TIRIN KOT, Afghanistan ó The most powerful man in this arid stretch of southern Afghanistan is not the provincial governor, nor the police chief, nor even the commander of the Afghan Army.
It is Matiullah Khan, the head of a private army that earns millions of dollars guarding NATO supply convoys and fights Taliban insurgents alongside American Special Forces.

In little more than two years, Mr. Matiullah, an illiterate former highway patrol commander, has grown stronger than the government of Oruzgan Province, not only supplanting its role in providing security but usurping its other functions, his rivals say, like appointing public employees and doling out government largess. His fighters run missions with American Special Forces officers, and when Afghan officials have confronted him, he has either rebuffed them or had them removed.

ìOruzgan used to be the worst place in Afghanistan, and now itís the safest,î Mr. Matiullah said in an interview in his compound here, where supplicants gather each day to pay homage and seek money and help. ìWhat should we do? The officials are cowards and thieves.î

Mr. Matiullah is one of several semiofficial warlords who have emerged across Afghanistan in recent months, as American and NATO officers try to bolster ó and sometimes even supplant ó ineffective regular Afghan forces in their battle against the Taliban insurgency.

In some cases, these strongmen have restored order, though at the price of undermining the very institutions Americans are seeking to build: government structures like police forces and provincial administrations that one day are supposed to be strong enough to allow the Americans and other troops to leave.

In other places around the country, Afghan gunmen have come to the fore as the heads of private security companies or as militia commanders, independent of any government control. In these cases, the warlords not only have risen from anarchy but have helped to spread it.

For the Americans, who are racing to secure the country against a deadline set by President Obama, the emergence of such strongmen is seen as a lesser evil, despite how compromised many of them are. In Mr. Matiullahís case, American commanders appear to have set aside reports that he connives with both drug smugglers and Taliban insurgents.

ìThe institutions of the government, in security and military terms, are not yet strong enough to be able to provide security,î said Maj. Gen. Nick Carter, commander of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan. ìBut the situation is unsustainable and clearly needs to be resolved.î

Many Afghans say the Americans and their NATO partners are making a grave mistake by tolerating or encouraging warlords like Mr. Matiullah. These Afghans fear the Americans will leave behind an Afghan government too weak to do its work, and strongmen without any popular support.

ìMatiullah is an illiterate guy using the government for his own interest,î said Mohammed Essa, a tribal leader in Tirin Kot, the Oruzgan provincial capital. ìOnce the Americans leave, he wonít last. And then what will we have?î

Building a Fortune

Mr. Matiullah does not look like one of the aging, pot-bellied warlords from Afghanistanís bygone wars. Long and thin, he wears black silk turbans and extends a pinky when he gestures to make a point. Mr. Matiullahís army is an unusual hybrid, too: a booming private business and a government-subsidized militia.

His main effort ó and his biggest money maker ó is securing the chaotic highway linking Kandahar to Tirin Kot for NATO convoys. One day each week, Mr. Matiullah declares the 100-mile highway open and deploys his gunmen up and down it. The highway cuts through an area thick with Taliban insurgents.

Mr. Matiullah keeps the highway safe, and he is paid well to do it. His company charges each NATO cargo truck $1,200 for safe passage, or $800 for smaller ones, his aides say. His income, according to one of his aides, is $2.5 million a month, an astronomical sum in a country as impoverished as this one.

ìItís suicide to come up this road without Matiullahís men,î said Mohammed, a driver hauling stacks of sandbags and light fixtures to the Dutch base in Tirin Kot. The Afghan government even picks up a good chunk of Mr. Matiullahís expenses. Under an arrangement with the Ministry of the Interior, the government pays for roughly 600 of Mr. Matiullahís 1,500 fighters, including Mr. Matiullah himself, despite the fact that the force is not under the governmentís control.

ìThe government tried to shut him down, and when they couldnít, they agreed to pay for his men,î said Martine van Bijlert, a co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, an independent organization here. NATO commanders say they reluctantly pay Mr. Matiullah (and others like him) for his services because they have no other way of moving their convoys across dangerous territory. Having their own men do it, they say, would take them away from other tasks.

