Helmand province once boasted an astonishing population of more than 1 million. Now, after years of violence and corruption, only about 300,000 people remain, half the population in 2000. While the international military effort has helped reduce the area occupied by the Taliban and other extremists, this terrain remains blighted by poppy growing, high unemployment and no health care.
On a dirt road that is lined with mud brick structures that double as brothels, men waiting for jobs tell of how unemployment in Helmand has reached 100 percent. One businessman who ran a fruit factory was so angry that he killed himself and his daughters when he realized he would never be able to pay for their funerals. A 35-year-old former teacher has been forced to turn to prostitution. He earns 1,200 afghanis a day ($17) – an amount not enough to feed the five children he has on his own.
In the eyes of many Afghans, the international military mission that has kept the Taliban from taking over this once-pristine area is nothing more than a paper tiger. Nowhere is that more evident than in the overcrowded governor’s compound in Lashkar Gah, Helmand’s capital. The Taliban have cut phone lines and are known to use insurgent hired gunmen to walk the streets. A watchman in the governor’s compound told me how he once saw one of the Taliban come in with a gun pointed towards me. The guard called the guards, only to hear me calling to the chief of the compound over the police radio. Instead of finding the gunman, the guard was sent to deal with me. At the time, I was not aware that he was on the Taliban payroll.
President Hamid Karzai recently ordered an increase in security forces. The military responded by issuing orders that almost exclusively benefit women – something that Afghans love to hate because it’s seen as not catering to the needs of men.
Each outpost on the increasingly perilous Helmand border is administered by two female officers. The order comes down from the governor himself, who, in a twist, holds an honorable female rank higher than a male. One such woman, Kundu Gul, recently asked me to go with her and her force into some Taliban territory. Gul, a 29-year-old mother of two, said that recently she was sent on a secret mission to the center of town, where she had to face the insurgency. While some wanted to kill her, she told me that others wanted to raise a banner that reads “Afghan women defend their own rights.”
The Afghan government is rapidly losing touch with its people in Helmand. Karzai issued a statement denouncing this undercover mission. His deputy, Abdul Raziq, the head of Helmand’s provincial council, then ordered the women be removed. The women’s forces have been sent home, yet Kundu Gul insisted that “the men will die first.”
One of the most sensitive issues in Afghanistan has been women’s rights – the constitution grants them equal rights, but includes caveats that have made human rights gains hugely difficult.
Afghanistan’s head-of-state, an elderly man who hails from Qalat, has in recent years become one of the world’s most glaring female hypocrisy artists. He’s endured much criticism in his country for refusing to address sexual abuse of women in his own family. He once declared that the president’s official residence should be available to only men. Under his tenure as head of state, his government has pushed hard for a strict interpretation of Sharia law.
Helmand remains a textbook example of how a well-intentioned international military presence fails to achieve its most important goal. American troops have built enough roads to move supplies from the capital to the rest of the province, yet much of the territory has long since been vacated by aid workers and the Taliban. “A lot of the work was already being done by the Afghan army,” said U.S. commander Gen. John Nicholson, in an attempt to deflect criticism that he’s lost the support of the locals.
“How long can we stay here if we are not going to put something concrete up?” asked a senior leader in Helmand. “Do they have the guns