Whereas Raziq’s ways labored in some respects, beating again the Taliban in Kandahar and incomes him the admiration of many who opposed them, the technique got here at a transparent value. It stirred such enmity in components of the inhabitants that the Taliban turned his cruelty right into a recruiting instrument, broadcasting it to draw new fighters. Many Afghans got here to revile the American-backed authorities and every part it represented.
“None of us supported the Taliban, a minimum of not at first,” mentioned Fazul Rahman, whose brother was kidnapped in entrance of witnesses throughout Raziq’s reign. “However when the federal government collapsed, I ran by means of the streets, rejoicing.”
Even some who cheered the ruthlessness Raziq wielded towards his enemies lamented the broader corruption and criminality he helped enshrine, a key a part of why the Afghan authorities collapsed in 2021. After his demise, his commanders expanded their predation additional, extorting atypical folks and stealing from their very own males’s wages and provides.
“What they introduced beneath the identify of democracy was a system within the arms of some mafia teams,” mentioned Qari Mohammad Mubarak, who ran a ladies’ faculty in Kandahar and initially supported the federal government. “The folks got here to hate democracy.”
Many American commanders, diplomats and their allies in Afghanistan knew on the time they had been bankrolling a conflict that strayed far exterior worldwide regulation.
“Typically we requested Raziq about incidents of alleged human rights abuses, and once we bought solutions we might be like, ‘Whoa, I hope we didn’t implicate ourselves in a conflict crime simply by listening to about it,’” mentioned Henry Ensher, a State Division official who held a number of posts on Afghanistan, together with as the highest civilian consultant in Kandahar in 2010 and 2011, when he labored with Raziq.
“We knew what we had been doing, however we didn’t suppose we had a alternative,” Ensher mentioned.
Most American leaders — together with greater than a dozen interviewed by The Occasions — mentioned that Raziq had been seen as the one companion able to beating again the Taliban within the heartland of the insurgency, the place a pitched battle for dominance was underway.
“Within the second, we’d have succeeded, however so what?” Ensher mentioned. “The whole enterprise was flawed.”
Many Afghans say Raziq used the People and their navy may to pursue a private vendetta, taking vengeance towards the rivals his tribe had been combating for many years.
In interviews, many former senior American officers acknowledged that they by no means grasped that dynamic. It was a defining attribute over a era of fight — how little the USA understood concerning the conflict it was waging.
The United Nations, human rights teams and information retailers raised critical considerations about Raziq and his forces, however impartial investigations had been restricted, particularly with the area so impenetrable through the conflict.
To find out the extent of the abuses, The Occasions combed by means of greater than 50,000 handwritten complaints that had been scrawled into the Kandahar governor’s ledgers from 2011 by means of the top of the conflict in 2021. In them, we discovered the rudimentary particulars of just about 2,200 instances of suspected disappearances.
