Ky Emmanuel Duparcq
Kabul - Like many inhabitants of the Afghan district of Jaghatu, Mohammad Naim and Mohammad Arif were full of hope at the end of 2001.
But seven years later, something once deemed impossible has happened: the Taliban have returned, swept along by a catalogue of post-invasion failures committed by the United States and growing public rancour.
By December 2001 the Taliban had been routed and an army of international donors had promised a new era in the mountainous district of Jaghatu, about a three-hour drive from Kabul en route to the southern city of Kandahar.
Leaders of the Taliban fled, most of them to Pakistan or Iran. Others from the repressive movement, which ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001 and sheltered Osama bin Laden, slipped into the shadows and into obscurity.
"The Taliban were so weak that the Americans didn't pay any attention to them," says Naim, who was head of the local district government from late 2002 until late last year.
But as the years passed, the militants regained confidence.
"Their networks were reconstituted in Pakistan," says Arif, another district representative, who like Naim has taken refuge in Kabul.
"Those who stayed behind started to lead pinpointed and effective attacks."
More time passed and the people of Jaghatu saw initial hopes of a better future, built on the back of international aid, dissolve as they instead became collateral damage amid anti-militant operations by foreign troops.
"For seven years, most people went to school and had access to health care. But there were no jobs, no hospital, the roads were worse than before, prices rose - and don't get me started on security," says Naim.
In Kabul, cabinet ministers, warlords and businessmen incorporated into the new government amassed fortunes and built mansions, fanning discontent in the provinces - a bitterness that the Taliban network began to exploit.
Infiltrating the border from Pakistan, the Taliban advanced slowly northwards, eventually reaching Jaghatu.
Small groups arrived from the southern town of Qalat with money and weapons, Arif says.
Attacks multiplied on the Kabul-Kandahar road, which passes through Jaghatu, and the valuables stolen in raids attracted jobless young men.
"Bit by bit they gathered together the ousted, fundamentalist Taliban, criminal groups, nostalgic ex-fighters and unemployed youngsters," Arif says.
The new Taliban of Jaghatu consists of "50 percent Islamic ideologues and 50 percent opportunistic bandits", according to Naim.
Arif doesn't agree.
"Eighty percent gangsters," he says.
"After the mujahideen in the 1980s and the Taliban in the 1990s, this is the era of criminals and thieves," he says.
It was not difficult to subjugate a population with weapons and fear.
Arif gives an example: "The Taliban captured a policeman. They demanded a ransom of 1 200 000 afghani ($24 000) from his family, who had no money. And they killed him."
In this climate of fear, little more than 200 Taliban are able to control the district's 70 000 inhabitants, Naim says.
Theirs is not a traditional, fixed control over Jaghatu.
Instead small, mobile, clandestine groups exercise a reign of terror that suffocates any adverse reaction from local tribes.
So far, the US-backed government has been unable to stop them.
Faced with a growing menace, the former district chief asked the provincial governor last year for help and was sent 80 police reinforcements.
"They left after four months. They had not been paid by the ministry," he says.
"Before, the police could go everywhere. Today, they don't even go to the market in fear of being attacked."
Naim ended up resigning at the end of 2008 and now lives in Kabul.
"Otherwise, I would have been killed," he says.
Last he heard, his successor had also escaped to the Afghan capital. - Sapa-AFP