Dangers Up Ahead

By Phil Zabriskie/ Helmand

Pir Mahmad, an officer in the Afghan national police, was on his way to Sangin, in southwestern Afghanistan, last month when he found himself fighting for his life. He was traveling in a police convoy of five dilapidated pickup trucks armed with a modest arsenal of rocket launchers and AK-47s. As the patrol neared Sangin, Mahmad, 22, heard gunshots. He looked up to see that the man riding next to him was dead. Soon they were surrounded by Taliban guerrillas who had charged from the hilltops shouting "Allahu akbar." Five policemen were killed before commanders called in air support and backup from Afghan army soldiers and U.S. commandos. Later that day, at a triage center in nearby Gereshk, Mahmad pulls up a sleeve to show where a bullet grazed his arm. In four years' policing one of the country's most volatile regions, he says, "I have never seen fighting like this."

This is a side of Afghanistan that George W. Bush didn't see last week. Visiting the country for the first time, Bush spent five hours in the capital, Kabul, and hailed Afghanistan's progress since the ouster of the Taliban more than four years ago. The country has made strides: it has an elected government, newly paved roads, more children in school, the appearance of a few shopping centers in Kabul. But the improvements in the lives of many Afghans are tempered by the country's persistent insecurity, which is fueled by a rampant drug trade and a Taliban-led insurgency growing more brazen, sophisticated and lethal. More than 1,600 Afghans and 99 U.S. soldiers were killed in combat last year, the bloodiest period since the fall of the Taliban. Since the beginning of 2006, eight more Americans have died, including one last week. Few believe the fighting is likely to subside. Lieut. General Michael Maples, who heads the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, told Congress last week that "insurgents now represent a greater threat to the expansion of Afghan government authority than at any point since late 2001."

The violence is surging at a time when the U.S. military is hoping to draw down its 19,000-member force in Afghanistan and turn over responsibility for much of the troubled south to NATO forces. Washington also hopes the newly trained Afghan army, which has 35,000 troops, will assume a greater role. But in places like Helmand province, where few Afghan or foreign troops were stationed, the main burden of fending off the insurgents has fallen to an Afghan police force that is poorly trained and often overmatched by the Taliban. Says Sam Zia-Zarifi, research director of Human Rights Watch's Asia Division: "They are totally ill prepared for what they are going to face."

When TIME visited one police unit in Helmand last month, the shortcomings were obvious. A number of policemen said they hadn't been paid in a year. Most did not have uniforms. Some had received a few weeks of training, others none at all. Though Taliban militants in the area have murdered aid workers and local politicians, torched schools and menaced teachers, the police say the U.S. has paid the area scant attention, essentially ceding territory to the insurgents. Haji Mosa Jan, the Gereshk district commander, says, "We used to patrol with one or two men" in Sangin, but now it's too dangerous to patrol at all. "We thought the coalition forces were here to fight terrorists," says one of Jan's deputies, "but it seems like we get very little support."

The police attribute the breakdown in security to a plague familiar to law-enforcement officials around the world: drugs. Helmand's police oversee a sizable and dangerous jurisdiction--mountains to the north, desert and a long border with Pakistan to the south--in which opium traffickers and Taliban militants have struck up a marriage of mutual convenience. The province is the biggest opium-growing region in Afghanistan, which produces close to 90% of the world's heroin. While the U.S. and Afghan governments have announced measures to curb poppy cultivation, a visit to Helmand reveals how challenging such a campaign would be. Just outside Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital, lies a vast expanse of poppy farms. A glut has driven down the market price, but the flower is still the country's most profitable crop, according to farmers. Officials predict this year's yield in Helmand will be double last year's.

That poses a major problem for the police. Drug money, which accounts for perhaps one-third to one-half of Afghanistan's gross national product, creates its own loyalty. Druglords, some of whom have government connections or even hold official posts, "give the Taliban money and weapons" to keep the security forces occupied, says Haji Mirwais, the deputy police commander in Gereshk. "If we go somewhere, someone tips them off, and we get ambushed." In return, the Taliban safeguards heroin factories and provides armed escorts for drug convoys. U.S. military officers say the confluence of drugs and militancy has left parts of southern Afghanistan virtually ungovernable. Says Captain Allen Dollison, a civil-affairs officer based in Lashkar Gah: "They're absolutely linked, absolutely interconnected, and it has to be addressed to solve the security situation."

It may be too late. Afghan officials say Taliban commanders are using money from druglords to finance a guerrilla force that could sustain an insurgency for years. A continued source of irritation for military officials is the infiltration of militants from Pakistan; many Afghan officials believe that elements in Pakistan's intelligence agency, which midwifed the Taliban in its early years, are conspiring with the religious parties that govern Pakistan's border regions to create a safe haven for Taliban commanders and a launching pad for attacks--including around 25 suicide bombings in the past six months--throughout Afghanistan. Helmand Governor Mohammed Daud told TIME he believes that Mullah Osmani, a Taliban leader, is recruiting and training fighters at the Girdi Jungle refugee camp in Pakistan's Baluchistan province, which abuts Helmand.

For now, the U.S. is focusing its energy on trying to stop the big drug traffickers. A Western counternarcotics specialist based in Kabul says he expects to see high-profile arrests in the coming months, in what will be the opening salvo against the drug trade's "command and control." Helmand's beleaguered police will get some relief when approximately 3,300 British troops take over for the much smaller U.S. contingent in Lashkar Gah. The reinforcements can't arrive soon enough. After the fighting on the way to Sangin subsided, about 50 policemen took up posts above a road south of town--the spot from which they were ambushed days earlier. They were exhausted and nearly out of ammunition. Their commander was worried that the Taliban might try to exploit his men's fragile state. "They could be right below us," he said, peering into the surrounding poppy fields and waiting for the next attack.

With reporting by Michael Duffy, Sally B. Donnelly/ Washington, Muhib Habibi/ Kandahar