American forces enter uneasy alliances with tribal strongmen in Afghanistan

Never mind that the district governor says Ghani, 44, works against him, or that US soldiers describe him as godfather-like and his police as vaguely crooked. In an area rife with insurgents who stalk soldiers’ every move, Ghani’s militia has carved out a 4-square-mile bubble of tranquillity. Farmers can safely collect US-funded seeds, and children will soon attend a new American-backed school.

“What’s his is ours. What’s ours is his,’’ Lieutenant John Paszterko said of Ghani, a onetime anti-Soviet commander who now rules his tribal forefathers’ lands. “He’s a good friend to have.’’

As coalition forces struggle to weaken the Taliban, they insist that the key to doing so lies in bolstering Afghan institutions. Yet with government rule confined to certain densely populated areas, US officials rely on strongmen who can maintain order in the most treacherous locales, even if their commitment to formal governance is dubious.

That inconsistency is causing unease in Washington, where Congress is scrutinizing payments of US tax dollars to warlords who protected NATO convoys, and in Kabul, where critics fear a US-backed plan for village defense groups could spawn rogue militias or undermine government authority.

“In that scenario, the Afghan government doesn’t gain any strength or legitimacy,’’ one US official working in Kandahar Province said of such alliances.

The dynamic is present across this long-embattled nation, where former warlords are a dime a dozen and power is typically won with guns or money. Against that backdrop, Ghani is a minor player. With an AK-47 slung over his shoulder, he lords over 3,000 acres of farmland.

But Ghani’s area has suddenly become the focus of the US forces’ latest push to defeat the Taliban. It lies along a critical entry point into Kandahar city used by the Taliban as a supply route, and government leadership here has long been feeble.

So Ghani and his force of about 40 “soldiers’’ — he has about 50 more in reserve — are vital partners, according to US troops, who said the force might eventually be incorporated into the new village defense force plan.

US soldiers and the district governor say that only some of Ghani’s men have law enforcement training, but that the local police chief equips them all with uniforms and weapons anyway.

They are the closest thing in this area to an Afghan security force. The Afghan army soldiers set to share the US combat outpost near Now Ruzi have not yet been deployed. So when Pazsterko’s soldiers were ambushed by the Taliban recently, Ghani’s police helped fight them off.

Ghani is “one of the few people who does feel that responsibility’’ to fight the Taliban, said Captain Paul DeLeon, commander of Combat Outpost Durkin.

That is partly because his lifestyle would be fairly incompatible with Taliban rule. On Ghani’s land is a vast field of hemp used to produce hashish, which he insists he does not smoke.

Ghani says his wealth comes from his land, which he leases to farmers, and from the security services he provides to a Japanese company operating the large gravel quarry on his property. Gravel blankets the US outpost nearby — a gift from Ghani.

His partnership has been rewarded. US soldiers make sure his fighters have ammunition. Flowing through Ghani’s carefully tended garden is a gurgling canal, a project recently completed by the US Agency for International Development that beautified a public park on his land. Outside, construction on the schoolhouse is almost done.

Yet DeLeon said the builders complain that Ghani beats them when he is dissatisfied with their work. Farther west on Highway 1, Afghan army Captain Safi Ahmad said truckers complain that Ghani’s police demand illegal tolls and “torture’’ those who cannot pay. “By working with him, we’re essentially enabling him,’’ DeLeon said.

But DeLeon and NATO officials said they hold out hope that Ghani and others like him will serve as links between the population and the government.