Afghan Experiment Marked by Progress And Disillusionment

Boys in a classroom at the Nahrebullah School in Karabagh sit on a new carpet and listen to their teacher. In the past, the school had only concrete floors. (Pam Constable - Twp)

KARABAGH, Afghanistan -- When Mahmad Naib ventured back to his village, north of Kabul, after U.S. warplanes and Afghan fighters drove out the Taliban militia in November 2001, he found little but scorched earth. The grapevines were dead, the houses looted, the mosque in ruins and the magnificent sycamores burned black.

Today, the resettled mud-and-timber village is surrounded by ripening grapes and obscured by a thicket of new restaurants, workshops and gas stations lining the nearby Shomali highway. The roar of fast traffic drowns out the ping of hammers as workers erect a shiny tin dome on the half-restored village mosque.

"Life is hard, but it is peaceful, and that is what matters most," said Naib, 55, a mason who was shoveling debris Thursday out of the newly plastered mosque. "We do have our complaints. Wages are low, water is scarce, and the government never dug the wells it promised. But . . . by God's grace, we will finish this mosque in time for Ramadan."

One day after he spoke, a massive car bombing killed 16 people in Kabul, the capital, 30 miles to the south. The brazen midday attack underscored the fragility of peace in Afghanistan today, nearly five years after the overthrow of the Taliban rulers who imposed an extreme form of Islam and harbored Osama bin Laden.

Since late 2001, the country of 25 million people has undergone an ambitious experiment, backed by international troops, expertise and aid, to bring modern democracy to an impoverished, deeply conservative Muslim society.

On some levels, there has been remarkable progress: presidential and parliamentary elections, a new constitution, a new national army and greater freedoms for women. In poor but stable communities such as Karabagh, halting social and economic gains have been made: a part-time nurse in a clinic, carpets in a school where students once crouched on concrete, a grape harvest that is approaching half the pre-Taliban crop.

But in the southern provinces that spawned the Taliban movement, open warfare has resumed after four years of relative quiet. Insurgents are battling NATO troops and employing suicide bombs. Thousands of villagers have fled their homes, to escape both insurgent violence and NATO airstrikes. Schools have shut down, and development projects have stopped.

At the same time, opium poppy cultivation, virtually wiped out by the Taliban, has soared to record levels, largely in the south. Nationwide it increased by 59 percent in the past year alone, according to new U.N. figures. Drug traffickers have formed protective alliances with the Islamic insurgents.

"The situation in the south is difficult and fragile," said Mark Laity, a spokesman here for NATO forces. "We are conducting a number of offensives, but the Taliban have also been pushing hard. They are taking heavy casualties but standing their ground more. Our strategy is still to create secure spaces for development and governance, but the effort is taking longer and involving a lot more combat than expected."

NATO's commanding general, citing the surprising toughness of the insurgents, called last week on member nations to provide as many as 2,500 additional troops for the south. But the proposal faces questions in European capitals about the risks involved. Since taking responsibility for the south from U.S.-led forces at the beginning of August, NATO has lost 35 troops.

Senior Taliban leaders and al-Qaeda figures, including bin Laden, who is widely believed to be hiding in the wilds along the Afghan-Pakistani border, meanwhile continue to elude capture. Afghan officials have repeatedly accused neighboring Pakistan of allowing Taliban insurgents to find refuge in the border region.

In recent months, the violence has spread to the Kabul area and the east, creating a sense of insecurity that now overshadows all other national concerns. Even in the north and west, where the insurgency has hardly reached, many people today express dismay with the government of President Hamid Karzai. They say it remains weak and distant, that public services and protection are grossly inadequate, and that commanders from the war against Soviet troops in the 1980s often hold extortionate sway over daily life.