food, health care and other necessities have
left. There’s only one doctor and a midwife. Medicines are scarce.
“Before, there were four to five
doctors, one vaccinator and a nurse in the village,” Omar said. “But after the
Taliban took over, everyone has gone.”
“Some people are hardly getting
food for their families,” Haideri said. “One man the other day told me that he
has been boiling potatoes and eating it for the last four days.”
That has made Haideri and other
shop owners more resentful of the urban elites in Kabul. Two years after the
airstrike, they have been unable to rebuild their destroyed shops or properly
feed their families. Yet they’ve watched millions of dollars flow to shady
contractors and corrupt politicians in the capital. They say they are the same
people who have fled with the help of the United States.
“Those who left Kabul, they did not
leave Afghanistan due to hunger,” Haideri said. “They have collected a lot of
wealth, and they have gone to enjoy a luxurious life abroad. No one likes the
Americans here, so how could those people be liked?”
In search of justice
Taliban fighters in pickup trucks
now patrol roads dotted with banners that proclaim the nation free of foreign
troops. Every day, the fighters drive past the sprawling former U.S. military
base in the district center, known as Combat Outpost Nerkh.
It sits like an ancient ruin. Visitors
stroll through the silence, past dusty sandbags, strands of concertina wire and
other faded symbols of U.S. military power.
[How
Afghanistan’s security forces lost the war]
America’s legacy here haunts
Shukrullah Ibrahim Khail.
His younger brother, Nasratullah,
was an alleged victim of the A-team. The Special Forces unit raided their home
and grabbed him on a cold night, he said, and took him to the U.S. base. His
family sought the help of tribal elders to secure his release. Two days later,
they found Nasratullah’s body near a bridge, badly tortured. Months later, the
remains of 10 missing Afghan villagers were uncovered in graves near the base.
The U.S. military denied the
allegations. Two years later, a criminal investigation was reopened. Khail said
he was called to Kabul to give testimony to the government, U.S. and U.N.
officials. But after recounting the incident, he said he never heard back.
The Pentagon did not respond to
emails asking about the status of the investigation.
“Our demand was to punish those who
were responsible for those killings,” Khail said. “There was no justice done.
Nor was there any compensation for the victim’s families.
“What can we do now when they have
all gone?”
Haq Nawaz Khan in Peshawar,
Pakistan, contributed to this report.
Read more
The
treacherous journey into Kabul airport to escape Taliban-controlled Afghanistan
