Deadly Notes In The Night

By Aryn Baker/ Kandahar

The letters appear at night, pasted to the walls of mosques and government buildings and promising death to anyone who defies their threats. Mohammed Qasim, a janitor in Kandahar, ignored the first night letter that appeared at a mosque in his village last month, which warned residents to stop working for the Afghan government. Qasim had lied to his neighbors, telling them that he worked as a tailor--not at a police station 10 miles away. Then the second letter arrived. "Once this government falls, we will be in power. We will have your documents, your resumes, your names and your addresses. We will come and punish you," it read. Now Qasim doubts that he can keep his job, which pays about $40 a month, not a lot by Afghan standards but enough to dream about giving his two sons opportunities he never had. "If it gets any worse, I will have to leave," he says. "I don't trust that the government or the police can protect me."

Night letters--menacing notes posted under the cover of darkness--have become a potent weapon in the Taliban's widening campaign against the symbols of authority in the new Afghanistan. The tactic is aimed at sowing doubt and fear among Afghans, with the ultimate goal of reimposing the Taliban's primeval control over parts of the country--and it's working. The campaign took a lethal turn three weeks ago, when Taliban fighters blew up a busload of Afghan laborers heading to work at a U.S. military base near Kandahar, killing eight. Atrocities like that are commonplace in America's other battleground in the war against terrorism, Iraq, but the bombing represented the first large-scale attack on Afghan civilians working with coalition forces since the U.S. toppled the Taliban in 2001. And sometimes the threat of violence is as effective as the real thing. Night letters left across southern Afghanistan, the Taliban's stronghold, have slowed government services and brought reconstruction projects to a halt. In Kandahar province, many police officers have quit, and after letters appeared threatening employees, two medical clinics were shut down. In the past two months, insurgents have burned down 11 schools in the region. Some of the attacks were presaged by night letters warning parents to keep their children home.

The success of the Taliban's intimidation blitz has added to Western concern about President Hamid Karzai's government, which remains unable to assert its authority much beyond the capital city, Kabul. "In many respects, I think that this insurgency is less about insurgent strength than government weakness," says Ronald Neumann, U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appeared in Kabul last week in a show of support for Karzai, while 10,000 coalition troops launched a fresh offensive against Taliban insurgents in the south. But few Afghans believe the threat posed by the resurgent Taliban is close to being extinguished--and some are doubtful that the NATO forces assuming control of southern Afghanistan will be able to hold the insurgents at bay. "In 2001 the coalition toppled the Taliban in two months. Why can't the coalition stop the Taliban now?" asks Agha Lalai Destagiri, a provincial-council member who lives in Panjwai village, 16 miles southwest of Kandahar. "It means the Taliban has become too strong for the coalition. That scares us."

For the Taliban, the night letters are a cost-effective way to exploit such anxieties. "They don't have weapons to come to town to fight," says Captain Jammilla Bargzai, head of the Kandahar police department's crime-investigation unit. "Their only weapon is to scare people." Her bravado fades when she begins to talk about her own fears. Bargzai hasn't seen any night letters posted in her neighborhood, but her neighbors have told her that strangers on motorbikes have asked about her and marked her house. She has moved six times in the past year. "If I see a strange man in my neighborhood more than three times in a week, I know it's time to move," she says. She used to carry her AK-47 to work but was worried that the gun's silhouette under her burqa betrayed her identity. Now her Smith & Wesson pistol--a gift from coalition forces--is her only source of protection. "I want to stay and do my job," she says. "But I have an 8-year-old daughter. If the government can't protect me, I will have to leave."

The Taliban isn't relying just on violence to shake Afghans' faith in the authorities. The rise in crime in Kandahar has provoked a new round of letters, reminding people how safe the city was under the Taliban regime. Many are starting to listen. "Life under the Taliban was not good," says Hyatullah Rafiqi, Kandahar's education administrator. "But it's not good now. At least with the Taliban we had security." Rampant corruption, police abuse and an unchecked drug trade have bolstered the Taliban claims. A former mujahedin commander who fought with the Taliban against the occupying Soviet army in the 1980s says the Taliban now has a dedicated propagandist who furthers the cause by perpetuating and promoting rumors of police graft and government failures. The Taliban even maintains a website that lists occurrences of police corruption and reports of coalition attacks on innocent civilians www.alemarah.org in Pashto and Arabic).

Critics fault Karzai and the 26,000 allied troops in Afghanistan for failing to strengthen institutions like the police. In Kandahar, Asadullah Khalid, the governor, is desperate to counter Taliban propaganda with a more robust police force. He estimates that he has only 40 officers for every 100,000 citizens. (By comparison, New York City has 40 officers for every 8,000 civilians.) He says he has petitioned Karzai's government for funding for a larger police force but says he has received little response. The police situation in Kandahar province is emblematic of the country as a whole. That there is widespread police corruption is no surprise given the lack of training, funds and firepower, notes Abdul Salaam Rocketi, a former mujahedin commander and a Member of Parliament. "If you have a dog and you don't feed it, it will knock on other doors."

So life for Afghans across the country continues to swing between hope and cruelty. In Panjwai, where a U.S. air strike in May killed 24 suspected Taliban along with 16 civilians, wails of mourning were mixed with sighs of relief that the Taliban might finally have been defeated. But then the night letters resumed, warning villagers not to become puppets of the American "infidels." Two weeks later, the Taliban seized two local police officers accused of collaborating with the government. Within two hours, they were publicly tried, sentenced and beheaded. It took more than 48 hours to gather enough men to retrieve the bodies. It was a sobering rebuke to local leaders who had decided to put their faith in the state. "The Taliban says it is heaven, and so does the government," says Mir Hamza, one of Panjwai's tribal elders. "But I think they are both hell." And until Karzai--and his U.S. allies--delivers peace and security, Afghans like Hamza can expect to receive more messages in the night.

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With reporting by Muhib Habibi/ Kandahar