In Tunisia, a warm embrace of fresh freedoms

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, January 24, 2011; A01

TUNIS - Workers stormed out of the state-run shipping company the other day. For decades, they had lived quietly in relative poverty as their bosses, all members of the former ruling party, drove luxury cars and owned mansions.

Only 10 days ago, the police would have suppressed this mini-uprising and arrested them. Now, it was a new order. Pumping their fists, the workers accused the company's chairman of embezzlement and demanded his resignation.

Across this nation, Tunisians are experiencing a blossoming of freedoms after a popular uprising ousted President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali from power on Jan. 14, ending his autocratic rule. Many are voicing their thoughts and ideas after living for nearly a quarter of a century in fear. Others, for the first time in their lives, are demanding justice for relatives killed by his regime.

The happiness is tempered by unease, for their future is still uncertain. Protests are unfolding daily in the capital to demand that the interim government purge all members of Ben Ali's party. The opposition is weak and divided; some fear militias that supported the president might create problems.

In a crackdown on key allies of Ben Ali, police on Sunday placed two high-ranking officials under house arrest and detained the head of a well-known private TV station for allegedly trying to slow the country's steps toward democracy.

But for now, at least, many here are embracing freedoms they thought they would never have.

"They stole the nation's money. They were a mafia. Our company is like a little example of what was wrong with Tunisia," said Sofiyan Abu Sami, one of the workers who walked off the job the other day. Some carried placards that read "No to corruption."

"Now, we can finally speak our minds," he said.

Under Ben Ali, Tunisia was perceived by the West as a model nation in the Arab world - moderate, relatively prosperous and secular. The autocratic leader, who seized power in 1987, stamped down on Islamic radicalism; he was a U.S. ally in the war against terrorism in a region where al-Qaeda was making inroads.

Ben Ali also lorded over a landscape of repression and corruption. Journalists were censored, harassed and monitored by his intelligence service. Critical voices were silenced.

His family owned more than half the companies in Tunisia, including banks, hotels and real estate development firms. Bribes and good ties with the government were the route to jobs and promotions.

In the streets, shops and offices, Ben Ali's photos were everywhere, as were the secret police.

For years, Mohammed Nasrallah, who was once jailed for supporting an opposition group, was forced to keep a large photo of Ben Ali in his restaurant near the Avenue Habib Bourghiba, the epicenter of the protests, which winds through downtown Tunis. Removing it would have meant a visit from city inspectors, stiff fines, perhaps even a beating by the secret police.

But after Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia, Nasrallah took the photo from the frame and set it on fire. "It was like I was born again," he said.

A block away, Radhiya Mishirsi said she once worried that the police would insult her when she wore her head scarf. On Friday, she stood near a group of policemen and declared that she would cover her entire face, leaving only her eyes exposed. The policemen nodded and smiled. 'First, the people'


On the Avenue Bourghiba, Mohamed Dhakar carried a placard calling for a new national motto: "First, the people. Freedom. Rights. Justice."

"I am not part of any party," Dhakar yelled. "I am for Tunisia."

His presence attracted a large crowd and triggered an impromptu discussion.

"We are against the secret police. We want all of them in uniform," a man yelled.

"If the new government is making a piece of theater, the people will remove them like we did the old government," another man yelled.

Communists, socialists and atheists were all staging demonstrations downtown on this day. Opposition groups were once banned or harassed by the old government. On Friday, more than 1,000 Islamists marched along the avenue, calling for a parliamentary form of government. A group from a rural area in Tunisia's impoverished south distributed pamphlets demanding more jobs and development in their region.

Some hurled insults at the once-feared police.

"There is a God," a man shouted at some policemen. "There is a God to protect the truth. How can you have killed your own people?"

Sueda Guesmi was also asking that question. She said her son was accused of selling alcohol illegally and imprisoned without a trial. A few weeks later, she was told he had died in his cell.

"I want to know why my son was killed," Guesmi said. "I want justice for him." Writing without fear


At the Ministry of Youth and Sports, the 300 or so employees demanded that the minister, an ally of Ben Ali, depart along with his staff. He complied. As his chief of staff left the building, the employees exploded in thunderous applause.

"Long live the revolution! Long live Tunisia!" they chanted.

"We are rejecting this new government," said Rauda Assel, an employee standing outside the ministry building. "This is not the moment for taking your ministry car and your responsibilities, but to be with the people for the right cause."

