Along a potholed road in eastern Afghanistan, Mohammed Jan points through a cloud of dust at a line of mansions that seem out of place in such poverty-stricken surroundings. \n"This is where the new, beautiful houses begin. They belong to the commanders. Their money is from drugs, from smuggling. They will never be caught. Their soldiers are working with the Americans," says Jan, himself a small-time opium grower. \nNearly two years after the collapse of Taliban rule, ordinary Afghans like Jan say they are losing faith in the US and its coalition partners. \nThey point to rampant corruption, Afghan President Hamid Karzai's weak leadership and the behavior of US-backed warlords whose private armies operate with impunity throughout most of Afghanistan. \nTheir disillusionment is strengthening Taliban holdouts whose attacks are getting bolder. Nowadays the rebels don't fear being turned over to the authorities; they say most villages give them food and shelter. \n"The big mistake is from the Americans. They want to bring peace to Afghanistan with thieves and killers. The Americans after two years have learned nothing," said Abdul Raouf, a car dealer in the eastern city of Jalalabad. "Every day the situation is worse." \nThe American invasion of Afghanistan relied heavily on local anti-Taliban forces, and it was inevitable that these warlords, however unsavory, would continue to be important forces in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda network that masterminded the Sept. 11 attacks. \nBut Afghans increasingly wonder whether the trade-off was worth it. \n"Everybody says warlords, but who are these warlords? They are commanders, they are government ministers," said Raouf. "We didn't like the Taliban but there was security then, there were laws. But now anyone with a gun is the law." \nBack at the mansions, in the province of Nangarhar, a white marble watchtower peeks over the 3m-high brick wall. \n"Drug smuggler," Jan says. "That's a commander of Hazrat Ali's. Are the Americans crazy? We Afghans know who these people are and what they are doing. There is no security, no development, but these people's pockets are fat with money. We know that without the Americans they would be nobody." \nHazrat Ali is military chief of Afghanistan's eastern zone, a powerful man appointed by Karzai but aligned with Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim. \nThe US says it is committed to strengthening the central government and is putting more than US$1 billion into extending Karzai's control beyond Kabul, the capital to the whole Texas-sized country. \nUS officials insist that Jan's lament doesn't reflect the full picture. They say some areas are more secure, some less; some Afghans are optimistic, others not. They point to the reconstruction projects that are beginning, the road that links the capital to Kandahar. \nReconstruction, the argument goes, is bound to be slower in the east and south of Afghanistan, where Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters are being hunted. Sometimes, Western diplomats say, solutions entail messy compromises; when Karzai decided that the governor of Kandahar, Afghanistan's second city, was corrupt and ineffective, he removed him but made him a government minister. \nThe opium industry, harshly suppressed by the Taliban, has made a roaring comeback. \nThe UN says production in 2002 generated up to US$1.2 billion or almost a fifth of Afghan GDP. Central Asian states and Russia are complaining bitterly about the increase in Afghan drugs flowing north. \nThose benefiting most are the commanders aligned to the government and working with the US-led coalition, say Afghans in eastern Jalalabad who spoke to reporters. \nCommander Mustafa, a soldier of Zahir's and a partner with the US-led coalition, denies the allegation. In an interview at his base near the border with Pakistan, surrounded by a dozen men with kalashnikov rifles, he said his men would seize and destroy any drugs they found. \nA UN official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the drug trade couldn't possibly flourish without the patronage of government officials and military commanders. \nHuman Rights Watch recently issued a 101-page report warning that "Afghan warlords and political strongmen supported by the United States and other nations are engendering a climate of fear in Afghanistan." It named a string of men in senior government positions. \nThis climate of fear, the advocacy group said, jeopardizes efforts to adopt a new constitution and hold national elections in mid-2004. \nA disarmament campaign was to have begun July 1, but the UN delayed it, demanding the Defense Ministry first be reformed to reflect Afghanistan's ethnic diversity. The UN wants sweeping changes to take power away from Defense Minister Fahim's private army. \nNearly two years since taking power, Karzai's limited reach is allowing the corruption to flourish. \nSeveral months ago, Karzai banned logging in eastern Afghanistan, but it still flourishes in areas where his appointees govern. \nThe rock-strewn road from Kunar in eastern Afghanistan to neighboring Nangarhar province is bumper-to-bumper with timber-laden 16-wheelers. \nIn Kabul, Afghan businessmen who have come back from the US to invest here are disillusioned. \nAbdullah Aziz, who returned to Afghanistan from California where he has lived since 1978, said he went to northern Kunduz province to retrieve his property. \nHe said he brought a letter from Karzai to the governor. "He took the piece of paper and he said `Karzai -- he is no one here.'" \nAziz is still trying to get his property.
A senior UN official has said he is “alarmed” that a peaceful Australian climate protester has been jailed for 15 months — and refused bail before her appeal — amid global outrage at her “disproportionate” punishment. On Friday, Deanna “Violet” Coco was sentenced to 15 months in prison for blocking a single lane of traffic on the Sydney Harbour Bridge in April in a protest staged to draw attention to the global climate emergency. “I am alarmed at a NSW court’s prison term against climate protestor Deanna Coco and refusal to grant bail until a March 2023 appeal hearing, ” UN Special
SECOND ATTEMPT: An overhaul of the criminal code is expected this month, after a similar move was in 2019 stymied by large-scale protests in the Muslim-majority country The Indonesian parliament is this month expected to pass a new criminal code that would penalize sex outside marriage with a punishment of up to one year in jail, officials have said. The legislative overhaul would also ban insulting the Indonesian president or state institutions, and expressing any views counter to the country’s state ideology. Cohabitation before marriage is also banned. Decades in the making, the new criminal code is expected to be passed on Dec. 15, Indonesian Deputy Minister of Justice Edward Omar Sharif Hiariej said. “We’re proud to have a criminal code that’s in line with Indonesian values,” he told Reuters
CARROT-AND-STICK: Authorities tightened control over virtual private networks, which protesters used to access banned non-Chinese news and social media apps Chinese authorities have initiated the highest “emergency response” level of censorship, according to leaked directives, including a crackdown on virtual private networks (VPNs) and other methods of bypassing online censorship after unprecedented protests demonstrated widespread public frustration with the “zero COVID” policy. The crackdown, including the tracking and questioning of protesters, comes alongside the easing of pandemic restrictions in an apparent carrot-and-stick approach to an outpouring of public grievances. During an extraordinary week in China, protests against “zero COVID” restrictions included criticism of the authoritarian rule of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — which was further highlighted by the death of
EASING RESTRICTIONS: China has not approved any foreign COVID-19 vaccines and is opting for those produced domestically, the US Director of National Intelligence said Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is unwilling to accept Western vaccines despite the challenges China is facing with COVID-19, and recent protests could affect his personal standing in the Chinese Communist Party, US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said on Saturday. Although China’s daily COVID-19 cases are near all-time highs, some cities are taking steps to loosen testing and quarantine rules after Xi’s “zero COVID” policy triggered a sharp economic slowdown and public unrest. Despite the social and economic impact of the virus, Xi “is unwilling to take a better vaccine from the West, and is instead relying on a vaccine
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