Finnish forces in Afghanistan face vicious opponents
Central government has weak hold on northern mountains
By Pekka Hakala
Water from melting snow from the mountains cascades down the Shirin Tagab River toward the Turkmen plains. It is there that they disappear. The rivers of Faryab Province flow into dry emptiness, without ever reaching Amu-Darja, the river that forms Afghanistan's northern border, even during the most intense spring floods.
Snow remains on the highest northern slopes, but the landscape in lower areas, east of the city of Maimana, looks like it is straight out of the depictions of paradise in a Jehovah's Witness publication: in a couple of weeks the parched soil has burst into fresh green.
After the small village of Kate Qala, the row of holes that they call a road continues eastward toward Zarshoi, the next mountain village. Before that, there was a small intersection, with a road leading to a third village - Caq Maq.
No point in going there, however, since Caq Maq is not exactly renowned as a welcoming place.
Descending from the mountain to the edge of the highway come Muhammed Abdullah and his donkey, laden with hay gathered for his cattle. Finnish peacekeepers rush to talk to the man.
Sergeants Mikko Niskanen and Jaakko Estola ask if anyone has been collecting illegal taxes.
"Not now. We will not see that until the crop is ripe. It is not yet the time for taxation", Muhammed Abdullah says.
Muhammed Abdullah has wheat growing on about an acre of irrigated mountain slope in the village of Zarshoi. After the harvest there will be time to plant maize, and he has also raised sunflowers.
"One kilo out of ten used to go to the taxes", the farmer says. "A man by the name of Saidani collected taxes last year, and said that he was doing so on behalf of Shamal, But he did not give the money to Shamal. Let's see if they will come to collect taxes again. If they do, we will complain to the government. It's good that you are patrolling here."
Straight-talking villagers like the young wheat farmer Muhammed Abdullah are invaluable to the Finns who patrol in Faryab. Few people in the villages will dare speak openly about illegal actions taken by local strongmen, which is why the peacekeepers seek to talk to people in more remote areas, as is happening now.
Shamal, or Abdul Rahman, is a so-called field commander who is wanted by the present Afghan officials. He keeps his headquarters high in Caq Maq, where nobody can sneak up on him. He is said to have 400 armed men under his command, with whose help he collects his tithes from the nearby villagers.
Shamal rules with fear, and the guarantor of his position is the warlord of the predominantly Uzbek area of northwest Afghanistan, the current commander of the Afghan Army, Abdul Rashid Dostum.
Shamal became a real nuisance in August and September last year when he clashed with Dostum's arch enemy, Commander Khalifa Saleh, who is loyal to General Abdul Maliki. Several people were killed in the clash, and peacekeepers spent a couple of months in Kate Qala keeping watch over the situation.
It is peaceful again in the ethnically diverse village of 870 people. A new police station is being built on a hill with money provided by Finland, and the work is proceeding on schedule. However the hill had to be lowered by a metre and a half, so that the police would not be able to peek over the fences of houses and violate people's privacy.
Or perhaps it was an attempt by supporters of Shamal to find an excuse to keep the central government, its police, and their new jails away from these mountains.
Just over 100 Finns are in Afghanistan taking part in the NATO-led ISAF peacekeeping effort, and 31 of them are in Maimana together with Norwegians and Latvians. The Finns are leaving for Maimana this summer, and the Latvian additional forces will move into their quarters. The meagre forces are to be concentrated in the Mazar-i-Sgharif area.
In NATO-speak the small Maimana garrison is called a provincial reconstruction group, even though the tools used are assault rifles, rather than hammers.
"This means the reconstruction of society", says Lieutenant Colonel Ali Mättölä, the commander of the Finns in Maimana. "The work involves security, administration, and development, which results in a stable society."
At the old police station of Kate Qala, things are taken with a grain of salt. There are eight police officers sent from the provincial capital Maimana to represent the central government.
"How busy have you been patrolling the area?", Major Pasi Virtanen asks Saifur, the commander of the police.
"During the day we are constantly on patrol", Saifur says. "And at night we go out every two hours with our radios.
Virtanen nods. He actually suspects that the police will not venture out of the police station building at all when there are no peacekeepers in the village.
"It often comes to my mind that nothing will be completed while we are here", Virtanen sighs from his cross-country vehicle.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 21.4.2007
PEKKA HAKALA / Helsingin Sanomat
pekka.hakala@hs.fi
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| 24.4.2007 - THIS WEEK |
 Finnish forces in Afghanistan face vicious opponents |
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