The employees appointed a three-member committee from their own ranks to run the ministry until, they said, a government is formed that satisfies them.

At La Presse newspaper, the editor in chief, who was appointed by the former government, also stepped down. A committee of editors took over. Ten days ago, they were publishing official propaganda delivered by the state news agency. On the front pages, they always published a picture of Ben Ali. They wrote fawning articles about Besma - The Smile - a charity run by his wife, Leila Trabesi.

"It was a smoke screen to hide the corruption of the first family," said Hmida Ben Romdhane, an editor on the committee now running the newspaper. "Before the revolution, we were not publishing information. We published disinformation. The regime forbade any attempt to write the truth."

Now, for the first time in their lives, La Presse's 50 journalists are writing without fear.

Ben Ali's photo is no longer published on the front page - unless it accompanies a scathing article about the regime's excesses. Last week, La Presse published a story about Switzerland freezing Ben Ali's assets.

Soon, Ben Romdhane said, his reporters are planning to investigate the corruption and repression of the former regime. "We have to learn how to be free and work in this new atmosphere of freedom," he said.

His voice filled with emotion as he spoke about the profound change in the newsroom and his life.

"I am 59, and I have seen only two presidents. I have experienced two dictatorships," he said. "The freedom we have gained is a freedom imposed by the people on the political system. This freedom, I think, will last.

"It's a new era."

Related articles

• Marchers add to Tunisia pressure (bbc.co.uk)
• Tunisia arrests TV channel owner for "treason" (reuters.com)

Iran's fuel blockade strains relations with Afghanistan, prompts protests

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, January 17, 2011; A07

KABUL - A protracted fuel blockade by Iran sparked protests in Afghanistan for the second day in a row Sunday as tensions rose between the Islamic neighbors, who share a long border and a complicated history.

Afghan demonstrators in the western border city of Herat threw eggs and stones at the Iranian consulate, protesting the six-week border blockade of fuel tankers passing through Iran that has caused prices of gasoline and winter heating fuel to rise between 35 and 60 percent across the country.

Afghanistan's commerce minister, Anwar ul-Haq Ahady, said at a news conference in the capital Sunday that the government was "not happy" with Iran, marking the first public criticism of the actions by Afghan officials. He said the Afghan government had not received any plausible explanation for the blockade, which has left up to 2,000 fuel trucks stranded on the border. "Whatever reason they have given is not acceptable to us," Ahady said.

Iranian officials said they were stopping the fuel transports because the government suspects the product ends up with NATO - and perhaps U.S. - forces in Afghanistan. "We have news that fuel transited through Iran is handed over to NATO forces. We are extremely worried about this," Fada Hossein Maleki, Iran's ambassador to Afghanistan, told the official Islamic Republic News Agency on Jan. 5.

"We will provide fuel for the people, but no one has the right to give it to the military of a country who will use it against the interests of the nations of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan," he said.

NATO officials here have repeatedly denied that the fuel was being sold to U.S. and NATO troops fighting Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan.

Ahady said that until early December, about 2,400 tons of fuel per day had been entering Afghanistan through Iran, most of it coming from Iraq. That had supplied almost half the nation's domestic fuel needs, he said, but once it stopped, a poorly regulated system of private fuel importation had left the country without a plan to manage the crisis. He pledged that Afghanistan would import 200,000 tons of fuel through other routes in the coming month.

Afghan news media reported this week that Iran had reacted angrily to a series of protests outside its embassy in Kabul and its consulate in Herat, calling in the Afghan ambassador in Tehran and demanding that the protest organizers be arrested.

Maleki told the news agency that, after the protests in front of his embassy, Iran had demanded the arrest of the "key elements of this suspicious act." If that happens, he said, "the Islamic Republic of Iran might reconsider the fuel transit."

But some Afghan officials and many civilians have complained that Iran has no right to dictate to its government.

The crisis has added a new chapter to the tense and contradictory relationship between the two countries. Iran has long served as an economic and wartime safety valve for millions of Afghan refugees, while Afghan rivers provide a steady flow of water to Iran under a 60-year-old agreement. Iran, the wealthier and more powerful neighbor, has also been providing financial support to Kabul, some of it in the form of cash payments to President Hamid Karzai.

Yet many Afghans suspect that Tehran wants to weaken their country, undermine its alliance with the West and increase Shiite Muslim influence in their Sunni-dominated society. There are periodic reports of covert Iranian activities in Afghanistan, and constant tensions along the border where thousands of Afghans cross back and forth.

