Afghanistan's linchpin: Kandahar

Improving governance remains a NATO objective, but faced with little alternative to working with existing administration of one of the world's most corrupt nations, officials are now downplaying this component of the campaign.

The hardest part: establishing security

Defeating the Taliban militarily is one thing. But success in southern Afghanistan, and thus the rest of the country, will depend far more on the coalition's ability to protect Kandaharis from Taliban threats and terror tactics – and transforming the government into something worth supporting.

Taliban "kill elders, the officials, the doctors, the engineers," says Abdul Haq, an Achekzai tribal elder who lives in the Horn. "This will put pressure on the people. Last year they killed many people in Panjwaii district, and the government couldn't stop this killing."

Rubbing his cropped gray hair and speaking softly, Mr. Haq recalled the murder of a teenage boy who had joined the police. The Taliban "had spies within the government who [sold him out], and after questioning him and hearing out his story, they killed him" in the mulberry grove where he had gone to pick fruit. "It was the third time they had arrested him. He was 17."

Even in Kandahar City, which is nominally under government control, Taliban assassinations of authority figures have proven extremely effective. Kandahar's deputy mayor was gunned down earlier this year, and his successor met the same fate. A senior warden at Kandahar jail was killed in a drive-by shooting on Nov. 6. The deputy head of the provincial adult literacy department was shot two days before.

Although exact figures are hard to come by, local media have reported more than 600 local government vacancies following a string of murders. The fact that empty posts outnumber assassinated officials is evidence that the fear campaign is working.

How to keep 'ghosts' away

As troops prepared for their final air assault on the Horn last month, US Lt. Gen. David Rod­riguez, one of the most senior NATO officers in Afghanistan, quizzed Afghan commanders at a vantage point overlooking the Horn on how they planned to stop the insurgents – known locally as "ghosts"– from sneaking back into the Horn and terrorizing inhabitants.

"These operations you've been doing are going very well … the challenge is, after that, how do we continue to provide security for the people?" he asked. No one answered.

"What we need [to] do with every asset we have out there," he continued, "is figure out how to make it bigger than it is, so that the people say, 'OK, we'll be protected.'"

Creating that sense of security has largely proved elusive for the Afghan and NATO security forces. In Marjah, in neighboring Helmand Province, a US Special Forces captain said that persuading people whose chief motivation is survival to stick their necks out was – not surprisingly – difficult.

"The Taliban are quick to take out tribal leaders," said Captain Matt, whose full name can't be disclosed under NATO press rules.

In one of the most notable examples of the Taliban targeting tribal strongmen, Abdul Hakim Jan, a powerful figure from Arghandab district (Kandahar City's northern gateway) was one of 80 spectators killed when a massive car bomb detonated at a dog fight two years ago. His murder, which came soon after the death of Mullah Naqib, another Kandahar politician and elder from of the Alokozai tribe, signaled the fall of Arghandab to the Taliban.

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