A NATO Bid to Regain Afghans' Trust

"Everything is confused now," he said. "At night we hear shooting and rockets, and we cannot light our lamps for fear of the Taliban. But if a mine explodes on the road, the army and coalition forces come and pressure us to find out who did it. The best thing to do is negotiate, but the Taliban will never negotiate as long as the foreign troops stay here."

One obstacle to security is the shortage of Afghan police and soldiers in the region. In terms of size and competence, the new national army and police force have lagged far behind what officials hoped for, so the government recently began recruiting and training local auxiliary police officers to serve in conflict zones such as Kandahar province.

The program has drawn praise and criticism. It gives men in poor rural areas an income and a vested interest in protecting their communities. But recruitment standards are low, training is cursory, and many who sign up are rejected because of hashish use or other habits.

Commander Ehsanullah Alizai, the provincial police chief, said that local elders and district officials are choosing applicants for the new force and that each recruit is further vetted by his office. But he acknowledged that the two weeks of training they will get are far from adequate.

"Of course it is not enough. It takes a lot of time and education to become a police officer. But this is an emergency," Alizai said, adding that 250 of the expected 1,000 new police officers have completed training and started work. "The security situation in Panjwai and Zhari was getting worse, and the government had to take action."

But the threat of further NATO bombing has not stopped the Taliban from launching new attacks, often against civilians. Last month, two insurgents on a motorbike ambushed Fazel Mahmad, a Panjwai elder, as he was taking his daughter to a doctor in Kandahar. Mahmad, who works with a government program that helps local insurgents return to civilian life, was shot in the neck and throat but survived after surgery at a NATO base.

"The local Taliban are sons of our soil, but the Taliban trained by al-Qaeda see all Afghans as infidels and Americans. They do not want any reconciliation," said Mahmad, who now speaks with a lisp. He said he saw many wounded Taliban fighters being treated at the NATO field hospital, where he said they cursed the medical staff and refused to eat.

In a second recent attack, insurgents opened fire on a clinic at a camp for nomads and refugees beside the highway from Kandahar to Panjwai and briefly kidnapped the doctor. Now the clinic building sits abandoned beside the colony of patched tents and thorn-bush camel corrals.

On Tuesday, several women in the refugee camp said they had fled there after airstrikes on their villages near Panjwai. One woman, Badro, shrieked and wept, saying two of her brothers and all the family's sheep and camels had been killed.

"Everyone is a witness. There were no Taliban there at all," she cried, shaking a fist. "The dead bodies of my family are still there. It is not safe to collect the pieces."

[On Sunday, a Pakistani suicide bomber detonated himself in Paktika province, killing 15 people and wounding 24, including an Afghan special forces commander, the Associated Press reported.]

The Afghan government has made efforts to console and aid survivors in Panjwai. Abdullah Shah said he was paid about $8,000 as compensation for his dead relatives. He was also taken to Kabul, where he said Karzai gave him a hug and promised him a new house.

Last week, the minister of rural development flew to Kandahar and met with a large group of elders from Panjwai, asking what they needed most. He was accompanied by Christopher Alexander, deputy U.N. representative for Afghanistan, who told them the goal was to transform their region "from this year's battlefield to next year's construction ground."

The delegation did not visit Panjwai because it was considered too dangerous, but Alexander said elders from several villages told him security was better because young men who had been fighting for the Taliban were now earning money on NATO construction projects. He also noted that several elders did not attend the Kandahar meeting, suggesting that they were suspicious of the government and sympathetic to the insurgents.

Mahmad, a fruit grower who remained in Panjwai that day, complained bitterly that the residents were trodden upon by everyone.

"We don't support the Taliban, but we don't want the foreign troops here, either," he said. "I blame President Karzai, too. If we had laws and honest government in this country, the Taliban wouldn't be fighting."