A recent series of violent border incidents involving Afghan job seekers has added to the tensions. Afghan human rights and political activists said Iranian border guards regularly abuse Afghans who try to cross illegally in search of jobs, beating many and fatally shooting several in recent months.

"Iran wants Afghanistan to be weak and unstable, and their cruelty has caused a serious crisis for poor Afghans, but our government remains silent," said Najibullah Kabuli, an Afghan legislator and TV channel operator who organized several of the recent anti-Iran rallies here.

The fuel crisis has put Karzai's government in an awkward position on several fronts. It is caught between the widening domestic anger at Iran and its historic dependence on Tehran for help with fuel, refugees, jobs and trade. At the same time, it is hosting tens of thousands of American and other NATO troops to help fight Taliban insurgents, while trying to preserve cordial relations with a neighbor that is a sworn enemy of the United States.

Ahady, Afghanistan's commerce minister, declined to comment on Iran's relationship with his government, and Karzai, who is politically beholden to several former Shiite militia leaders with ties to Iran, has said almost nothing about the current crisis. Last month Vice President Mohammed Fahim Khan visited Tehran and reportedly appealed to Iranian officials to halt the blockade. Since then, Iran has been letting a trickle of 30 to 40 tankers a day cross the border, while thousands more sit idle.

The halt of fuel transports coincided with an overhaul in the way state subsidies are handed out in Iran, prompting a sharp increase in the price of gasoline and other staples.

Before the plan started on Dec. 20, the Iranian government had been stocking up on fuel in case the changes led to unrest or shortages. Although Iran praises itself for exporting gasoline and petrochemical products to neighboring countries while it faces international trade sanctions, some have speculated that the stopped tankers on the border are serving as a possible backup in case the fuel is needed inside Iran.

"Iran is our neighbor and we share the same religion, but it is always creating problems for us," said Jamshid Khan, a construction company administrator who was waiting in a line of cars at a Kabul gas station Saturday. "If they don't let the tankers go soon, I am going to have to start riding a bicycle to work."

Correspondent Thomas Erdbrink in Tehran contributed to this report.

Lebanon prepares for 'the toughest week ahead'

By Leila Fadel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 17, 2011; A06

BEIRUT - The head of the militant Shiite Hezbollah movement on Sunday defended the decision to bring down Lebanon's government, arguing that the move was necessary to protect the country from the consequences of indictments expected soon from a controversial United Nations tribunal.

The comments from Hassan Nasrallah - his first public remarks since the government's collapse - set the stage for what are likely to be lengthy negotiations on forming a new government that will stall Lebanese institutions and frustrate the nation.

Hezbollah and its allies resigned from the government Wednesday to protest Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri's refusal to renounce the work of a U.N. tribunal investigating the 2005 killing of Hariri's father, former prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri. The move follows a long standoff over the tribunal that has paralyzed the country, pitting Hariri, backed by the United States and Saudi Arabia, against Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran.

Parliamentarians are expected to meet Monday to nominate a new prime minister for this tiny coastal nation of Sunni and Shiite Muslims and Christians that has long been a regional battleground for influence.

Political leaders here are deeply divided, and choosing a new government will prove difficult if a compromise is not reached. Nasrallah vowed that members of the March 8 alliance, led by Hezbollah, would not back Hariri, who is now serving as a caretaker prime minister. Instead, the group and its allies are trying to gather the parliamentary support they need to select someone for the position.

"It was our moral and patriotic duty to make this government fall in order to open a door to form a strong government," Nasrallah said in his address on the Hezbollah television channel Al Manar. "This step was constitutional, legal and civilized. We did not go to the streets or use weapons."

Sealed draft indictments in the 2005 assassination will be sent soon to the pre-trial judge at the tribunal, and they are widely expected to implicate several of Hezbollah's members. The group has staunchly denied involvement in the killing of Rafiq al-Hariri and 22 others and has demanded that the government stop cooperating with the tribunal.

"They could not make a plan to deal with the indictments," Nasrallah said, adding that the Hariri-led administration "exposed" the country and had become "incompetent." He added, "We exercised our beliefs for the sake of our country."

Both the pending indictments and the related political crisis are sensitive issues in a nation that on the surface seems calm but is, in fact, deeply divided by religion and sect and often teeters somewhere between peace and conflict.

