Looting and Vandalism Mark Taliban's Retreat

By Keith B. Richburg Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, November 15, 2001; Page A01

KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov. 14 -- They came to power five years ago as a highly disciplined movement aimed at cleansing Afghan society. They opposed corruption and factional infighting. They vowed to impose security, strict morals and a harsh version of Islamic law.

But when the Taliban militiamen left Kabul in the cover of darkness late Monday, their departure was marked by confusion, panic, looting and vandalism. Taliban troops ransacked offices and stole vehicles. They marauded through currency exchange shops, smashing open vaults and stealing cash. They looted the museum. In at least one military facility, they left behind for the city's new conquerors debris-strewn offices with broken doors and locks.

"They destroyed all of the facilities here," said Gen. Mohammed Sharif Tawasuli, commander of the Prophet Muhammad Division of the opposition Northern Alliance, whose troops moved into the city early Tuesday and took up position at the site of an old military school. "They took whatever they could. Then they broke all the locks."

Tawasuli and other Northern Alliance commanders also said the Taliban left behind a trove of documents, including passports, identification cards and training manuals, detailing the involvement of Pakistanis, Arabs, Chechens and other foreign fighters in helping to maintain Taliban rule. They said the documents, written in Persian, Urdu and English, confirmed what Northern Alliance officials have long reported: that thousands of foreign troops were integrated into the Taliban force and may have formed the core of its frontline defense.

As Kabul residents began today to fully absorb the reality of the Taliban's sudden exit -- with men shaving their once-mandatory beards and women showing their uncovered faces in public for the first time in five years -- new details emerged of those final, panicked hours before the Taliban's pre-dawn retreat.

In the currency exchange district, inside the main marketplace, Taliban troops raided about 80 shops, dealers said. They smashed the locks on metal grates, broke open safes and stole an estimated $1.5 million, 10 million Pakistani rupees and "tons of afghanis," currency dealer Fazil Ahmed said, basing his estimate on a stocktaking session with his colleagues.

"We have some special safes, but they used their weapons to break the locks," said Ahmed, whose shop was looted of $4,500 in U.S. currency and 188 million afghanis. "It's not only me -- it's everybody."

An official with a foreign relief agency said several aid groups reported that Taliban troops and officials, in the days before their exit, had entered the groups' compounds and confiscated vehicles. He said the Taliban often used such rationales as faulty paperwork as a pretext for commandeering the cars.

Northern Alliance soldiers posted outside the Kabul city museum reported that some antiques had been looted before the Taliban's departure. The museum had only recently been repaired, with foreign assistance.

Not all of the Taliban's forces got the message to evacuate. At Kabul's 2nd District police station, Gen. Abdul Wahid Sharifi produced for a reporter two Afghan Taliban soldiers who he said were captured the night before hiding in a residential neighborhood with AK-47 assault rifles and pretending to be Northern Alliance troops. He said the two, from Afghanistan's southern border area near Pakistan, "didn't know there was an order to evacuate."

He said police arrested a dozen Taliban stragglers Tuesday night, all armed, including one Pakistani, and that several carried military-style manuals printed in Pakistan and written in Urdu, Pakistan's dominant language.

During more than five weeks of punishing U.S. airstrikes, the Taliban went to great lengths to try to conceal assets. In the Qowa-a-Markaz neighborhood, residents described how the Taliban moved dozens of vehicles into the yard of a private repair shop, hoping the vehicles would be missed by U.S. planes.

"They put their vehicles here," said Abdul Qodus, a security guard for the automobile lot. "This is a private place, so they thought their cars would be secure."

One witness described how in their final hours in the capital, Taliban troops used rocket-propelled grenades to destroy cars that were under repair or for some reason could not be moved.

After the Taliban evacuated the city, some residents began looting in the early morning hours Tuesday. Some witnesses described seeing women, children and old people stealing food from warehouses and shops. Northern Alliance officials have cited the breakdown of security, and the threat of chaos, as the reason they broke a vow not to occupy the capital. Troops have moved into government ministry buildings, military installations, foreign embassy compounds and other key sites. Heavily armed troops in camouflage as well as policemen in black uniforms seemed to be jointly taking responsibility for Kabul's security today. Soldiers at major intersections searched cars, while police officers directed traffic from elevated pedestals at traffic circles.

[On Friday, a senior spokesman for the Northern Alliance said it would not set up an interim government for Afghanistan, but would create a military council to govern Kabul until a broad-based Afghan government is formed, the Reuters news agency reported.]

Kabul residents have endured successive civil wars, including the Taliban's relentless barrage in April 1996, when 866 rockets were fired into the city. So while generally glad to see the Taliban gone, many here seemed anxious at the sight of a new Afghan army in the capital -- particularly troops from the Northern Alliance, the disparate group whose rule here from 1992 to 1996 was marred by infighting.

"I don't know whether the alliance will be good people or not," said Haji Ismatullah, a money-changer whose shop was looted by departing Taliban troops. "We've already experienced them."

"If there is support from the international community, we might have peace," he added. "But if there is no international support, we don't think they can bring peace."

The alliance today made some moves to try to assuage the nervous populace. It announced that people who had lost their jobs under the Taliban would be rehired and should return to their offices on Saturday.

"I'm looking forward to Saturday," said Saraj Uddin, 28, a flight engineer who said he was fired by the Taliban because he once worked for "a Communist regime."

Uddin was lined up with scores of other men for something he had been waiting for for more than five years: a shave at the barber shop. The Taliban mandated that all men grow beards, and today, as an act of defiance, men stood in long lines for the chance to be freshly shaved.

Abdullah, 17, pointed to the pile of hair on the floor. "We will send it to Pakistan!" he said to laughter in the shop. Many Kabul residents blame Pakistan for having supported the Taliban during its five-year rule.

Some of Kabul's women, forced by the Taliban to wear the traditional long, flowing burqa, were also enjoying a new taste of freedom. In the Tahir Maskan neighborhood, a gritty area of public housing high-rises, a group of eight women stood talking and laughing with their faces fully exposed to the sunshine for the first time in five years.

"You can experience it yourself," said Karima Herat, who was headmistress of a girls' high school that was shut down by the Taliban. "Wear it yourself just for one hour, then remove it, and you will understand."

"We're very happy," said her friend, Rayhna Sadat, who taught school before the Taliban banned women from the workplace. "But we're worried about whether this government is sustainable or whether there will be looting. This is the second day, so we feel a bit free. But we cannot say anything about the future. We are afraid of civil war in our country."

Referring to the Northern Alliance, she said, "It is not good to experience the ones we've already experienced before."

Northern Alliance officials and commanders say they are aware of the misgivings and suspicions, but said they have learned from their mistakes. "The Taliban was promoted because of the fault of the Northern Alliance," said Tawasuli, the general, who was sitting in his new office, a partially destroyed room in the military school.

"When they [the parties of the Northern Alliance] captured Kabul in 1992, they started a lot of factional fighting. People blamed the government because they could not provide food or security. So they turned to the Taliban. The Taliban promised security and to bring Islam to Afghanistan.

"We've learned," he said. "We know that fighting is not the solution for our country."

-- Anonymous, November 15, 2001