America Failed Kunduz Long Before It Bombed a Hospital
by
Anand Gopal
Many Americans had never heard of Kunduz until last week, when bombs from a U.S. AC-130 gunship slammed into a Medecins Sans Frontieres hospital, killing more than 20 people and burning sections of the building to a crisp. But the attack was, in fact, just the latest in a series of tragedies unleashed by U.S. and Afghan policy on the small northern province, the result of an experiment to use private armed groups to fight terror that has gone horribly wrong.
The region of Aqtash, which lies east of the M.S.F. hospital in Kunduz city, contains some two dozen villages of mud and stone. Standing at the main intersection there four years ago, I could see six or seven flags perched atop various houses, each marking the territory of different anti-Taliban militias that had been created by the Afghan government and the United States. It was harvest season, the time of year when the militiamen go house to house demanding taxes and food. Earlier, one group had erected a checkpoint on the road leading into a village; not to be outdone, rival groups began setting up checkpoints of their own. To reach the main bazaar, you would have to pass up to a dozen checkpoints, surrendering a transit fee at each. That morning, the turf jostling spilled over into direct conflict. Two anti-Taliban groups opened fire on each other, reportedly leaving three dead.
Under the circumstances, people stayed home unless absolutely necessary, but even the indoors was no refuge. The week before, I was told that a militia fighter, who was part of the U.S. program to train and equip anti-Taliban militias, had broken into someone’s house. “He found a girl alone in there and raped her,” Muhammad Hafiz, his commander, told me. “He escaped and we don’t know where he went.” Hafiz promised an investigation. Families were loathe to let women out of sight. Girls stopped going to school, but being a boy didn’t always help. When visiting a militia compound, I learned from villagers that a boy had recently been brought onto the base to spend the night. The commander at the compound is said to have denied it, but later one of his fighters was more forthcoming. “The Taliban used to throw bodies in the river,” he told me. “We were just having fun.”
A few months after my visit, I was told the anti-Taliban militias of Aqtash erupted in clashes again when one commander kidnapped a bacha ba-rish, a boy sex slave, belonging to another group. Seven were killed and many more wounded. In time, families with access to weapons began arming themselves to protect against the militias. Some, who could afford it, tried to flee. And others, especially Pashtuns, invited the Taliban into their village as protection.
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/10/kunduz-hospital-bombing-militias-afghanistan
