All unquiet on the eastern front

June 14, 2006 | KABUL, Afghanistan -- It was an accident. And when the large U.S. Army truck careened out of control just outside Kabul and killed several civilians -- it's still unclear how many -- that's what the military called it.

But the Afghan people at the scene two weeks ago didn't see an accident, according to witnesses and local media reports. They saw irresponsible behavior by an occupying army that had no respect for Afghan lives. Rumors spread that it was intentional. They began pelting the convoy with large rocks and whatever else was available in the dusty bazaar near the scene of the incident.

The rest of the details are murky. Afghan witnesses claim the U.S. soldiers opened fire on the crowd and killed half a dozen or more people. Other reports claim it was the Afghan police and Afghan National Army that did the firing into the crowd. But it doesn't matter, because within one hour, large crowds of angry Afghan youth -- reportedly egged on by various enemies of U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai -- rampaged through Kabul, looting shops, attacking Western-affiliated companies and aid agencies and attempting to ransack nice hotels frequented by Westerners.

The riots went on for more than seven hours. Armed gangs of looters destroyed humanitarian compounds and laid siege to the Interior Ministry itself. The much-touted Afghan security forces were ineffectual, and the 9,000 NATO peacekeeping troops in Kabul never left their compounds. Scores of people were killed. The official total is 17 dead but literally no one believes that. Eyewitnesses said there were more than 10 killed in front of one mobile phone company compound, whose security detail of former British Special Forces men refused to abandon their building and opened fire, eventually winning a four-hour gun battle against the looters. Informed Afghan security sources put the total dead at close to 100 people.

It was the worst single day of violence in Kabul since the fall of the Taliban regime over four years ago, and it revealed how fragile the tolerance for the American, NATO and international community presence in Afghanistan actually is for the people of this impoverished, violence-plagued and deeply divided country.

Violence in Afghanistan has recently spiked, mainly in the south, as the remnants of the Taliban have been increasingly successful in their insurgency. In the past three weeks, the country has seen some of the worst fighting since the fall of the Taliban. Since May, more than 500 people have been killed, many of them suspected insurgents. U.S. Ambassador Ronald Neumann blamed much of the violence on drug mafias fighting the Kabul government's U.S.-backed opium eradication campaign. The situation has grown so grave that Karzai has taken the risky step of using tribesmen in the south to fight the Taliban.

But the rioters weren't Taliban or their supporters. The men burning the compound of CARE International, chasing Western journalists while screaming "skin the infidels," were also waving posters of murdered Northern Alliance commander Shah Ahmed Massoud. The rioters were the supporters of the very groups that helped the Americans defeat the Taliban. These are our friends, who fought alongside us in 2001 and 2002 and welcomed the U.S. military as heroic allies.

What happened? Afghans complain it's the same thing that always seems to happen in Afghanistan: The West's failure to deliver on its big promises. Bush's invasion of Iraq diverted badly needed troops, materiel and money from Afghanistan. Now the situation is deteriorating, and the U.S. is stretched too thin to do anything about it.

Mohammed Fahim Dashty, who runs the English language Kabul Weekly newspaper, remains close to his Northern Alliance comrades -- he was Massoud's press aide and lost an eye when two al-Qaida operatives posing as Arab journalists blew themselves up on Sept. 9, 2001, killing Massoud. He says the people of the country have become enraged after seeing too little improvement and too much occupation.

"Four years ago there were big wishes, big hopes for quick changes in their miserable lives for the Afghan people," he says. "But it didn't happen and in some ways it's worse than under the Taliban because day by day the security situation worsens."

Afghans are angry not only with the international community -- the United Nations, the European Union, NATO, non-governmental aid groups, and the huge corporations that provide consultants and experts to the reconstruction effort -- but with the increasingly unpopular Karzai. The president plays politics by exploiting his close ties to the American and international donors who have dumped billions into the country the past four years.

Next page: Dirt-poor Afghans resent foreigners driving fancy cars