Go out just beyond the walls of the Grenadier Guards’ fort here at Shawqat and it is possible to get a glimpse of what Nato’s exit ticket from Afghanistan could look like. Could, possibly, maybe and perhaps – with quite a few ifs too.
Go out just beyond the walls of the Grenadier Guards’ fort here at Shawqat and it is possible to get a glimpse of what Nato’s exit ticket from Afghanistan could look like. Could, possibly, maybe and perhaps – with quite a few ifs too.
It is Habbibullah’s offices. He, being the district governor here, in a place which has known no government for eight years – simply the Talibs with their mullahs, headed notepaper and their own style of dispensing justice.
And that was popular in many quarters and not without its benefits. Certainly a long way from the awful, corrosive corruption of the Karzai regime in Kabul.
But the Habbibullahs of this world are in some way’s Nato’s only real way out of the mess they have shot their way into in this country.
Because if you walk into his offices you see brand new signs for the Irrigation Office, Statistics Office and so forth. Inside, look! There are actual officials actually officiating.
True, there’s also a family of swallows currently building a nest in the main corridor but that merely adds a little rural charm to the place.
And outside you see two things. First a large crowd of Afghans patiently waiting to have their papers verified. And across the dusty dirt road a large building site – soon to be a whole new District Government Office. The brickies are working away furiously today.
Can proper government really take hold? Will these apparently diligent officials and the benign Habbibullah in his bulbous black turban really deliver? Or will they line their pockets like so many others?
Possibly they can bring real lasting governance to this place – though there is little history of that. But they need security.
And security that Nato for all its firepowers, cannot possibly provide.
But people are worried. Ask those in the queue outside and they complain about President Obama wanting to pull out Nato troops. They do not believe the new Afghan army can take on the Talibs – still less the police and why?
Because there is so much more to the insurgents than the narrow Taliban ideology.
A doctor approaches and me and says:
“The Taliban are not just the problem. It is Iran and Pakistan, always interfering in our country. They use the Taliban or whoever. Our army cannot beat this pressure, this interfering.”
So you need to be braver than ever to become an official around here. They know – everybody knows – the Talibs have not been defeated – just displaced. And they are watching and waiting.
Watching a Nato arsenal who and they look east at Pakistan interfering. And west, across the deserts, to Iran – also interfering.