American Support

But Mr. Matiullahís role has grown beyond just business. His militia has been adopted by American Special Forces officers to gather intelligence and fight insurgents. Mr. Matiullahís compound sits about 100 yards from the American Special Forces compound in Tirin Kot. A Special Forces officer, willing to speak about Mr. Matiullah only on the condition of anonymity, said his unit had an extensive relationship with Mr. Matiullah. ìMatiullah is the best there is here,î the officer said.

With his NATO millions, and the American backing, Mr. Matiullah has grown into the strongest political and economic force in the region. He estimates that his salaries support 15,000 people in this impoverished province. He has built 70 mosques with his own money, endowed scholarships in Kabul and begun holding weekly meetings with area tribal leaders. His latest venture is a rock-crushing company that sells gravel to NATO bases.

This has irritated some local leaders, who say that the line between Mr. Matiullahís business interest and the government has disappeared.

ìWhat law says that a police officer can have a private security company?î said Juma Gul Hemat, the Oruzgan police chief, whose office is a few hundred yards from Mr. Matiullahís.

ìMany times I have confronted Matiullah over his illegal business,î Chief Hemat said. ìBut as long as the Americans are behind him, there is nothing I can do. They are the ones with the money.î

Both General Carter and Hanif Atmar, the Afghan interior minister, said they hoped to disband Mr. Matiullahís militia soon ó or at least to bring it under formal government control. Mr. Matiullahís operation, the officials said, is one of at least 23 private security companies working in the area without any government license or oversight.

General Carter said that while he had no direct proof in Mr. Matiullahís case, he harbored more general worries that the legions of unregulated Afghan security companies had a financial interest in prolonging chaos. In Mr. Matiullahís case, he said, that would mean attacking people who refused to use his security service or enlisting the Taliban to do it. Local Afghans said that Mr. Matiullah had done both of those things, although they would not speak publicly for fear of retribution.

ìDoes he make deals and pay people to attack?î General Carter said. ìIím not aware of that.î

Last fall, Mr. Atmar summoned Mr. Matiullah to his office and told him he wanted to give Mr. Matiullahís army a license and a government contract. The warlord walked out.

ìI told him that itís my men who are doing the fighting and dying,î Mr. Matiullah said. ìThe guys in Kabul want to steal the money.î

Mr. Matiullah is causing other problems, Mr. Atmar said, alienating members of Afghan tribes not his own. He has also begun charging Afghans to ride on the highway.

ìParallel structures of government create problems for the rule of law,î Mr. Atmar said. Along the highway linking Kandahar and Tirin Kot, many of Mr. Matiullahís soldiers drive Afghan police trucks and wear Afghan police uniforms. Posters of Mr. Matiullah are plastered to their windshields.

ìThere is no doubt about it ó the people of Oruzgan love Matiullah!î said Fareed Ayel, one of Mr. Matiullahís officers on the route. ìThe government people are not honest.î

Like many of Mr. Matiullahís men, Mr. Ayel quit the police to join his militia, which paid him a better salary.

Indeed, many people in Tirin Kot praise Mr. Matiullah for the toughness of his fighters and for keeping the road open. Mr. Matiullah claims to have lost more than 100 men fighting the Taliban. Recently, he and several of his fighters followed an American Special Forces unit to Geezab, where the Taliban had been expelled after six years.

But doubts persist about Mr. Matiullah, especially about what he does when Afghan and American officials are somewhere else. An American intelligence report prepared for senior American commanders last spring listed a number of associates of Ahmed Wali Karzai, President Hamid Karzaiís brother and the chairman of the provincial council of Kandahar Province, who were suspected of involvement in the countryís opium trade. The report listed Mr. Matiullah as one of the suspects, but provided few details.

A former senior official in the Kandahar government, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by Mr. Matiullah and the Karzais, said he believed that Mr. Matiullah was facilitating the movement of drugs along the highway to Kandahar.

ìI was never able to look inside those trucks, but if I had, I am fairly certain what I would have found,î he said.

Despite his relationship to the Special Forces, Mr. Matiullah has been suspected of playing a double game with the Taliban. Asked about Mr. Matiullah earlier this year, an American military officer in Kabul admitted that Mr. Matiullah was believed to have a relationship with insurgents. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was discussing intelligence matters.

Asked again recently, the same officer said that Mr. Matiullah was suspected of drug smuggling. He provided no details. The next day, after consulting intelligence officers, the officer said Mr. Matiullah was a trusted ally. ìTheir assessment about him has changed,î he said.

