Kunduz Residents Live in Fear of Taliban’s Return: The NY Times, Feb 7, 2016

By NAJIM RAHIM, DAVID JOLLY and AHMAD SHAKIB
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan — Farhad Azyanfar, a student of Dari literature at the university in Kunduz, watched in fear as a few hundred Taliban fighters overran and defeated a larger but demoralized government force to capture this northern city in September.
He was relieved several weeks later when the insurgents left the city after a combined American and Afghan counterattack, but the feeling was short-lived: He and many other residents fear the Taliban will be back soon.
“You can see the white flags of the Taliban along the road as soon as you step out of Kunduz City,” said Mr. Azyanfar, 20, who travels back to his district outside the provincial capital several times a week. The area controlled by the government extends “only to the buildings in which they are based,” he said. “As soon as you step outside, it is totally a different picture: The Taliban’s presence and influence are much larger than the government’s.”
It has been more than four months since the Afghan forces crumbled as Taliban fighters overran Kunduz. But there has been no improvement in the conditions that made the two-week Taliban takeover of the city possible. Disillusionment with the government has only gotten worse; the Afghan forces are still overstretched and demoralized; and the Taliban still control much of the outlying areas and roads.
Now, the worry in and around Kunduz is that it is inevitable that the insurgents will return, strengthened this time by weapons, ammunition and vehicles looted during their capture of the city.
For a national government already strained by territory losses and infighting, another loss of a provincial capital — whether that is a repeat in Kunduz or a new setback in Helmand or another contested province — is an alarming prospect.
The initial loss of Kunduz was a national trauma. Many Afghans began fleeing neighboring provincial capitals and district centers. An already huge wave of emigration accelerated after the assault. And, worrisomely in a country torn by warring strongmen in the ’90s, local warlords were threatening to remobilize and settle scores in the absence of a capable government defense.
The repercussions of Kunduz’s fall were felt all the way to Washington, where President Obama abandoned his goal of ending America’s involvement in the Afghan war this year and instead extended the United States military mission beyond 2016.
Around Kunduz, accounts by residents and officials make it clear that the city is still suffering under Taliban threat.
Insurgent fighters regularly stage attacks on government checkpoints in the area and are sometimes bold enough to set up daytime roadblocks just a few miles outside the city center. Trade has slowed to a trickle. When the sun is up, the city center is crowded, but the streets empty as night falls, quiet except for the occasional sound of gunfire and rockets exploding on the outskirts of town. The buildings destroyed during the Taliban’s brief reign remain unrepaired amid uncertainty about the future, and the hospital run by Doctors without Borders, destroyed by an American airstrike, will not reopen until security is assured, the organization says.
While the insurgents were forced to abandon the city center, they have maintained their hold on strategic districts, including Chardara and Dashti Archi, from which they launched their September attack. That fact bodes poorly for the spring, when the insurgents traditionally increase the tempo of fighting.
Commander Nezam, who leads a militia in Kunduz, said that if government efforts to reinforce the city “don’t start now, Kunduz will fall permanently into the hands of the enemy and government forces will not be able to retake it.”
He added: “The enemy is fully equipped and armed now. We are worried that operations haven’t started.”
It was not lost on Kunduz residents that the city was freed only after direct help from American forces. The residents have demanded more support from the security forces, and new assurances that they will perform better.
For its part, the Afghan National Army insists it is taking the initiative.
“We are organizing the operation at the moment,” said Ghulam Hazrat, a spokesman for the Afghan Army’s 20th division in Kunduz. “Some small-scale military operations were initiated a few days ago, but had to be suspended because of poor weather.”
Waseh Basel, spokesman for the Kunduz governor’s office, said the security situation was “satisfactory,” though “people are not as hopeful as they were before the city fell.”
Still, he said: “Kunduz will not fall again because both the civil and military sectors are working together day and night. The military has carried out operations, and there will be more in the future.”
President Ashraf Ghani responded to the September debacle by announcing a shake-up of the police, military and intelligence services, but analysts said that the changes had so far not gone far enough.
Mr. Ghani also ordered local pro-government militias to join the government or disarm. In January, that led to at least one outbreak of violence when a militiaman shot and killed an Afghan soldier who was trying to disarm him. In the latest episode, the provincial governor’s secretary was killed on Tuesday under murky circumstances, and two local police officers were detained.
Officials here say that over all, there has been little progress in either incorporating or disarming the militias, leaving a danger that the warlords will again challenge the authorities in Kabul if confidence in Mr. Ghani’s government frays further.
“One of the problems in Kunduz is that you’ve got this Venn diagram of actors,” said Ted Callahan, a security adviser who has worked extensively in northern Afghanistan. “Their interests sometimes intersect and they may eventually cooperate against the Taliban.”
But in the meantime, those warlords, whose loyalty to the government has been suspect at times, “are arming up,” he said, and there are concerns that another failure by the army to hold Kunduz could lead to a further loss of government authority in the region.
As a sign of their confidence, the Taliban recently issued an edict that they said applied to all of Kunduz Province and was a direct throwback to their harsh rule in the late 1990s. The insurgents demanded that all women wear hijab, that men not shave. They also insisted on an end to the use of tobacco, drugs and alcohol, and a ban on “vulgar movies” and music.
Insurgents even try to dictate which cellphone carriers people should use, Mr. Azyanfar, the literature student, said. The Taliban have warned Kunduz residents not to use service provided by companies that ignored its proclamation that cellphones not be used after sunset. Three times, Mr. Azyanfar said, he had seen people at insurgent roadblocks “forced to break down their MTN/Salam SIM cards and swallow them. People are scared to death.”
Geeta Yaftali, formerly a project manager at the Empowerment Center for Women in Kunduz, quit her post and fled to Kabul after the city fell, as the militants systematically sought out women’s rights advocates for punishment. “The security situation in Kunduz is not promising,” she said, adding: “Anything can happen when you are advocating there, whether you are alone or surrounded by 10 men or women, you can still be targeted very easily.”
Jan Mohammad, a shopkeeper in the central Chowk area of Kunduz City, felt the Taliban’s return was inevitable: “The Taliban are powerful and the government is not really paying much attention.”
“If nothing changes, I believe by summer that we will once again see Taliban taking over Kunduz City,” he said. “If that happens, you have to be prepared to obey them.” http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/world/asia/kunduz-residents-live-in-fear-of-talibans-return.html?_r=0