On the radio in Beirut, one weekend news bulletin summed up things in just four words: "The toughest week ahead."

Nasrallah asked why the "world is interfering" in an internal issue, referring to Western and Arab countries that have rallied behind Hariri. Before signing off, he warned Hariri that the deposed dictator in Tunisia, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, was an ally to the West, but those friends quickly turned on him, and no Western airport opened its doors after his people ousted him from power.

"There is a huge responsibility tomorrow on the members of parliament to decide the destiny of the country," he said.

Such uncertainty is the norm in Lebanon, whose institutions have been stalled intermittently since the 2005 killing.

Most people here agree that an internal war will not engulf Lebanon. Many say they don't want to fight, and only one party is strong enough to win, the armed Shiite movement of Hezbollah, founded nearly 30 years ago when Israel invaded Lebanon. In 2008, Hezbollah showed its military might when it took to the streets and briefly took control of parts of the city.

"They could have kept the city, they could have taken it all, but they didn't. They just wanted to show that all of this is a play," said Ahmed Waheed, 45, as he hawked meat pies on the side of the road in the northern city of Tripoli. "We want the truth but these politicians have taken us into a dark tunnel, and we don't know where we are anymore."

Around him, banners graced the bridges and traffic circles of this city. "Whoever betrays Saad Hariri, betrays Lebanon," reads one in the center of the mostly Sunni city where Hariri has wide support.

"They fight with each other so they can get paid from the outside," Waheed said. Most months, the Sunni man can't make his rent. He steals his electricity because he can't pay for it, and every time there is a crisis, food prices rise. His wife holds a master's degree, but she can't get a job. "We want to protest, but there is no government to protest."

Waheed's frustrations are echoed across the country.

In south Beirut, the Shiite heartland of the Lebanese capital, Hassan Ramadan squeezed fresh juice for his customers Sunday. The front of his store was adorned with a picture of Nasrallah.

He and his family had a store in Tarik al Jadida, a Sunni district of Beirut where sectarian skirmishes were most fierce in 2008. Sunni men from the neighborhood destroyed his store because it was Shiite-owned. He still hasn't reopened. The time to do that is not now, he said, because the sectarian tensions are too high.

"Lebanon is always in a crisis," Ramadan said. "When the leaders sit together and agree, the people will calm down and everything will be okay. The politicians decide the safety of the streets."

"Lebanon is a battlefield for the whole world," added his customer, Mohammed Srour, as he dipped his plastic spoon into a cup of sliced fruit and fresh juice.

fadell@washpost.com Special correspondent Moe Ali Nayel contributed to this report.

Officials try to regain order in Tunisia

By Bouazza Ben Bouazza and Elaine Ganley
Monday, January 17, 2011; A06

TUNIS - Major gun battles erupted outside the palace of Tunisia's deposed president, in the center of the capital, in front of the main opposition party headquarters and elsewhere on Sunday as authorities struggled to restore order and the world waited to see whether the North African nation would continue its first steps away from autocratic rule.

Police arrested dozens of people, including the top presidential security chief, as tensions appeared to mount between Tunisians buoyant over Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali's departure and loyalists in danger of losing major perks.

There were cheers and smiles in much of Tunis, the capital, as residents tore down the massive portraits of Ben Ali, some of them several stories high, that hung from lampposts and billboards and were omnipresent during his 23-year reign.

Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannoushi said on state TV that a new national unity government will "most certainly" be announced Monday "to open a new page in the history of Tunisia." There are three legal opposition parties that could be included in the government Ghannoushi has been directed to form by the interim president, Fouad Mebazaa. Negotiations are advanced, Ghannoushi said Sunday night.

Worries among Tunisians, however, grew with the violence and worsening shortages of essentials such as milk, bread and fresh fish.

"We're starting to feel it now," said Imed Jaound at the Tunis port, which has been closed since Friday, when Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia.

A gun battle broke out around the presidential palace late Sunday afternoon in Carthage on the Mediterranean shore, about 10 miles north of Tunis. The army and members of the newly appointed presidential guard fought off attacks from militias loyal to Ben Ali, said a member of the new presidential guard. Helicopters were surveying the zone.

The militias emerged from a forest to charge, the guard member said by telephone. He said the militia are "numerous" and are using various kinds of arms but gave no further details. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to be publicly named.

Residents of Carthage - a center of power in ancient times but now a Tunis suburb popular with tourists - said they have barricaded themselves inside their homes amid the shooting. Many soldiers were in the palace, but it was unclear whether any of the interim government's leaders were.