Mr. Matiullah denied any contact with either insurgents or drug smugglers. ìNever,î he said.

Like many Afghan leaders close to the Americans, Mr. Matiullah got his start after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, when the Americans were in desperate need of allies. Within a few years, Mr. Matiullah was the head of the Highway Police in Oruzgan Province.

In 2006, out of concern that legions of officers were working with drug traffickers, the entire agency was abolished.

ìThe highway police was one huge drug smuggling operation,î said a former Western diplomat, who was based here at the time of President Karzaiís order.

Mr. Matiullahís army is part of a constellation of militias and security companies, many of them unregistered and unregulated, that claim at least some loyalty to Ahmed Wali Karzai, who is widely acknowledged to be the most powerful man in southern Afghanistan. ìAhmed Wali is my friend, my close friend!î Mr. Matiullah said earlier this year, offering to put him on the telephone for this reporter.

In a second, more recent, interview, Mr. Matiullah said he and Mr. Karzai had no relationship at all.

Both Ahmed Wali Karzai and Mr. Matiullah are associates of Jan Mohammed Khan, a former governor of Oruzgan Province and Mr. Matiullahís father-in-law. Mr. Khan was removed from Oruzgan Province at the insistence of the Dutch in 2006 because of concerns that he was close to the drug trade. He is now an adviser to President Karzai.

Those relationships, Mr. Matiullahís detractors say, allow him to flourish.

ìMatiullah is not part of the government, he is stronger than the government, and he can do anything he wants,î said Mr. Essa, the tribal elder in Tirin Kot. ìHe is like the younger brother of Ahmed Wali. He is protected in Kabul.î

At a recent meeting inside the American Special Forces compound here, Mr. Matiullah was approached by an elderly Afghan beggar who hobbled up and then stood at attention and saluted in military fashion. Without hesitating ó indeed, without even looking ó Mr. Matiullah pulled a wad of money out of his pocket and pressed it into the manís withered hands.

ìLong live Matiullah, you are the best,î the old man said.

ìO.K., O.K.,î Mr. Matiullah said. ìNow I am busy.î

It's a difficult task, but the key obstacle is the assumption that "Afghanistan" must remain a single country. It's like walking into an experiment and saying "Well, I'm willing to change my methods, instrumentation, and subject matter so long as I always arrive at the same conclusion". I think that, on the whole, there needs to be some serious discussion as to the sustainability of the Afghan nation. Tribal politics is very tough to track because they can be so mutable that they change daily, or so established that they never change for generations. Over there, one of the problems we face is one group saying another group is "Taliban" and using that designation to get support from us in causing some hurt to their familial enemies. We do well in some areas and poorly in others and there is such a wide variety of conflict in the country that having a single monolithic structure handling it all, like ISAF, with a single monolithic mission and strategy meant to fit all sizes is, in my opinion, an unrealistic and unwinnable goal. It's like Sysiphus, or something.

There are different types of people in the special operations community. Some guys are just doers, some guys are thinkers, and most are a mixture of the two. Amongst the thinkers, the method of supporting the strongest tribes with the closest aligning values as our own seems to be the favored strategy. Yes, it is dangerous and yes, that would mean one ISAF force supports a tribe that comes into conflict with another ISAF supported tribe. I guess my point is that there is no single right answer, no single strategy, no one tactic, and no teleprompter-delivered speech that can win this. In my opinion, anyways, for whatever that is worth. I do not intend to convey the feeling that this is unwinnable, merely that we need to be smart about our objectives and really think about what we are trying to achieve.

I guess this works if you're trying hard to get out of the country by 2011, but its not a recipe for long term stability.

Yes, it will take longer. Yes, it forces you to study the local relations hard. Yes, it will be less effective. Yes, it will be frustrating because it will seem to move so slow.

But this is just the way things work in Afghanistan and you can only accomplish something if you work with the grain of local society, not against it.

How does a guy from a weaker tribe become governor? I'll admit that I'm relatively ignorant to Afghanistan's current political process. Are the governors voted in my the populace, appointed by Kabul, or elected from amongst elders, or other?

Defence Minister John Faulkner says the finishing touches are being applied to new arrangements for leadership in Oruzgan province and for a force to replace the outgoing Dutch taskgroup once it leaves the Afghanistan region.

