Power Plays in Afghanistan: Laying the Groundwork for Civil War

[Purveyor]

By Christoph Reuter in Khanabad, Afghanistan

The Bonn conference on Afghanistan aimed to paint an optimistic future for the war-torn country. But the country's inhabitants have no illusions: They know that their military cannot protect them, and that the warlords are jockeying for position. Meanwhile, the Taliban are just waiting for the Americans to leave.

There is a new weapon in Afghanistan's dog-eat-dog war. It is invisible and omnipresent. The Afghan intelligence service, NDS, has authorized the use of firearms against the force of this weapon, but this has already led to deaths. In their Friday sermons, the imams condemn it as a diabolical instrument of infidels.

It is the number 39.

From Herat in the west, through Kabul and all the way to Kunduz in the north, it is a number associated with prostitution and evil. Car dealers, who always sell vehicles complete with license plates, must give customers large discounts if the number 39 appears on the plate number. Mullah Tarakhel, a Pashtun member of parliament listed as member No. 39, ordered his bodyguards to open fire when Tajik colleagues scoffed at him. Two men were killed in the gunfire. At the grand council, or loya jirga, held in mid-November, the delegates argued less passionately over a strategic agreement with the United States than over who was to be appointed to the 39th of 40 committees -- until they decided to simply skip the number. "In Afghanistan, the number 39 has a very strange meaning which it is not fair for me to tell you," said jirga spokeswoman Safia Sediqi.

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http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,801820,00.html#ref=nlint

[msongs]

1. civil war been going on there for 10,000 years, it is a tribal culture and tribes fight nt