Emran Feroz | Vox

The coronavirus pandemic hasn’t stopped the war in Afghanistan

2020-04-15T19:43:10-04:00

A security personnel stops motorists at a checkpoint during a government-imposed lockdown in Kabul, on April 8. | Wakil Kohsar/AFP via Getty Images

The Taliban in Afghanistan signed a peace agreement with the United States on February 29 and stopped attacking American forces there.

But there’s no peace agreement between the Taliban and the Afghan government — which means fighting between the two has continued unabated, even amid the coronavirus pandemic.

On March 20, Taliban fighters attacked an outpost in Zabul province and killed at least 24 Afghan soldiers, which caused outrage across the country. One day later, an Afghan government airstrike in Kunduz province killed 13 civilians, including 10 children. Two weeks ago, Afghan troops killed or wounded at least nine Taliban insurgents in Jawzjan province.

“This is wrong, and it needs to stop. Especially now,” said Dr. Sayed Shah, a medic from Afghanistan’s Baghlan province. Shah’s concerns are shared by many Afghans who are frustrated that the Taliban and the Afghan National Army are continuing to fight while the coronavirus spreads across the country.

As of April 15, Afghanistan has reported 784 Covid-19 cases and 26 deaths, but observers and medics on the ground believe the real number of infections could be much higher. A majority of the infected people are from Herat province, which shares a border with Iran, a country that has been hit heavily by the pandemic.

Overall, there is a shortage of coronavirus tests and ventilators in the country. The World Health Organization (WHO) has provided Afghanistan 1,500 testing kits, yet only two laboratories in the country are equipped with machines that can process test samples. And according to the Ministry of Public Health, Afghanistan only has 300 ventilators — for the entire country.

International observers have urged both the Afghan government and the Taliban to immediately stop fighting and start working with the United Nations and aid agencies to improve access to health care to save as many lives as possible.

Unfortunately, it seems both parties are unwilling to cooperate. And they’re not the only ones: The Afghan government itself is divided, with two rival politicians both claiming to be the legitimate president of Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, the coronavirus continues to spread.

“A very toilsome procedure”

Every day, 50 to 100 patients visit Shah’s small medical office. “We try testing everyone who was in Herat or who used to have contact with people from there. We are also focusing on people with general symptoms,” Shah said.

He described how he and other medics were taking samples of suspected infected patients and sending them to the capital, Kabul. But — in part because of the ongoing fighting — that’s “a very toilsome procedure,” he told Vox.

The route to Kabul takes at least four hours just because of the distance, and includes passing through the mountainous Salang Pass with its decades-old roads. But often, even travel within Baghlan itself is virtually impossible because of the almost daily skirmishes between insurgents and security forces.

“Baghlan always used to be a violence hot spot, but these days it’s totally unbearable. They [soldiers and insurgents] should lay down their arms and work as health workers to save lives,” Mohammad Shahzad, a local merchant, told me.

On at least one occasion recently, power in the region was cut off due to clashes between Taliban fighters and Afghan soldiers in Baghlan. “They endanger the lives of patients. It was not just us who lost power. Large parts of the country were affected,” Shah said.

The Taliban denied that their operations caused the power outage and claimed instead that a power pole was damaged “because of weather circumstances.”

Attacks by government forces are escalating too. A recent airstrike killed two children in Baghlan’s Chashm-e Sher region and wounded several other civilians.

All of this is going on while physicians like Shah struggle to get the basic supplies they need to test and treat their patients. “I don’t have any tools to test anyone. Many local medics all over Afghanistan are in the same situation. We don’t have a simple laboratory for tests,” Shah said. “Let’s be realistic. We are not prepared for this crisis.”

To be fair, few if any countries were adequately prepared to deal with this pandemic. But Afghanistan’s political situation made it even less prepared than most.

