Shifting Afghan loyalties test US bid for permanent gains

But at night, those checkpoints disappear, and the Taliban erect their own roadblocks, illustrating how the struggle over Afghanistan’s future is not so much a pitched battle as a grinding tug-of-war.

As thousands of Marines begin offensives to retake battle-scarred southern provinces, the conflict with the greatest long-term importance for the war is taking place here, just half an hour’s drive south of Kabul.

Wardak is a place the US military already considers under its control. Yet, every day in this province of fertile valleys and apple orchards, a half-million Afghans must choose between casting their lot with the US troops, who return to their bases at night, or the Taliban, who hail from nearby villages and rule over vast, remote areas.

“During the day, there is no Taliban,’’ Lal Mohammad, a 24-year-old driver from Jalrez district, which recently received an influx of US troops. “But during the night, they can come to your house. If you are working for the government in a remote area, they come to kill you.’’

The perilous choices facing Wardak villagers show the challenge of making permanent gains in Afghanistan, and presents a major test of a new US Army stabilization program aimed at clearing an area of Taliban fighters, holding it securely, and then arming and training local men to ward off the Taliban themselves.

So far, results of the new “guardian’’ program have been mixed, as the dueling checkpoints on Highway One demonstrate. Residents, in a series of nearly two dozen interviews, say the reason in part is conflicting loyalties, and fear of what will happen when the United States eventually pulls out.

Still, US military officials see the program as a possible “game changer’’ in Afghanistan. Civilian deaths in Wardak have dropped by 27 percent, according to NATO figures. If a 60-day review by the new US and NATO commander, General Stanley McChrystal, concludes it is a success, it could be replicated around the country.

On a recent morning, a single guardian squinted by the highway in olive fatigues, waving vehicles past, while Afghan policemen who were supervising him lay in the shade of a nearby billboard.

“This is the only Afghan strategy that has an exit strategy built into it,’’ said a US special forces commander in charge of the program, who asked that his name not be used for his own security. “If this was to take nationwide, it would mitigate the need’’ for more US troops.

Some 3,500 US troops from the 10th Mountain Division pushed into Wardak in February. It was a tenfold increase in troops from last year, in a province that is about half the size of Connecticut. Their goal: clear out the loosely organized insurgents who had taken control of the province. The Army built bases in both the Jalrez district, made up of a lush valley, and the Sayedabad district, a mountainous area full of Taliban sympathizers that borders a crucial stretch of Highway One.

In March, US special forces asked village elders to volunteer their young men for a protection force that will act under the Afghan Ministry of the Interior with backup from the Afghan national police, the Afghan Army, and US soldiers. Similar to payments made to a tribal militia in Iraq that helped quell the Sunni insurgency, the guardian program in Wardak pays about $125 a month, an attractive salary for the untrained and unemployed.

People in Jalrez cautiously embraced the program. At least 193 residents have undergone a three-week training and been given an AK-47. As a reward, USAID funding has flowed to Jalrez to build irrigation canals, a clinic, and to repair the local mosque.

Jalrez residents agree that security has improved and that most of the Taliban have fled.

“They are not in power anymore,’’ said Abdullah Qadir, 45, interviewed at Wardak bus station in Kabul. “The villages close to the road are controlled by the guardians.’’

But in Sayedabad, residents have been more resistant to the program, out of fear of reprisals or sympathy with the Taliban, who some say deliver a less corrupt, more Islamic form of government. Less than 60 recruits have undergone the training so far. The guardians were slated to be deployed in Sayedabad after a ceremony yesterday.

Some say US troops, who once focused on disarming warlords, are now creating a new threat by arming inexperienced men who live in places where their Afghan supervisors don’t dare go.

Roshanak Wardak, a member of Parliament from Sayedabad, calls the program very dangerous.

“They want to give arms to those boys which don’t have arms,’’ she said. “Who will guarantee that these boys will not join Taliban? How is it possible that one [guardian] will kill his cousin who is a Talib? It is impossible. . . . Since several months, they are trying to make these groups, but people refuse to join.’’

Even in Jalrez, where residents cite significant security gains, they also complain bitterly about the roadblocks and the Afghan Army, who took over a girls’ school as their base and used its desks for firewood.

The increase in US troops carries its own dangers, residents said. Several gave detailed descriptions of Americans mistakenly shooting innocent people in recent weeks, including a nomad who was tending sheep, a man who was riding a bicycle, and two farmers who were watering their fields.

Captain Rebecca Lykins, a public affairs officer for the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Afghanistan, who is working with the US special forces in Wardak, said her team was not aware of any such incidents.

Lieutenant General David Barno, who commanded coalition troops in Afghanistan in 2003, said the pilot program is still being studied, but there is a general consensus that something like it is needed.

“People are becoming keenly aware that Afghanistan is 50 percent larger and has about 4 million more people than Iraq,’’ he said. “There are going to have to be a lot of security forces.’’

But by far the biggest criticism among residents was that the guardians are too weak to fight the Taliban on their own if the Americans leave.

“The guardians are good, but people are not really happy with them because they know that they have no power,’’ said a 51-year-old man who works for the provincial governor who asked that his name not be used. “I live just two kilometers from the provincial capital. During the night, the Taliban are walking around the villages. As a government employee, I am always afraid of problems.’’

In Sayedabad, the Taliban control almost the entire district, residents said.

“We don’t see any sign of the government there,’’ said a security guard who asked that his name not be used. “What we see is the Taliban.’’

The guard, who has four daughters, laments that their school was closed by the Taliban about a month ago. US troops, Afghan police, and the guardians don’t have the power to reopen them, he said.

“The government cannot protect us,’’ he said. “I don’t think the guardians can fight the Taliban.’’

Most people in Wardak are simply waiting to see which side wins.

“Who knows who is good and who is bad?’’ one Jalrez man said. “Time will show the result.’’