Bullets Over Kabul's Broadway

1 Bullets over Kabul’s Broadway On the bright and breezy Sunday morning of April 15, 2012, my colleagues and I left NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters in Kabul to meet with Afghan journalists, government officials, and civil society leaders to discuss the security and political situation in Afghanistan and the transition to a much reduced international presence after 2014. For once, I was participating in an official, NATO-sponsored trip of five researchers, whom NATO called “opinion leaders,” from the United States, Europe, and Australia. After several days under NATO auspices, I would stay on in Afghani- stan and travel around the country on my own, as I did on previous trips—continuing my research, unencumbered by formal security restric- tions and free to interact with many different Afghan interlocutors. This book, in its policy analysis and personal reflections, is based to a large extent on that fieldwork in Afghanistan and recounts some of my experi- ences that are emblematic of the political and social contentions, violent struggles, and mafia rule with which Afghanistan is grappling on the cusp of the new post-2014 situation, when most Western soldiers will have departed. Many Afghans fear this impending change, even as they are tired of Western presence in their land. My analysis is well introduced by what transpired on that day, April 15, as we met or were affected by the behavior of many of the types of actors that have Afghanistan’s future in their hands. The experience would turn out to be a micro example of what life in Afghanistan after a decade of Western intervention has become: a combination of social 1 01-2441-4 ch1.indd 1 11/1/12 12:52 PM Felbab Brown maps:Felbab Brown Maps 10/3/12 12:04 PM Page 1 2 / Bullets over Kabul’s Broadway Afghan Provinces and Major Cities Afghan Provinces and Major Cities Place at beginning of chap 1 01-2441-4 ch1.indd 2 11/1/12 12:52 PM Bullets over Kabul’s Broadway / 3 progress, an uncertain and worrisome economic outlook, politics and intrigue, violence by insurgents and terrorists, and fighting back by Afghan security forces. One of the brightest developments in Afghanistan since 2002 has been the growth of vibrant media in Afghanistan, which increasingly have been able to expose government corruption, abuses by power brokers, and the brutality of the Taliban; challenge oppressive but deeply ingrained social mores; and seek greater accountability for the Afghan people. Yet the morning meeting with Afghan journalists, even though carefully super- vised by Afghan government officials, revealed not only the life- threatening pressures that Afghan journalists face from Afghanistan’s armed groups and power brokers but also the increasing effort by the Afghan government to undermine and muzzle independent media and other critics of its rule.1 Moreover, since many independent media outlets in Afghani- stan are still fundamentally dependent on Western financial support for their economic survival, the likely decrease in Western funding after 2014 could severely hamper their ability to challenge those who hold formal and informal power and to demand truth for the Afghan public.2 Later in the morning, our research group’s planned meeting with the secretary-general of the High Peace Council, an institution established to support the Afghan government’s negotiations with the Taliban and other insurgents, was canceled. A delegation from one such insurgent group, Gulbudin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami, had arrived for meetings with the secretary-general. Negotiations with Hekmatyar have been on and off over the years as part of an effort to bring a negotiated solution to the intense insurgency that, by the end of the post–9-11 decade, had swept across Afghanistan and which the Afghan government and ISAF had struggled to suppress during that same period. But as with the Taliban, the negotiations had failed to achieve much traction, despite the fact that many politicians and power brokers associated with Hezb-i- Islami have positions of official and unofficial power in Afghanistan. Unlike some of its key allies in Afghanistan, such as the United Kingdom, the United States had long been reluctant to embrace negotiations with the Taliban, believing that it first had to significantly weaken the insurgents militarily before negotiations could produce any lasting positive results. Yet by the middle of 2012, military progress on the battlefield turned out to be far more elusive than Washington and ISAF had hoped. Negotiations did start in 2010, but as of fall 2012, they were stalled with little achieved. 