Senator Faulkner, just back from attending the NATO minister's meeting in Brussels, said an announcement was imminent.

He said the new arrangements would involve no backward step.


Oruzgan plan being finalised: govt
June 15, 2010 - 7:39PM

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Defence Minister John Faulkner says the finishing touches are being applied to new arrangements for leadership in Oruzgan province and for a force to replace the outgoing Dutch taskgroup once it leaves the Afghanistan region.

Senator Faulkner, just back from attending the NATO minister's meeting in Brussels, said an announcement was imminent.

He said the new arrangements would involve no backward step.
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"We are putting the finishing touches on that outcome now and I hope in very short order you will see an announcement made in a co-ordinated fashion with ISAF (International Security Assistance Force), NATO and our other coalition partners about the new arrangements," he told reporters.

"I believe those new arrangements will be very well received in the international community and here at home in Australia."

Australia now has some 1550 troops in Afghanistan, most in Oruzgan province where they have operated under overall control of the Dutch taskgroup since 2006.

The Netherlands is set to start withdrawing its 1800-strong taskgroup. Australia has declined to take the leadership role in Oruzgan.

The US is set to take a far greater role in Oruzgan but it's unclear whether it will provide a comparable force and all the key support units the Dutch are now withdrawing.

Senator Faulkner said the issue of leadership in Oruzgan wasn't just a matter for Australia but also involved ISAF and others with troops in Oruzgan.

He said the new arrangements would produce very strong civilian and military integration in the province.

"This has taken a lot of time and a lot of effort. We have worked very closely with our partners in ISAF and in NATO to get an outcome."

Anyway, its hard to remain optimistic. The corruption, the incompetence, the pettyness of tribal politics, it all runs so deep. There are so many societal factors working against what the want to accomplish. Sometimes I wonder if the country isn't hopeless. What if it is simply impossible to avoid antagonization in tribal politics, under the current circumstances? It used to be that there would just be a loser and they would suck it up until tribal politics shifted again. But now there are external factors like the Taliban who create an "unnatural" outlet for tribal unrest. Since it seems to be impossible to remove the major external influences, perhaps stability is just impossible to achieve in the current situation?

Lack of coordination is one of the biggest problems, like it always was. Back in 2006 the British pushed a group of Taliban out of Helmand along the Helmand river into Uruzgan. We could have scooped them up had we known, but the British didn't tell us what they were doing and they stopped at the border. The Taliban got away. That sort of thing still hasn't been fixed I think.

If I keep like this, I'll start rambling about how I think conventional Big Army should get the hell out of Afghanistan, too and then I'd get in real trouble!

This, I think, is relevant to the thread and I didn't want to create a new one:

At this stage, after 9 or so years of this I feel as if we (political side) have lost so much credibility in the region and I honestly do not see any realistic and earnest attempts to get it back.

Totally. We had the same sort of problems with other units that were supposed to be attached to us.

.....

Everyone wants their piece and USSOCOM can't send the same people all the time.

If I keep like this, I'll start rambling about how I think conventional Big Army should get the hell out of Afghanistan, too and then I'd get in real trouble!:roll:

"You see, I told you. They don't want us in Muc Hoa."

"To be fair, sir, they don't want us anywhere."

Also, a little shameless self-promotion.

Well, that sounds hopeful.

As a side note, I feel that the length of the war is not really an argument. I think that the dynamic and scale of the war changed to such a degree during 2006-2007 that it could be seen almost as a new conflict. What happened before did much to shape the battlefield of 2006, but it was a whole different ball park. Obama's escalation is similar but not nearly as dramatic. In my view at least.

Let me guess, US Navy SEALs? In that case I totally agree with you. Completely wrong mindset if you ask me.

And implicitly you mean that it should be up to the SOF community? I disagree with you. From what I've read and seen I think that many regular army units and commanders have come a lot further in their counterinsurgency mindset than most SOF units.

A commander of an infantry unit has very different things to worry about and, if he is smart, will realise that he is dependent on the population for security and interact with them accordingly.

Its different for Army SF I hope, but in Uruzgan for instance, they are based at Anaconda and Cobra FOB's which are deep in Indian country, far away from the four main valleys where the population is concentrated.