The timing of the political chaos couldn’t be worse

Incumbent President Ashraf Ghani and CEO Abdullah Abdullah both declared themselves the winners of the country’s presidential election in October 2019, and both conducted separate inauguration ceremonies last month. Several politicians and strongmen are reportedly busy trying to resolve the differences between Ghani and Abdullah, but no official word has been released.

It’s not the first time this has happened: After the 2014 presidential elections, Abdullah disputed the results showing that Ghani had won and refused to concede. Fearing the collapse of the political system and the outbreak of violence, then-Secretary of State John Kerry negotiated a compromise: Ghani was declared president, while Abdullah was given the newly created position of CEO, a pro forma head of government position that does not actually exist in Afghanistan’s constitution.

But coming amid the coronavirus pandemic, the timing of the political chaos this time around couldn’t be worse. Rather than working together to prevent the spread of Covid-19, Ghani and Abdullah are vying for power, each trying to depict himself as the country’s savior, the one best prepared to lead the fight against the virus.

President Ghani and his cabinet members appear with masks and gloves from time to time and have stopped hugging each other when greeting. They also mentioned the virus in several speeches and statements and called on the people to take the disease seriously.

In reality, though, neither camp is succeeding in providing an adequate response to the crisis. Additionally, the US government said it was cutting $1 billion in aid to Afghanistan this year, and potentially another $1 billion in 2021, after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo failed to persuade Ghani and Abdullah in a meeting in Kabul in late March to support a unified government.

Meanwhile, the Taliban has started its own anti-coronavirus campaign. In Herat’s Shindand district, which is largely controlled by the insurgents, a Taliban Health Commission gathered “to raise public awareness” and “prevent the spread of the virus.”

“The spread of Covid-19 is an important issue for us. We have taken all measures to fight against it as strong as possible, and we also have a structured plan,” Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid told Vox.

He said his group has already put several people under quarantine and that Taliban fighters are traveling to remote villages via motorcycles to distribute leaflets, soap bars, and hand sanitizer. “We are especially focusing on returnees from Iran and told them that they should start a self-quarantine,” Mujahid said.

With the country’s leadership bitterly divided and Afghan and Taliban forces continuing their bloody civil war, Afghanistan’s response to the pandemic has been dysfunctional, to say the least.

“The spiraling COVID-19 crisis puts millions of Afghans at risk, yet Afghan officials are consumed with infighting and the Taliban with adversarial posturing,” said Patricia Gossman, associate Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The two sides need to work together with the UN and humanitarian agencies to ensure that aid reaches the whole country, or a dire situation will become catastrophic.”

A few glimmers of hope that things may be improving

Two weeks ago, the Taliban declared they would uphold a ceasefire in areas under their control if they are hit by a coronavirus outbreak. The group also said they would guarantee the security of health and aid workers traveling to their areas offering assistance to prevent the spread of the virus.

And, after days of waiting, Herat has finally been put under quarantine by the government. Kabul is also facing a shutdown, and for the first time in years, many famous places like the Mandaii, the capital’s historic open-air market, are almost completely empty.

Still, many Afghans are not satisfied with the reaction from either side regarding the crisis and have decided to take things into their own hands.

Some well-known Afghan singers have composed songs about Covid-19 and shared them on social media. One of them, sung by famous singer Farhad Darya, was even used by local security forces to raise awareness.

In Afghanistan’s southeastern province of Khost, young activists are taking the fight against the spread of the virus seriously. “People, especially in remote areas, don’t know anything about the virus. They have not ever heard of corona. It would end in a catastrophe if they remain uninformed,” said Shah Mohammad Takal, a local activist.

In recent days, Takal and other activists have reached out to remote villages to try to inform people, many of whom are illiterate, about the dangers of Covid-19. They also printed leaflets with symbols to make the information as comprehensible as possible and spread them in villages and on the streets in the city.

These efforts seem to be having an effect, as measures have begun to ban overcrowding in public places in several provinces. In Khost, several hotels have already closed, and all types of meetings have been prohibited for the time being.

