Real Security Is Elusive, New Afghan Police Force Finds

This past week, tribal leaders launched the first multi-faction police squad here, no small feat in the ethnically combustible city.

The force’s top mission is to disarm thousands of soldiers who rushed into Mazar-i-Sharif after the Taliban fell, and the new officers have devised a system of confiscating guns at city limits and handing out little cards in return, like coat checkers.

But security is still spotty.

Not only do the crowded, muddy streets bristle with grenade launchers and 50-caliber machine guns, but several local aid workers were attacked during the week.

No foreigners are known to have been hurt, but a local Save the Children driver was beaten and robbed, a UNICEF official was shot, and the head of Focus Humanitarian Assistance, a British group, was kidnapped while walking to work.

“This is a warning to all of us,” said Eric Larouche, director of UNICEF operations in Afghanistan. “The country is still in transition, and there’s no doubt insecurity has increased.”

Some people are even saying the unthinkable: Things were better under the Taliban.

“No, we didn’t like them,” Habib Dullah, a currency trader, said as he slammed down a brick of grubby Afghan bills. “But at least we were safe.”

The spate of attacks came just as factional leaders have laid aside their rivalries to provide one of the most important postwar services: security. A careful formula was reached to share police power among the region’s three main ethnic groups: the Tajiks, the Uzbeks and the Shiite Muslim Hazaras.

The city’s top security official, Gen. Majid Rozy, is an ethnic Uzbek and a confidant of Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, also an Uzbek and the leading warlord in the north.

Gen. Mohammad Isa Eftakhouri, the police chief, is a Hazara, a member of a sectarian minority that has often been persecuted in the past.

The Tajiks supplied the largest portion of the police force’s personnel--240 from their barracks, compared with 180 from each of the two other groups.

Just five years ago, the three factions battled Beirut-style for control of the city. Their feuding was one reason the Taliban was able to capture Mazar-i-Sharif in 1997 and win recognition from several countries as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan.

But after Sept. 11, the United States spurred the three sides to join forces. With U.S. help and under the banner of the opposition Northern Alliance, they drove the Taliban out of the city in November. That was the first in a string of victories that brought the religious extremists down.

Last month, when local leaders discussed creating a police department, U.N. advisors encouraged each group to contribute 200 soldiers. All of Afghanistan is ethnically fragmented, but the north is especially torn between groups with a history of violence. Peace meant parity, the U.N. advisors said.

Yet one hitch was Ata Mohammed. The tall, bearded Tajik warlord who could double for Fidel Castro insisted on having more armed men in the city than anyone else.

“Mazar territory is my territory, and I should have the most police,” he said in an interview last week.

His request was honored.

The force began its duties Wednesday, and the new police--who are outfitted like soldiers--have been diligently working together to search trucks, taxis and even camels that lurch into town across the endless Central Asian steppe.

“Lift up your feet!” policeman Khair Mohammed yelled to a truck driver at a checkpoint. “I see your gun.”

Two minutes later, Mohammed ducked into a mud shed to deposit a confiscated AK-47. Next to it stood grenade launchers, machine guns and a chest-high stack of ammunition boxes. All were cataloged according to serial number. The owners had been told to retrieve their weapons when they left the city.

For those who don’t comply, there’s a new jail with a few prisoners and a rudimentary court system to hear cases.

The top warlords have partially cooperated with the disarmament process by pulling out some of their militia forces and confining them to barracks.

“There are so many less gunmen on the streets today than there were a few weeks ago,” said Martin Rose, a U.S. Army major stationed in Mazar-i-Sharif.

But plenty of heavily armed men still ply the back alleys and dirt roads of this no-stoplight city of 200,000.

It’s not clear whether militiamen were behind the spate of attacks on aid workers. The perpetrators may have been freelance bandits. Many foreign aid professionals say they are concerned that local workers were targeted because of their connection to well-financed aid organizations.

Parwiz Azizy, a driver for Save the Children, was ferrying a vanload of ill women Monday night when he was waved over by three gunmen with turbans wrapped over their faces.

They punched him, stole his money, made all the women get out of the van and then told Azizy to kneel on the road with his head bowed. His life was spared, he said, only because one of the women flung back her burka and jumped in front of the gunmen.

“They were going to shoot me,” he said.

The UNICEF official, an education program manager, was shot in his home Saturday morning. He was hospitalized with a leg wound. The head of Focus was kidnapped Thursday and was still missing Saturday.

All the cases remained unsolved, although police said they were working on them.

“Even America can’t build a society in one day, one week, one year,” said Rozy, the Uzbek security chief.

Outside the city, peace is even more elusive.

A couple of miles south of Mazar-i-Sharif on the road to the capital, Kabul, sit two mud-walled barracks, built on small hills.

Young men in baggy pants, turbans and high-tops suck on cigarettes as they patrol their forts, one belonging to an Uzbek faction, the other to Hazaras.

They guard nothing. The only thing between them is an old Soviet army depot and the detritus of war: empty rocket launchers, thousands of spent shells and tanks stripped of every switch, handle and gear.

It’s not clear whether the feelings between the two groups mark an enduring rivalry or signal deeper troubles to come.

“They are bad people,” said Awaz Ali, an Uzbek soldier, pointing to the Hazara compound.

“Maybe they should go back to the mountains,” said a Hazara soldier, jerking his head the other way.