Afghan city fears greater Taliban presence

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan —

Her children tell her they see her dead in their dreams. Friends are afraid to come to her home. She shows a visitor chilling text messages in neat Pashto-language script on her cellphone: Do you want to die? We will kill you for what you've said.

Roona Tahrin, a 38-year-old women's rights activist and mother of six, believes she is firmly in the Taliban's sights. Her predecessor as director of the city department of women's affairs was killed; she received a text in February telling her she was next.

Disciples of the Taliban never have abandoned Kandahar, the city they consider their spiritual home. After the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 that ended the Islamist movement's harsh, five-year reign in Afghanistan, many adherents simply melted into this dusty metropolis.

The insurgents' presence these days, though, is more keenly felt than at any time in recent memory. Assassinations, threats and kidnappings are rife. Whole swaths of the city are off-limits to police. People glance at their watches and cut short conversations at dusk; it is dangerous to be out after dark.

The Western military is planning a massive offensive in Kandahar this spring and summer, an effort that will dwarf the campaign led by Marines this year in neighboring Helmand province.

But many in Kandahar are afraid that the military operation to secure the city's outlying districts, already in its preliminary stages, simply will drive more insurgents into the city proper — and place its 1 million residents in even greater peril.

Tahrin believes she was marked for death after she told a women's gathering that Islamic teachings do not dictate that women must cover themselves with the burqa, the billowing, head-to-toe garment that almost all women in Kandahar wear in public.

Her life grows more circumscribed by the day. She keeps her children home from school. She varies her routes to work and back again. No one wants to travel with her.

"We live like prisoners," she said. "We are terrorized."

Because the Taliban are so entwined in daily life in Kandahar, many residents doubt that a military operation alone can dislodge its loyalists.

"The Taliban can do anything they want here," said shopkeeper Suleiman Shah Agha, who sells clothing in a bazaar mainly frequented by women.

The occasional presence of Western troops, mainly Canadian, inspires more nervousness than confidence. On a recent day, a convoy of armored vehicles moved slowly through a central market, gun turrets swiveling. Passers-by shrank back into shops, watching and waiting for the foreigners to move on.

In mid-March, after synchronized bombings killed at least three dozen people in and near Kandahar, the central government promised to rush in 900 more police officers to form a protective "band" around the city. An additional 1,000 police are to be deployed elsewhere in the province this spring and summer.

Although some police officers perform their jobs bravely, corruption is rampant, particularly in the force's upper ranks. Most people are reluctant to report suspected insurgents.

Residents said a detention in their neighborhood or district can have deadly repercussions. Taliban foot soldiers sometimes stop people at random after such arrests and demand to see cellphones — apparently to check whether the call log includes contact with authorities.

One centerpiece of the planned Western offensive is an intensive series of shuras, or consultative tribal gatherings, meant to hold out a promise of better governance once the militants' grip on the city is broken.

Haji Aghalalai, a Kandahar provincial council member, said people at one such gathering in Panjwayi district, on Kandahar's outskirts, said they were afraid that the Taliban, even if driven out, would return quickly.

"They were saying if this operation moves the Taliban out permanently, it is fine," he said. "But if the troops leave so the Taliban come back, they don't want it."

Afghan authorities say even a decisive military victory will do little good unless the government can win over a war-weary populace.

"More troops aren't the solution. We need jobs and development," Kandahar Gov. Tooryalai Wesa said.