IT WAS an undignified way to collect their dead but the two old men toiling in 40C heat had little choice.
“This is my nephew Abdul Qadir,” said Mohammed Zagzai, 60, leaning over one of four bodies. “I was told I could find him here. He was taken prisoner, then executed.”
The dead men, soldiers loyal to Ismail Khan, Herat’s governor, lay side by side in a ruined outpost near Shindand airport, western Afghanistan. Wrapping each of the corpses in tarpaulins, the men dragged them to a truck.
The heat, effort and emotion finally proved too much as Mr Zagzai’s companion fell to the ground. He lay panting alongside the latest victims of fighting near Herat which threatens to destabilise the entire west of Afghanistan.
More than 50 people were killed and more than 100 are missing after Amanullah Khan, a renegade Pashtun warlord, made a grab last week for Herat, the capital of Afghanistan’s most prosperous province.
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His forces took Shindand military airport in the south of the province and fought their way to within 19 miles (30km) of Herat. The advance halted only at the demand of Kabul, an order backed by a hasty deployment of Afghan National Army troops and their US coalition advisers between the two sides.
Both Amanullah Khan and his opponent, Ismail Khan, who as well as being governor and a Tajik, is a veteran jihadi, were threatened with US airstrikes during the fighting according to US officials — a rugged interpretation of the coalition’s policy of neutrality on inter-Afghan fighting.
“Herat was as close to being captured as at any time since the Taleban seized it in 1995,” a senior coalition officer said. “Civil war? We’re damn close to it. We’ve got a rogue commander out there taking on a provincial governor.”
Amanullah Khan’s forces pillaged, robbed and murdered after their advance. Among the dead were numerous victims of alleged murder.Ismail Khan’s brother, sister and brother-in-law are confirmed as missing, reportedly dead. American military intelligence is conducting an investigation into the reports of war crimes.
“At present the military is looking into matters with a view to war crimes charges against Amanullah,” an American military official in Herat said. “What becomes of those investigations is another matter though.”
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Since a shaky ceasefire announced last Tuesday, Amanullah’s forces have made new gains, including Kalat-i-Nazar, a lucrative border post with Iran.
Yet despite his conduct the warlord, a former Taleban commander with no official post, has the apparent backing of some members of President Karzai’s administration. He appears to be employed as a pawn to humiliate Ismail Khan — in the tradition of Afghan government intrigue.
At his new headquarters in Shindand airbase, the country’s second largest military airfield, which he now shares with Afghan Army troops and US officers, Amanullah Khan claims only to be leading a popular uprising against Ismail Khan.
“For too long his cruel face has oppressed the Pashtuns,” Amanullah Khan smiled. “There was no plot against him, just a popular resistance which I lead for my people. If he remains in power then fighting will spread throughout the region.”
Ismail Kahn has long attracted hostility in Kabul. A former Mujahidin commander, he has carved Herat into an affluent fiefdom almost independent from central Government. Public works projects have inflated an economy boosted by customs revenues from trade with Iran. There is an electricity supply, running water, paved roads and shops filled with goods.
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This comes at the expense of a downtrodden Pashtun majority, no free press, and Ismail Khan’s rejection of Kabul officials posted to the province. Even though he remits $8 million (about £4.5 million) a month to Kabul, many government officials accuse him of embezzlement.
Ismail Khan, 58, cut an isolated figure in his palace yesterday. He accused Kabul’s Minister for Tribal Affairs, Arif Noorzai, of allying the Pashtun forces against him under Amanullah. “For two years Amanullah Khan failed to capture so much as a village from me,” he said. “This time Arif Noorzai succeeded in unifying the forces against me. I was attacked from the north, east and south simultaneously. It wasn’t just Noorzai that backed them, there were others in the Government, who I don’t want to name.”
He is outraged that the Government, rather than condemning Amanullah, had sent a delegation to discuss an end to the stand-off.
United Nations officials admit privately that rather than demanding Amanullah’s withdrawal from Shindand, the Government is examining ways to replace Ismail Khan as governor with an official from Kabul, thus roping Herat back into central control ahead of October elections.
But they fear that Ismail Khan’s men may react to his dismissal with their own guerrilla campaign. “He’s like some old mafiosi don who wants to turn legit and throw in the towel,” a US intelligence officer said. “But he don’t know quite how yet, and he won’t throw in the towel till the other guys back off. Would you?”
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