Life under the Taliban: how a boy of seven was hanged to punish his family

As a seven-year-old boy is hanged in Afghanistan, Ben Farmer hears how in certain areas the Taliban's shadow administration remains more influential than the government in Kabul.

A Pashtun girl holds a child while watching a US Army patrol June 3, 2010 a village south of Kandahar, Afghanistan. Credit: Photo: Chris Hondros/Getty Images

Del Awar, aged seven, was taken at sunset and found hanging in an orchard at sunrise the following day.

Bruises and scratches around the young boy's neck suggested his murder had been neither quick, nor easy, according to those who saw his slight body after it was cut down.

His death is widely believed to have been punishment for the stand taken by his family against the Taliban in their remote Helmand village.

Reports from the village of Heratiyan in Sangin district said Del Awar's father, Abdul Qudoos, and grandfather, Abdel Satar, had grown tired of Taliban intimidation and the violence the militants attracted.

The family had either demanded rebel fighters stop using village compounds to stage ambushes or had refused a demand of £400 for machine guns, villagers reported.

The two men had been angrily denounced as Nato or US spies and unknown to them, Del Awar's cruel fate was sealed.

The Taliban have denied the killing, but in Heratiyan where villagers must live under the reality of complete militant control, many privately doubt their protestations.

Awar's father, Abdul Qudoos, was a poor man who could not send his children to school and did not have a feud with anyone, explained Maulawi Shamsullah Sahrai, a 50-year-old elder from the village.

"Some in the village have said the Taliban killed him for being a spy, others have said they were trying to frighten people.

"Some would rather blame it on ghosts because they are too afraid to speak about the death."

Heratiyan, like large swathes of rural southern Afghanistan, is under a Taliban control so complete it amounts to an alternative government to Hamid Karzai's Kabul regime.

For those accused of collaboration with the Nato-led forces or with Mr Karzai's weak government, Taliban control often means rapid summary execution.

Schools have been closed or burned for being un-Islamic; schoolgirls have had acid thrown in their faces, and women have been confined to home unless accompanied by a male relative.

Under their backward governance, anything resembling modern health care is almost non-existent.

But at the same time, for others, Taliban control has provided an order which contrasts with the predatory anarchy which blighted Afghanistan in the 1990s.

For them Taliban rule means fast and tough justice for thieves, bandits and murderers as well as protection from corrupt Karzai-appointed police commanders and officials.

Persuading Afghans that government from Kabul is better than government by the Taliban has now become the linchpin of General Stanley McChrystal's drive to wrest control of Kandahar from the insurgents this summer.

Plans for the biggest military offensive of the war yet against the Taliban's birthplace have changed into what is described as a "governance offensive".

General Michael Flynn, the head of military intelligence in Afghanistan, estimated last December that 33 of 34 provinces now had shadow Taliban administrations.

In 2005 only 11 provinces had shadow governors.

The influence of these underground governments varies from marginal to significant and the proportion of Afghanistan actually under Taliban control is hotly contested.

Previous estimates of more than half the country have been strongly denied by Kabul.

However in the southern Taliban heartlands, Kabul-appointed provincial governors, district governors and police are mirrored by Taliban-appointed governors and police.

Hamid Karzai's representatives are unable to leave the protection of main towns or only hold sway during office hours. Security from Nato-led patrols ends as soon as the patrol passes.

Such is the scene in rural districts of neighbouring Kandahar, said 46-year-old Gul Mohammad, who farms wheat and grapes on 17 acres in Zhari district.

"The Taliban have everything they used to have when they were in government. They have a governor, they have judges, they even have their own police force," he said as he sat cross-legged on a floor cushion in his town house in the city.

Fear of a successful special forces campaign against Taliban commanders and governors has meant the shadow administration constantly moves to avoid raids but still remains more influential than Kabul.

Like all those in his Panjwayi village 30 miles from Kandahar, Haji Sher Mohammad has had to deal with both sides.

When Hamid Karzai first took power, a bodyguard of his ally Gul Agha Sherzai seized Haji Sher Mohammad's house and threw him out. When he complained, he says he was ignored and then imprisoned. It took two years and $5,000 in bribes to regain his property, he claimed.

He compares this with Taliban justice. In February, while visiting his brother's home he saw a Taliban fighter planting a homemade mine near the house to target passing foreign convoys.

Fearing the blast would kill his nephews and nieces or trigger military reprisal, he crept out when the Taliban had gone and snipped the wires.

He was seen and seized by fighters who took him to a mobile Taliban court for punishment. The roving courts move daily to avoid air strikes and are the insurgent's main method of administration.

He was led into a hut in the middle of a vineyard where judges and guards had arrived by motorbike. The forbidding sight of three, severe long-bearded mullah's sitting on a simple straw mat before an Islamic legal text quickly cooled his indignation.

"I hadn't been afraid until then," the 48-year-old said.

"But when I saw they had sticks and Kalashnikovs, I feared for my life."

The fighter denounced him as a spy for the Canadians and demanded punishment, but Haji Sher Mohammad replied: "If this is safe for your wife and family, bring them there."

The judge backed him and ordered the fighter to remove the mines.

Haji Sher Mohammad said he was no friend of the Taliban, who were uneducated and attracted violence. But they were more honest than the government, he said.

"If I have a legal problem, the Taliban will rule in an hour according to our customs and Islam. If I take it to the government, in six months nothing will have happened. Then whoever pays the most will win."

Gul Mohammad, who has also seen the Taliban solve legal disputes in Zhari added: "Both the Taliban and the government are uneducated, we don't like either of them, but the big difference is that the government want money."

Nato commanders realise that success in defeating the Taliban will only come from persuading men like Haji Sher Mohammad and Gul Mohammad that the government has more to offer than the Taliban.

"We need to tell them that the Taliban may be able to offer swift justice of a kind, but they will never be able to offer development, clinics, or education for their children," said one British officer in Helmand last month.

The coalition also hopes to capitalise on anger at Taliban violence and intimidation. The United Nations has estimated the number of civilians killed by the Taliban has risen as they use indiscriminate homemade bombs to target foreigners.

This week a suicide bombing blamed on the Taliban which targeted a wedding party in Kandahar province apparently attended by members of a pro-Government militia, left more than 100 dead or wounded.

British and American commanders believe Taliban control is little more than intimidation which makes up for insurgents' weakness.

"Whether of not a town is under Taliban control is really up to the perception of the townsfolk," said one American officer.

"If they have a commander who is able to make threats or deliver letters at night, people can think they control the town."

In Heratiyan, where Abdul died this week, that is how the locals feel.

"Heratiyan is totally under Taliban control," said Maulawi Shamsullah Sahrai.

"They can do whatever they like. They have total authority."