Khost: A US war snared in Afghan realities

In Afghanistan's Khost province on the border with Pakistan, the US military has completed several reconstruction projects to win public support, but the unrest has shown no sign of letting up. And never have the US soldiers been more disliked. The troops have become victims of their own errors and the tribal complexities here, illustrating the difficulties of a mission the United States says will be "much tougher" than the one in Iraq. The United States likes to showcase Khost as a difficult province where it has succeeded in bringing development despite the risks associated with being so close to Pakistan's tribal zones -- known Taliban and Al-Qaeda refuges. US aid has led to the construction or renovation of several dozen kilometres (miles) of roads, eight administration buildings, 27 health centres and 48 schools since 2001, according to US government figures. Such reconstruction is part of a counterinsurgency strategy based on winning over the public and drying up support for the rebels. But the violence here has increased: there were 18 insurgent attacks in 2004, 50 in 2005, 107 in 2006, 165 in 2007, and 196 in 2008, according to provincial police counterinsurgency chief Razuddin, who has only one name. Local leaders told AFP this deterioration in security may in part be due to militant activity in Pakistan, but was also a consequence of US errors that had alienated ordinary people in Khost. "Today the people in this region hate the Americans whereas they were welcomed when they arrived in 2001," said Raza Nawaz Tani, head of an association of tribal chiefs in the eastern province. Some of the chiefs said they could not understand why the US military did not attack insurgent bases in Pakistan instead of villages in Afghanistan. They condemned the mistakes of the US military in Khost -- its troops killed nine Afghan soldiers and 14 security guards in error last autumn, they said -- and believed this was pushing youths to join the rebels. "Ninety percent of the victims of their operations are civilians," claimed Khan Sardar, a tribal elder from the Spera district. Night-time raids and searches of women are a particular problem for locals, who are from the conservative and proud Pashtun tribe that spans the border. "For the Pashtuns, if a man comes uninvited into my home at night and touches a woman in my family, I have the right to kill him, without consequence, because that is a crime," said an Afghan working for an international organisation in the region who asked to remain anonymous. A US military spokesman in Khost, Patrick Seiber, said however that night raids were "effective -- that's what we do when the enemy is there." The US military has a formidable task in the area, where the enemy mainly favours random attacks such as suicide bombings -- "asymmetric warfare" in military speak. But it does not even have the confidence of the Afghan police, meant to be its main ally, although said to be deeply corrupt. "They never tell us about their operations," said Razuddin. "They do them and then call us so we are in the photograph at the end." He acknowledged though that some Afghans give false information to troops so they target their tribal enemies, mistakenly thinking they are insurgents. Some of these rivalries are rooted in the 1980s when Afghans either supported the Soviet occupation or fought it. "People denounce their personal enemies over any kind of dispute," said Khan Sardar, the elder from Spera. But beyond that, people are "exasperated" with the foreign military presence, he said. "Many ask themselves if the Americans are here to help the country or to occupy it," he added. The new US administration of President Barack Obama has acknowledged that it needs a new approach in Afghanistan. It is expected to bring in up to 30,000 more troops from this year in an Iraq-style "surge." But the new US envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, said at a security conference in Germany at the weekend that the changes needed to go further. "What is required in my view is new ideas, better coordination within the US government, better coordination with our NATO allies and other concerned countries, and the time to get it right," Holbrooke said. "It is like no other problem we have confronted, and in my view it's going to be much tougher than Iraq."