Public health officials are also trying to scan many travelers coming into the city by taking their temperatures or asking them questions about their health. Over the past several days, 8,000 masks, soap bars, and blankets have been distributed to the public in Khost.

Still, Takal said, “It’s just a matter of time until we record the first infection in Khost.”

“Western countries are struggling [to fight the virus], so you can imagine how difficult it is for Afghanistan,” Takal said. “But we try our best.”

Emran Feroz is a freelance journalist and author and is the founder of Drone Memorial, a virtual memorial for civilian drone strike victims. Find him on Twitter @Emran_Feroz.

Mohammad Zaman is a journalist based in Khost, Afghanistan, who regularly works for Afghan media outlets and radio channels.

America’s failure in Afghanistan, explained by one village

2020-02-21T18:09:42-05:00

Young Afghan children look on as a US soldier secures the area in the Logar Province, Afghanistan, on August 22, 2009. The Logar Province is roughly an hour away from the Mussahi District. | Manan Vatsyayana/AFP via Getty Images

MUSSAHI DISTRICT, Kabul Province, Afghanistan — A small group of men, and children who quickly grow bored, are standing by the riverside. All of them are staring at the contraption before them: a small water pump that, despite their best efforts, won’t turn on.

A young man tries to set it in motion by pushing at the gear and pulling at the engine, all the while staring at the tube protruding from the lifeless pump. The water in the river remains still and calm. The pump, sent by a relative who spent the last two decades in Germany, simply will not work.

It’s an all too typical story in the Mussahi District of Kabul Province, 30 kilometers (around 19 miles) south of the capital itself, where many things have not functioned for some time. Much like Mussahi’s water pump, most of Afghanistan isn’t functioning either, at least outside the major cities.

And even if the newly reelected president, Ashraf Ghani, does his best to try to improve things, he’ll have a hard time holding off the Taliban.

Eighteen years after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, the capital city of Kabul has gone through several transformations. The city is now dotted with high-rises that fill the skyline, roads that are slowly being paved, and newly renovated monuments of eras gone by.

A small, burgeoning moneyed class is also fueling the slow growth of Western-style coffee shops complete with $1 lattes while more than half of the country’s population is living on less than $1 a day. This transformation has been topped off with mansions and fancy wedding halls — secured places and compounds where urban elites display their wealth.

However, only a short drive south of the city lies a different world, one that has been left behind by the years of poverty and war. Mussahi has been a part of Kabul Province for decades now, but it is one of the districts of the province that is de facto controlled by the Taliban.

This will also not change after the final results of the recent presidential elections were released earlier this week. After five months of waiting, current President Ashraf Ghani has been declared the winner while his main opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, rejected the result and said he will form his own “inclusive government.”

But both Abdullah and Ghani lost in rural places like Mussahi.

During the presidential election campaigns last autumn, while the political elites in the city celebrated their version of Afghan democracy, the people of Mussahi were shut out from the political process entirely.

Nightly Taliban checkpoints meant they could not travel to the capital to address the candidates directly during their live televised interviews. The lack of Army presence meant none of the candidates came to campaign in a district of Kabul.

And on election day, the very real threat of Taliban attack meant the polling stations remained closed.

Mussahi is a prime example of exactly what went wrong in Afghanistan

The signs of the US-backed government’s failure are written all over Mussahi, and many residents express their dissatisfaction with the nation’s leadership. Many also support the Taliban.

In Mussahi, soldiers of the Afghan National Army, which was created and trained by the US and its allies after 2001, are disregarded. The soldiers know that it is Taliban country and that they may risk their lives entering it. Few of them appear for Friday prayers, and when they do, they look insecure and nervous.

“They just want to leave as soon as possible. They know that nobody wants to see them here,” says a resident.

The truth is that few, if any, of the soldiers can make it past their checkpoint on the bridge that marks the entrance to the district itself.