One Carthage resident said she saw four men in a taxi speed through a military checkpoint at the end of her street and toward the palace nearby. Soldiers shot at the taxi and the men inside returned fire.

The resident, who asked not to be named because of security concerns, said her neighbors saw other armed men break through checkpoints in civilian cars. The gun battle lasted about four hours before calm returned in the evening, she said.

Other gunfights broke out near the PDP opposition party headquarters and a two-hour-long gun battle raged behind the Interior Ministry, long feared during Ben Ali's reign as a torture site. Residents of the city center heard constant volleys of gunfire throughout much of the afternoon; they were ordered to stay away from windows and keep their curtains closed.

The prime minister said Sunday night that police and the army have arrested numerous members of armed groups, without saying how many.

"The coming days will show who is behind them," Ghannoushi said. He added that arms and documents have been seized from those arrested.

"We won't be tolerant towards these people," the prime minister said.

The security chief, Ali Seriati, and his deputy were charged with a plot against state security, aggressive acts and "provoking disorder, murder and pillaging," the TAP state news agency reported.

- Associated Press

Overthrow delivers a jolt to Arab region

By Liz Sly and Leila Fadel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, January 16, 2011; A11

BAGHDAD - Moments after Tunisian president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali was ejected from his palace, tweets began flying across a region that was at once enthralled and appalled by the specter of an Arab leader being overthrown by his own people.

"Today Ben Ali, tomorrow Hosni Mubarak," gloated one tweeter, referring to Egypt's long-serving president. "Come on Mubarak, take a hint and follow the lead," urged another.

And prominent Egyptian blogger Hossam el-Hamalawy observed: "Revolutions are like dominos."

On Saturday, a day after Tunisia's president was forced into exile by massive street demonstrations, the Middle East was still reeling, with calls for copycat protests reverberating across the Internet, in cafes and on street corners as far afield as Jordan and Yemen. For the first time in the history of a part of the world long calcified by autocratic rule, a dictator had been forced from office by a popular revolt, and it was all broadcast live on television

Leaders braced for the fallout. Elites analyzed the potential for the revolution to spread. Ordinary people celebrated, marveled, gossiped and wondered: Will it happen here? What can we do? And, perhaps most important, who will be next?

Only one certainty stood out: The turmoil in tiny Tunisia, long ignored as a sleepy outpost of relative stability on the fringe of a volatile region, will have profound ramifications for the rest of the Arab world.

"Things will not be the same any longer," predicted Labib Kamhawi, a political analyst in the Jordanian capital of Amman. "2011 will witness drastic change, and it is long overdue."

The rumblings are already there. Jordan, Algeria and Libya have all seen violent protests in recent weeks, spurred by rising prices, unemployment and anger at official corruption - much the same issues that precipitated the snowballing street protests in Tunisia a month ago.

As the ousted Ben Ali flew into exile in Saudi Arabia on Saturday, the Saudi government issued a statement that seemed designed to forestall unwelcome comparisons between the new guest and the ruling Saudi monarchy.

"The government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia announces that it stands fully behind the Tunisian people," it said.

Almost no government in the region is immune from the combustible combination of grievances that sparked the uprising in Tunisia. Inflation, joblessness and the hopelessness of living in a country where opportunity is the preserve of a tiny ruling elite are steadily fueling frustrations from Algiers to Amman, from Tripoli to Sanaa and Damascus.

With the exception of Lebanon, whose democratically elected government also collapsed last week, for reasons related to Lebanon's own complicated sectarian politics, and Iraq, still battling the scourge of a lingering insurgency, every country in the region is ruled by some form of undemocratic autocrat.

"We could go through the list of Arab leaders looking in the mirror right now and very few would not be on the list," said Robert Malley, who heads the Middle East and North Africa program at the International Crisis Group. Rumblings in Egypt


Perhaps nowhere do the lessons of Tunisia resonate more loudly than in nearby Egypt, where Mubarak has been president since 1981, six years longer than his toppled Tunisian counterpart. Egypt, like Tunisia, is grappling with the challenges of a rapidly growing population, limited job opportunities and deep resentment of the entrenched privileges of a ruling clique.

In a possible foreshadowing of what may lie ahead, police broke up an attempted demonstration outside the Tunisian Embassy in Cairo on Saturday night and blocked all but a few dozen protesters from reaching the site of another planned protest.

