Afghans warring over humanitarian aid

San Francisco Chronicle

DASHT-E-QALEH, Afghanistan – Even though local warriors have no more enemy to fight or front lines to defend, they are exchanging gunfire in a new conflict in northern Afghanistan – aid wars.

Early Wednesday, after the local muezzin had called the faithful to prayers for the last time before bedtime, a C-17 cargo plane loaded with wheat, blankets, winter parkas and wool hats roared over Dasht-e-Qaleh, a town of about 40,000 inhabitants. Within minutes, the pilot located his target – a field on the town’s outskirts where U.S. planes have been dropping humanitarian aid almost nightly since the American war on terrorism began on Afghanistan Oct. 7.

When the 2,000-pound crates parachuted from the sky, two groups of several hundred armed men hidden in trenches, all former Northern Alliance fighters, knew just what to do. Dashing onto the field as if they were about to storm a Taliban fortress, they rushed to grab their share of the goods intended for Dasht-e-Qaleh’s needy.

But the armed gangs could not agree on how to divvy up the booty. Somebody fired a Kalashnikov semiautomatic rifle. Somebody fired back. Soon, three men lay dead and four wounded.

“These men never learned the basics of human behavior in school,” said Mahbuhbullah, a Dasht-e-Qaleh merchant. “All they have learned is how to shoot, rob and kill. They got used to killing in 20 years of war.”

Bandits prowl roads, scaring away truck drivers, who now refuse to take food aid into Afghanistan. Unprotected trucks that dare to venture into the country are often looted, relief agencies say. U.N. officials have also reported extortion.

In Dasht-e-Qaleh, newly unemployed fighters often seize air-dropped goods from civilians at gunpoint – or collect the aid themselves after scaring local residents away.

“People who need food and clothes come to gather aid, but fighters beat them with rifle butts and take the aid away,” Mahbuhbullah said.

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