Afghans Staking Hopes on Concrete Results

Dressed in rags and racked with coughs telling of tuberculosis, dozens of men who had been imprisoned for years by the Taliban in Kandahar flocked Saturday to the compound of Hamid Karzai, convinced that the man who soon will be Afghanistan’s prime minister could help them find work or a way home.

But like the other beggars and maimed old men outside the gates of Kabul’s presidential palace, the former prisoners were sent on their way by Northern Alliance fighters now serving as palace guards with neither help nor encouragement.

“We’ve come here because we have no money and no place else to go,” said Habib Rakhmon, a 29-year-old from Badakhshan province in far northeastern Afghanistan. Like the others freed from the crowded Kandahar prison when the Taliban withdrew from its southern stronghold last weekend, he has been sheltering in a mosque.

The men, huddled with their meager belongings and shielded from the freezing cold with only thin blankets, are typical of the multitudes of desperate Afghans looking to the incoming government as their last, best hope.

Impoverished Nation Has Suffered Much

One of the world’s poorest countries, Afghanistan has long endured occupation, civil war and fanatic rule. But expectations have been soaring since a Dec. 5 accord brokered in Germany established Karzai’s interim government.

With the mounting confidence comes the risk of disappointment. Although international aid is pouring in, emergency handouts will do little to fill the yawning need of a country where the vast majority is unemployed, most housing is in ruins and those who can earn food doing odd jobs count themselves lucky.

The closer the shattered capital gets to Saturday’s hand-over of power from the Northern Alliance to Karzai’s team, the more many Afghans expect quick improvements in their poverty and isolation.

Karzai has yet to make a public address to tell the Afghan people of his vision and priorities. In preparation for his six-month stint as Afghanistan’s leader, he has met with senior alliance figures and those incoming Cabinet officials he doesn’t already know.

He is well aware, says his spokesman, of the public’s hunger for peace and his responsibility to ensure it.

“He must prove he has the capability to bring the country together. We must meet these expectations,” said Sayed Najibullah Ashimi, Karzai’s spokesman. “But this six-month term is very short. We hope the people are patient.”

While most Afghans say they understand reform will take time, the most desperate might be counting on miracles.

“This is the fifth day I’ve waited here, and still no responsible person has come to help me,” moaned Habibullah, a 37-year-old former alliance fighter from the northeastern town of Faizabad, as he crouched outside the palace gates. He has not been able to communicate with his wife and four children since he surrendered to Taliban forces in 1996.

Though sickly and feeble, he said he expects a job from the government because he fought for it before he was captured and before the Taliban seized most of the country.

Chief among the prickly figures with whom Karzai must negotiate is former President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who has made no secret of his disappointment that younger Northern Alliance figures will be given key roles in the government.

Still, Rabbani promised after his first meeting here with Karzai on Thursday to support the interim government--an assurance that took on more credibility Saturday night when he invited Karzai to have dinner and discuss the country’s future.

In another gesture of reconciliation, the Western-educated incoming prime minister has also met with Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, the head of a radical Islamic faction. Sayyaf has denounced plans for a U.N.-mandated peacekeeping force, suggesting that foreign troops pose a threat to Afghanistan’s sovereignty.

On Friday, Karzai paid homage to the Northern Alliance’s slain military leader, Ahmed Shah Masoud, traveling by convoy to his Panjshir Valley burial site. Masoud was killed by suicide bombers posing as journalists two days before the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States--an assassination also blamed on Osama bin Ladan and his Al Qaeda network.

Karzai, a 46-year-old Pushtun tribal leader, has cast himself in the role of peacemaker, and that has done much to set the war-weary masses at ease.

How long a grace period he will receive remains uncertain. But Afghans able to stand back and observe their society with detachment contend the bigger threat to the new government is flagging foreign attention, such as they experienced in the early 1990s after Soviet occupation ended.

“Afghans are patient. They know there will be no revolutionary changes in this first six months. It will take years, probably 10 years, for aid and reconstruction to make a real difference,” said Ahmed Shakir Mureed, a political analyst with Radio Afghanistan.

Western Aid Seen as Crucial

“Everyone in Afghan politics is now in agreement about what is needed. All we have to hope for is that the world continues to help us,” he said. “Our experience in the past was disappointing, but we really believe this time that the West will stay focused.”

Former prisoners outside Karzai’s compound see the foreign aid as evidence that the new government could help them if it wanted to.

“I fought for the Northern Alliance--that is why the Taliban put me in prison. They should give me my job back,” said Mohammed Yahar, 25, who said he served as a guard for Rabbani before the president’s 1996 ouster by the Taliban. “If he cannot hire us, Karzai should at least give us money and help us get back to our homes.”