Kidnapping/Murder/Intimidation

Kabul City, 24-25 JUN 10.  It has been reported by the national police that insurgents stopped a vehicle carrying local civilians travelling along a busy road in the late afternoon of 24 Jun.  The men were then abducted.  The police service who were searching for the men found eleven beheaded bodies in a ditch close to a back lane in the countryside.  

The local Chief of Police has speculated that although these men had no link to the government or national security services, they may have been accused by insurgents of being spies as an intimidation measure against locals, due to the recent loss of a well known local insurgent commander in an ISAF raid.   

According to the latest information it has been indicated that all the murdered individuals were Hazaras and all came from a local village. According to prevailing understanding the insurgents in Afghanistan are invariably Pastun and generally hold the Hazaras in contempt.

Arrest Operation

Kabul City, April 19th 2010.  An Afghan Government statement released today indicated that nine men (including three Pakistani nationals) have been arrested in two separate locations of the capital.  One of the locations was said to be a Madrassa (religious school), the other, a nondescript family apartment in the restive eastern part of the city.

All nine men, including two teenagers and a man in his fifties, were charged with “intending to conduct terrorist acts” thought to be suicide attempts.  According to police a large quantity of arms and explosives including eight assault rifles, eight grenades, two RPG launchers, and 200 kilograms of explosives were recovered from the two locations and have now been taken into official custody.

Once again we see that crime and politics are inextricably linked in the Afghan capital.  Whilst arrests like this happen on at least a weekly basis none of the obvious questions ever seem to be answered.  

1. Where are these guns and explosives coming from?  
2. Are Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency behind the supplies to the insurgents?   
3. Perhaps they are provided by sympathetic Afghan’s who have a stash of weapons?  
4. Or maybe the insurgents are purchasing guns via the trade of drugs that filters through the Russian Mafia?

As with everything in this country being an observer of Afghan crime often leaves more questions than answers.      

Never Trust a Man in Uniform

In the UK we are told from a young age that a man in a uniform is someone to instinctively trust.  They are someone to go to if you find yourself in trouble, or lost, or without hope.  The situation in Kabul cannot be more different.  This teeming, bustling city of at least 5 million is home to thousands of Afghan National Police (ANP), Afghan National Army (ANA) and countless NATO troops.

Overall, it should be said, the ANA and ANP are doing a sterling job in what are very difficult circumstances.  How many cops in the West would be willing to be on the front line, on a daily basis, in stopping not just criminal activity but also anti-government terrorists?  Fair do’s to the guys out there trying their best to uphold law and order but this country must be one of the world's most dangerous places to fight crime.     

As the US has pulled back from day to day management of the city Kabul is now managed by ANP and ANA patrols and roadblocks that litter the city.  Distinguishing between these two groups is the first challenge for the uninitiated as the ANP have been created as a form of quasi-military force: “Bobbies on the Beat” they ain’t.

The most challenging and problematic element, however, is the use of uniforms (both ANA and ANP) by criminals and anti-government insurgents.  Over the last year or so a number of terrorist activities have been carried out by men dressed in stolen or illegally acquired uniforms.  

In one famous event, at a UN guest house, all four suicide attackers were dressed in this official garb.  When an attacker jumped on the back wall to attack the foreigners that were hiding the only armed civilian told me that he had to withhold his fire until the attacker pointed his gun directly at them and he was sure he was definitely not an officer.  You do not want to be shooting an official of the state unless you want to spend time in Kabul jail.

Only last week an insurgent dressed in an ANA uniform approached a NATO team parked at Kabul International Airport and initiated a Body-Borne Improvised Explosive Device (or BBIED as the acronym so vaguely puts it) that killed one and wounded six.  Once again this activity highlights the fact that ANA and ANP uniforms are readily available for a fee and that when that man comes walking to you looking officious your trust should be far from absolute.   

Poison, Misogyny and Politics

On April 20th 2010 in the potholed outskirts of the Shina Bagrami area, eastern Kabul City, seven female school students, along with one teacher, from the local girls’ high school were taken to the Indira Gandhi Hospital after falling sick and losing consciousness.

After discussing with teachers who stated that the air did not seem “quite right” school authorities have undertaken an investigation into this unsettling event.  The school has since concluded that some form of poisonous powder had been sprayed into the air of the classrooms at the school, which had in turn been inhaled by the unsuspecting students. 

An official British analyst who reports on daily events in the country has stated that “Although not proven, this sort of misogynist incident does unfortunately ring true”. So goes another criminal event in the Afghan capital.  Not many countries have crime and criminals that are so indelibly rooted to the politics of the state but in Afghanistan this is par for the course.  

The actions of criminals are often inherently connected to those of the anti-government insurgency yet the victims remain patently similar to those in Western states: vulnerable, weak and effectively defenseless.  In Kabul poisoning, misogyny and politics unfortunately go hand in hand.