01-2441-4 ch1.indd 3 11/1/12 12:52 PM 4 / Bullets over Kabul’s Broadway Still, the morning was cheerful; and after a snack of roadside kebab, our group headed to the Ministry of Mines to meet with the deputy minister, Mir Ahmad Javid, an impressive young man determined to steer the ministry toward good governance and sustainable development. Under the leadership of Minister Wahidullah Shahrani and Mir Ahmad Javid, the Ministry of Mines was working hard to transform itself from a noto- riously corrupt government institution—the pervasive characteristic of governance in post-2002 Afghanistan—to one that could support the emergence of a robust, legal economy in the country. One of the poor- est, most underdeveloped countries in the world and ravaged by three decades of war, Afghanistan would benefit enormously from being able to extract the large mineral riches—worth as much as $1 trillion—that lie beneath its soil.3 And indeed, Western budgeting for economic assistance to Afghanistan after 2014 has been banking on Afghanistan’s ability to generate substantial economic revenues from the mining sector, which, under optimistic scenarios, the government of Afghanistan estimates will grow from a meager $100 million in 2009 to as much as $1.5 billion in 2016 and $2.3 billion in 2025.4 An effective, corruption-free investment of the potential financial profits, focused on community and human-capital development, could be the economic engine of the country, reducing its grinding poverty. But for that to happen, Afghanistan would have to develop its nonexistent infra- structure, establish the rule of law, tame the corruption that makes it the third most corrupt country in the world after Somalia and North Korea, and significantly reduce the insecurity and violence that have wracked the country and its people since the late 1970s.5 Otherwise, the mineral riches, just like the influx of foreign aid and other money into Afghani- stan, could stimulate violent conflict instead of equitable economic growth, mimicking the detrimental outcomes of such mineral riches in countries like the Congo, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. That morning when we were at the ministry, its officials and Western advisers were drafting new mining laws, seeking to reinforce anticor- ruption provisions and incorporate a development component into ten- der rules, all while trying to balance these considerations with incentives for foreign companies to invest in their highly insecure country, such as establishing some guarantees that a company that conducts exploration would get to exploit what it found. A few weeks later, a group of other senior Afghan cabinet officials objected to the new legislation, arguing 01-2441-4 ch1.indd 4 11/1/12 12:52 PM Bullets over Kabul’s Broadway / 5 that the proposed law yielded too much of the profits and influence to foreign companies, thus placing the legislation and five open tenders in limbo.6 That decision caught off guard Western governments, who were eager for Afghanistan’s mining to expand rapidly and thereby avert a massive economic crisis in the country after 2014. As we were leaving the Ministry of Mines building, we were stopped by guards who informed us that militant attacks were under way in the area, Wazir Akbar Khan, the select, “Broadway” center of Kabul, where ISAF headquarters, foreign embassies, and Afghan government buildings are located and where security is the tightest. This launch of the Taliban and Haqqani network (an affiliate insurgency) yearly spring offensive would strand us at the ministry for the next eight hours. Although we were only about 400 meters away from ISAF headquarters, the streets were deemed too insecure to cross; and, anyway, both ISAF headquarters and much of Wazir Akbar Khan went into immediate lockdown. No foreigners and few Afghan civilians remained on the streets. In fact, no locals should have been moving around during a militant strike either; but after several years of periodic insurgent attacks, many Afghans are no longer all that fazed by such terrorist incidents. Thus, although rocket- propelled grenade explosions and shootings were occurring throughout the quarter—with the Afghan parliament and the Kabul Star Hotel under the most serious attack and various nearby embassies receiving fire—at least some Afghans continued digging ditches (which somewhat eerily resembled graves), selling their wares, and going about their lives, however fraught with peril, insecurity, poverty, and injustice. Six hours later, despite the firefights still going on in the city, most of the ministry employees left to be with their families. But since NATO headquarters were still under lockdown, our international group had to stay in the ministry, confined to a room where we could watch Al Jazeera’s television coverage of the attacks continuing around us in Kabul. Eventually, however, the ministry guards moved our group out of that room, significantly reducing our access to information (by then most of our smartphone batteries had run down) and increasing our frustra- tion. Eight hours after the beginning of the attacks, even our charade game of Taliban impersonations or sharing of spy stories could no longer relieve our confinement-induced boredom.

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