"It is our turn," chanted a small crowd of about 70 activists who managed to break through the police cordon. "Revolution is coming, by any means."

But it is far from certain that what happened in Tunisia will be replicated in other parts of a region whose governments have a practiced record of suppressing dissent. Tunisia was at once better and worse off than other Arab nations, in that its government had both allowed the development of a free economy in which many citizens prospered and ruthlessly repressed the emergence of any form of Islamist opposition.

"What is happening in Tunisia is Tunisia-specific," said Christopher Alexander, a Tunisia specialist and director of the Dean Rusk International Studies Program at Davidson College in North Carolina. "Each country is struggling with its own political, social and economic challenges. But just because some of the challenges are similar doesn't mean that trouble erupting in one place will spread to another."

If it did, the trouble might take a very different form.

In Egypt, the most potent opposition movement is the Muslim Brotherhood, whose supporters are dedicated to imposing Islamist rule on a country with a long secular tradition. Islamists are also the most vocal opponents of the regimes in Saudi Arabia and Jordan, which, like Egypt, are key U.S. allies, as well as in Syria, which is not.

"Change could come not for the better but for the worse, if fundamentalist forces succeed in taking over," said Kamhawi, the Jordanian analyst. "Tunisia was not that important at the end of the day. But what if a more important ally, such as Egypt or Saudi Arabia, was at stake? Would the Americans risk serious change in a more important country?"

The experience of 2005, when the region witnessed a somewhat similar moment, suggests that they would not. Powerful calls for democracy by the Bush administration had seemed to herald a new mood, encouraged by Iraq's first democratic election and the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, in which hundreds of thousands of protesters forced the departure of occupying Syrian troops.

But the moment quickly faded. The United States backed off after strong showings by Islamists in regional elections, and Lebanon's revolution foundered in the face of the country's fierce sectarian rivalries and waning U.S. interest.

In a speech in the Qatari capital of Doha last week, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered a measured critique of Arab regimes, emphasizing the need for leaders to reform their economies and stamp out corruption rather than outright political change. Unknown change ahead


Yet the upheaval in Tunisia may herald the stirrings of another new moment for the Middle East, one in which the United States perhaps becomes irrelevant, analysts say. U.S. officials noted that at no point did the protests in Tunis turn anti-American, despite U.S. support for the dictator they were seeking to dislodge.

Claire Spencer, who heads the Middle East department at the London-based Chatham House think tank, detects the beginnings of a new form of opposition among what she called the "post 9/11 generation," one that is as alienated from Islamic extremism as it is from its own governments.

"Tunisia has kick-started the region's imagination," she said. "There's a lot of frustration out there that could unleash change of some sort, though what it will look like, we still don't know."

Fadel reported from Beirut. Staff writer Joby Warrick in Washington, correspondent Sudarsan Raghavan in Dubai, and special correspondents Sherine Bayoumi in Cairo, Ranya Kadri in Amman and Ali Qeis in Baghdad contributed to this report.

Al Jazeera - Tunisia's unemployment crisis

5 Good Books about Muslim Cultures and America

By Erin Collazo Miller

After 9/11, many books were published about America's relationship with the Muslim world. Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran are in the news daily, and it is clear that there is a lot most of us do not know about the history, culture and religion of these countries. Fortunately, there is a way to learn more about Islam, and Islamic countries' relationships with America, without reading dry, political books. These books on Islam and America are informative, but read like good novels.

'The Kite Runner' by Khaled Hosseini

Riverhead

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is a gripping, page-turning fiction novel about a boy in Afghanistan who moves to America in the 1980s and how a haunting incident from his childhood draws him back to the country as an adult despite the dangers of the Taliban. This is a must read! The Kite Runner is great for learning about Afghanistan.

• Read a complete review of The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• The Kite Runner Book Club Discussion Questions

Read Review

'A Thousand Splendid Suns' by Khaled Hosseini

Riverhead

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini is superbly written, has a page-turning story, and will help you learn more about Afghanistan. In his follow up novel to The Kite Runner, Hosseini has once again created a heartbreaking masterpiece that connects readers with life in Afghanistan over the past several decades and highlights the common hopes, dreams and struggles that make us human.

• Read a complete review of A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
• A Thousand Splendid Suns Book Club Discussion Questions

'Three Cups of Tea' by Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin

Penguin

Three Cups of Tea is the true story of Greg Mortenson's adventures building schools in remote Northern Pakistan. It is an inspirational nonfiction book and a great way to learn more about Islam. Three Cups of Tea is great for learning about Pakistan.

