In Afghanistan's South, Mixed Signals for Help

"Musa Qala has proved to be a very good deal," said Maj. Luke Knittig, a U.S. Army officer and the chief NATO spokesman in Kabul. "After the agreement, there were 34 days of calm, which led us to believe the elders had made good on their word." However, he added: "We have our eyes closely on Musa Qala. If we see it being used as a launching pad for attacks, we will go back and address that."

President Hamid Karzai defended the pact last week against criticism that it has been a major concession to the Taliban. Speaking on Radio Free Europe, he said he had complete trust in the region's elders and in their promise not to allow any "saboteurs" in Musa Qala. However, Karzai also expressed concern about reports that a local Islamic cleric was humiliated by Taliban fighters and that a senior tribal leader had disappeared.

Karzai's embrace of the agreement stands in marked contrast to the skepticism he and other Afghan officials have shown toward two similar peace deals reached this fall between the government of Pakistan and tribal leaders in districts abutting the Afghan border. Those districts are widely believed to serve as havens for Islamic extremists and al-Qaeda fugitives who train insurgents and send them across the border to fight against Afghan and NATO forces.

Some observers here worry that the Musa Qala deal is not only setting a tone of conciliation toward the insurgency, but that it also means Karzai and his foreign defenders are falling back on Afghanistan's tribal system of jergas, or informal consensual agreements, at the expense of modern democratic institutions.

"This is the wrong way to solve things," said Noorulhaq Olemi, a member of parliament who chairs its security and defense committee. "Our problem is that we have a weak government. We need a better national army and police. We need reconciliation with the people, not with terrorists. If we go back to the tribal system and jergas, we could end up with the country divided into pieces."

Although Helmand residents disagree on the issue of negotiating with the Taliban, many express common anger and disillusionment with regional authorities. Both the Greshk women and the Nau Zad elders said that many police and civilian officials in Helmand are abusive and corrupt, and that this problem is creating local support for the Taliban.

The diplomats and academics on the Joint Coordination and Monitoring Board agreed, stating in their report that the factors driving the insurgency in the south include poor government services, corrupt officials and lack of law enforcement. In Helmand especially, they added, the "scourge of the narcotics industry" has significantly helped fuel the insurgency.

"When there is an absence in basic service delivery by the government, people inevitably look to alternative sources," the report said. "Only by eliminating corruption can the government diminish the freedom of operation that insurgents and drug traffickers now enjoy."

To the women from Greshk, who include government teachers and professionals, the Musa Qala agreement is a frightening example of authority caving in to powerful miscreants. One member of the delegation said the Taliban and its criminal allies had already built a plane runway and a heroin laboratory in Musa Qala.

But to the elders from Nau Zad, mostly poor farmers whose homes and livelihoods have been savaged by months of fighting, Musa Qala represents a model for peace that they desperately hope can be replicated in their district.

"Some people call it a Taliban agreement, but that is wrong," said Mohammed Anwar, a member of parliament from Nau Zad who hosted the visiting elders in Kabul. "The foreign Taliban are terrorists, but the local Taliban are the sons of Afghanistan. They will speak with us and live under the flag with us. If the government cannot bring security and stop this terrible bombing, they should let the elders try."