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KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – A wedding was called off because international troops killed the groom. A suicide bomber blew himself up in front of a police patrol. An old woman was beaten by the Taliban after she tried to stop them from taking her son.
And all of this happened in just two weeks in the same place – Kandahar.
The fight for Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city, shows some of the biggest hurdles faced by the U.S. as it tries to implement a strategy of winning over the people of Afghanistan.
Kandahar, a city of an estimated 800,000 people in the south, is an important piece in the battle for Afghanistan, and losing control of it would be a huge blow to the coalition.
The city – and the outlying province with the same name – will be a focus of the buildup of tens of thousands of troops that President Obama is expected to order for Afghanistan.
The military is particularly interested in improving security in Kandahar, which is regarded as the “spiritual center” of anti-U.S. forces.
By some accounts, including that of military officials, religious insurgents already control most of the 17 districts in Kandahar province. Kandahar was the headquarters of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, and the presence of Taliban there is growing.
The outgoing NATO commander for southern Afghanistan said troops need to secure the exits and entrances to Kandahar city itself if the provincial capital is to be protected from infiltration and an eventual Taliban takeover.
But the strength of the insurgents is only part of the problem.
The other part of the problem is the local people’s mistrust of the U.S. and the Afghan government with which it is partnered. Without trust, the residents cannot be counted on to tip off authorities to the militants’ presence.
“Progress is hindered by the dual threat of a resilient insurgency and a crisis of confidence in the government and the international coalition,” said Obama’s top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, in an August report.
McChrystal, who is asking for thousands more soldiers, has warned that the war can be lost unless the U.S. and the Afghan government win back the trust and support of ordinary Afghans.
But in Kandahar, the U.S. is fighting an overwhelming belief that the war is aimed at ethnic Pashtuns, who are the backbone of the Taliban and who dominate in the south and the east of the country where the insurgency and military action are fiercest.
Another hurdle is the lack of confidence of the people in their own government, and by extension the coalition.
Government corruption, not the Taliban, is keeping businesses from flourishing in Afghanistan, said Ahmed Shah Lmar, regional manager for one of the country’s leading cellular telephone companies. Lmar said businesses lose hundreds of millions of dollars to corruption, development plans sit in government offices gathering dust, and incompetent government officials delay projects until they become financially untenable.
“The government is more of a headache for us than the Taliban,” Lmar said.
After eight years and little sign of progress, the yawning chasm between Kandaharis and the international coalition has widened, with the Taliban outdistancing the coalition in the propaganda war.
A mark of the Taliban’s propaganda success is a widespread belief that a U.S. cruise missile caused last August’s ferocious explosion that killed 41 people and flattened a city block in the heart of Kandahar, instead of the powerful truck bomb they planted.