Several residents I spoke to complained about corrupt local government officials and told me they support the Taliban because, unlike the government officials, the Taliban actually gets things done. For instance, longstanding family feuds are finally being resolved in Taliban courts.

“This is [the Taliban’s] court. They have the control here,” said a local who wanted to remain unnamed. Many rural districts in Afghanistan are already fully controlled by or under the influence of the Taliban. According to various estimates, more than half of the country is contested or controlled by them.

As the recently published “Afghanistan Papers” revealed, this reality has largely gone ignored in both Washington and Kabul. Instead, the US government tried to paint a different picture of the war, one dominated by lies and false facts.

Mussahi is a prime example of exactly what went wrong over the last 18 years.

Washington has poured more than $2 trillion into the country over the last 18 years. But the only “aid” that can be found in Mussahi is a defective German water pump from the 1950s.

“There has not been any other aid. We have many problems here, especially with farming. But as you can see, we have to figure out how this pump works. It is sad that we remained that backward, but nobody is interested in our cause,” said Mohammad Azif, a farmer from Mussahi.

Like many other Afghans, Azif hopes that peace talks with the Taliban will be successful so that he and his fellow villagers could solely focus on rebuilding their homes. “We can live in poverty but not without peace. We cannot move freely at night. There is always fighting between the army and the insurgents. We need a peace deal that serves the interests of all Afghans,” he underlined.

Mohammad Shaheen, who lives in Kabul but visits Mussahi regularly with his family, believes that the government will continue to be careless about the daily problems of the villagers. “This is the closest district to the capital. The presidential palace is 15 kilometers from here, but we have so many problems here in terms of economy and security. The government does not care,” he said.

Mussahi may be a stone’s throw from the palace, a part of the province both the president and chief executive have resided in for decades, but the people here continue to feel politically helpless.

Rural Afghanistan almost doesn’t exist in the minds of many urbanites

Mussahi is just one example out of many. Often, it appears as though rural Afghanistan does not exist in the minds of many urbanites. Especially in Kabul, political elites have always lived in their own bubble.

This is nothing new: When the British tried to take over Afghanistan in the 19th and 20th centuries, their installed monarchs ruled in Kabul while rural Afghans organized resistance. When the Soviets invaded the country in 1979, people in the cities benefited from housing projects and infrastructure, while rural villages were wiped off the map by the Soviet Red Army and its Afghan Communist allies.

Ashraf Ghani’s government has not been able to change this long-standing reality. Instead, it became part of it and created its very own bubble. His government largely consists of Westernized technocrats, often with dual citizenships, who sometimes are not able to speak the local languages.

This can be observed in every aspect of life. In the context of ongoing peace talks with the Taliban, for example, many rural Afghans like those in Mussahi welcome any kind of violence reduction and appear optimistic, while large parts of the country’s urban elites fear for their lucrative and powerful positions.

This might also be one of the main reasons why a finished deal has not yet been agreed to, although Washington and the Taliban underlined that their talks are going to come to an end at the end of this month and are signaling that a deal may be signed soon.

However, an upcoming intra-Afghan dialogue among the Taliban, Ghani’s government, and other political factions of the country must also be able to build a stable bridge between rural and urban Afghanistan.

When Ghani celebrated the 100th anniversary of Afghanistan’s independence in the newly renovated Dar-ul-Aman palace in Kabul last August, American airstrikes and night raids conducted by CIA-backed Afghan militias had dramatically increased in the country’s rural areas.

At the same time, insurgent violence escalated and large parts of the country were under Taliban control. Last but not least, Ghani’s entire government is dependent on economic and military aid from the US and its allies.

To many Afghans, it appeared more than paradoxical to celebrate an alleged independence under such circumstances.

Emran Feroz is a freelance journalist and author and is the founder of Drone Memorial, a virtual memorial for civilian drone strike victims. Follow him on Twitter @Emran_Feroz.