An Afghan Governor With a Touch of L.A.

A single gas lamp lights the gloomy second-floor room where Taj Mohamad Wardak has lived since he arrived to become governor of turbulent Paktia province last week.

The house was once grand, with a large bathroom and enamel bathtub. Now the bathroom is, like most Afghan plumbing, not functional, and the halls are drafty, damp and mud-stained.

For Wardak, the world of rural Afghanistan couldn’t be further from the three-bedroom house with a pool in the North Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles where he had spent the last 15 years. Still, he didn’t hesitate to come.

“If America is heaven and Afghanistan is hell, then love is blind and I am in love with Afghanistan,” he said.

When the radical Taliban regime was ousted and the interim administration installed in Kabul last year, the gray-haired patriot bought a ticket to Pakistan and then caught a United Nations flight to the Afghan capital.

Just a few days later, on Feb. 2, he was tapped to become governor of Paktia province, which has been racked by fighting among warlords that left nearly 60 people dead in the last two weeks. It’s a job most people would avoid at all costs. But not Wardak.

“The situation is very bad here, and if I can be helpful, I will be very glad,” he said.

Wardak, who gives his age as 80, is one of a number of educated Afghans in exile who have made the altruistic choice of forsaking the comfort of Western life to help their war-damaged country recover. But he is far older than most emigre returnees and is taking a job far from the relative safety of Kabul.

Paktia, a mountainous province three hours south of Kabul, is predominantly Pushtun, the same ethnic group from which Wardak comes--and from which most of the Taliban members came. It was one of several provinces where members of the Al Qaeda terrorist network and their families lived. Many Al Qaeda members took refuge here after the Taliban regime was ousted.

In addition to the issue of Al Qaeda holdouts, a more immediate problem has been the fighting between two or three different warlords in the province. One, Bacha Khan, who comes from the southern part of the province, was appointed governor of Paktia in the early days of Afghanistan’s new interim administration.

Khan, a warlord with a heavy black mustache and a heavier ammunition belt, demanded loyalty of all the elders in the province but was suspected of using his friendship with the U.S. to lure American forces into bombing his enemies--including those elders who didn’t favor his appointment as governor.

After a tumultuous few weeks, fighting broke out between supporters of Haji Saifullah, a warlord here in Gardez, and Khan’s troops. After two days of clashes in which Khan lost a number of men, he was forced out, leaving the province’s governance in doubt.

The situation was so unsettled that it began to hamper the U.S. military in its war here against terrorism, and Washington asked interim Prime Minister Hamid Karzai to intervene. Karzai sought a new governor who could win the respect of the local people and would eschew the usual warlord tactics.

Wardak suddenly seemed a logical choice. He was from a well-regarded family. His brother had been well liked when he was governor of Paktia about 30 years ago, and Wardak himself had experience in the job--he had served as governor of the northeastern province of Badakhshan in the 1970s. Furthermore, he had the critical Afghan credential of having fought the Soviets when they controlled the country and of having served more than two years in a Soviet prison.

Wardak shares Karzai’s view that the country has had enough of warlords, and he is proud that he comes without an Afghan governor’s usual complement of scores of armed guards. “I go to the bazaar with just my driver,” he said.

He also feels strongly that Afghanistan must look to the West and to the U.S. to help bring it into the modern age. Part of that is enforcing the rule of law. And he believes that he will be able to bring order by force of personality and by being firm rather than despotic.

“We are here to implement the law. I am not just here as a priest--if we have people here who do not obey the law, then we are guilty of not doing our job,” he said.

Local leaders aren’t so sure that his approach will work. They have decided to swear fealty to him, but it takes time to create a deeper loyalty. Mohammed Isak, the deputy to warlord Saifullah, was reserved in his endorsement.

“We brought him here, and we are protecting him, and we serve him as soldiers, but he’s only been here three days,” he said. “We don’t know if he has the ability [to govern].”

It’s hard to overstate how different life must be for Wardak in Afghanistan. He left a home that he describes as having “a good kitchen, a nice yard and good bathrooms”--niceties that do not exist in Afghanistan except perhaps in the very richest homes in Kabul.

One reason that Wardak is able to give his all to the job is that his wife of many years died last summer.

In Gardez, he lives in one room heated by an ancient, rusty wood stove and sleeps on a mattress that rests on a chipped enamel bed frame. Otherwise, the room is a traditional Afghan reception room, with cushions along the wall, a rug on the floor and little else.

Incongruously, there’s a box with a brand-new Thuraya phone--the latest in dual satellite and cell phone technology. Wardak hasn’t figured out how to use it yet. But because there are no phone lines here, it will be a necessity.

“This was my brother’s home when he was governor here, but it has to be repaired,” Wardak said as workers could be heard lugging wheelbarrows of plaster through the halls.

On this sleeting February afternoon, he had a number of appointments before his day ended. He adjusted his long black leather jacket--a gift from his youngest daughter, who is studying at USC--over his traditional Afghan shalwar kameez pants and shirt. Then came another American garment--a beige Western raincoat.

But the finishing touch was pure Afghan: an elegant turban of black, gray and white raw silk.

“The people here gave it to me at the swearing-in ceremony,” he said, smiling as he strode out the door--an Afghan with a bit of American in him, but now deeply happy to be home.

--- UNPUBLISHED NOTE ---

Beginning in stories published in 2006, the Afghan warlord Bacha Khan is identified as Pacha Khan Zadran. (Second reference is “Pacha Khan.”)

--- END NOTE ---