• Read a complete review of Three Cups of Tea
• Three Cups of Tea Book Club Discussion Questions

'Reading Lolita in Tehran' by Azar Nafisi

Random House

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi is the true story of an underground women's book club in Iran. Part literary criticism, part history of the Islamic Revolution, Reading Lolita in Tehran will especially appeal to book clubs and readers who will understand comparisons between the novels the women read and the situation in Iran. Reading Lolita in Tehran is great for learning about Iran.

• Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi Book Club Discussion Questions

'Terrorist' by John Updike

Knopf

Terrorist by John Updike is a novel about an 18-year-old boy in NJ who is recruited to take part in a terrorist attack. In Terrorist, Updike imagines how an Islamic fundamentalist sees America. Terrorist is great for thinking about Islamic fundamentalism.

• Read a complete review of Terrorist by John Updike
• Terrorist Book Club Discussion Questions

Read Review

Related articles

• On a Kabul Hill, the Dogs and Kites of War (time.com)
• Six brilliant novels about sex, murder, and the meaning of life (psychologytoday.com)
• Book of the month: Late for Tea at the Deer Palace by Tamara Chalabi (peddlerofdreams.wordpress.com)
• Azar Nafisi: Iran's Women: Canaries in the Coal Mine (huffingtonpost.com)
• 'Kite Runner' Author Shares 'Reality' Of Muslim Life (huffingtonpost.com)

IIAS Newsletter 55

Newsletter 55

Spring 2010
1	Cover
2	Contents
3	From the Director
The Study
4	Engaging North Korea after the Cheonan sinking Timothy S. Rich
5	Working girls in Dhaka, between public and private space Anna Ensing
6 - 7	The effeminacy of male beauty in Korea Roald Maliangkay
8	Cigarette counterfeiting in the People’s Republic of China Georgios A. Antonopoulos, Anqi Shen & Klaus von Lampe
9	Negotiating with the Taliban: an Indian perspective Sanjeeb Mohanty
10 - 11	Three dreams or three nations? Rahaab Allana
12 - 13	Maulana Bhashani and the transition to secular politics in East Bengal Peter Custers
14 - 15	Moving portraits and interactive voices from the British Raj Annamaria Motrescu
16	Provincial globalisation: the impact of reverse transnational fl ows in India’s regional towns Anant Maringanti, Carol Upadhya & Mario Rutten
The Focus - Urbanisation in East Asia
17 - 18	Urbanisation in East Asia Gregory Bracken
19	Architectural iconicity: Malaysia’s Multimedia Super Corridor Leslie Sklair
20 - 21	The metropolis and the capital: Shanghai and Beijing as paradigms of space Jacob Dreyer
22 - 23	The state of cities in China Bogdan Stamoran
24 - 25	National economic reform and rural migration to China’s cities Ana Moya Pellitero
26 - 27	Constituting governance: the US Army in the Philippines, 1898-1920s Estela Duque
28 - 29	Leaping beyond nostalgia: Shanghai’s urban life ethnography Non Arkaraprasertkul
30 - 32	Writing the longtang way of life Lena Scheen
The Review
33	New For Review
34	Bookmarked
35	Cultural forms are like snow, crystal clear when hardened, opaque when soft Jeroen Groenewegen
36 - 37	The melancholy of Mocha Michael Pearson
38	Who is this ‘Indonesian Muslim’? Dick van der Meij
39	Race and multiculturalism in Malaysia and Singapore Holger Warnk
40	An extremely difficult position Nicholas Tarling
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New Look for Mecca: Gargantuan and Gaudy

Image via Wikipedia

By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia — It is an architectural absurdity. Just south of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the Muslim world’s holiest site, a kitsch rendition of London’s Big Ben is nearing completion. Called the Royal Mecca Clock Tower, it will be one of the tallest buildings in the world, the centerpiece of a complex that is housing a gargantuan shopping mall, an 800-room hotel and a prayer hall for several thousand people. Its muscular form, an unabashed knockoff of the original, blown up to a grotesque scale, will be decorated with Arabic inscriptions and topped by a crescent-shape spire in what feels like a cynical nod to Islam’s architectural past. To make room for it, the Saudi government bulldozed an 18th-century Ottoman fortress and the hill it stood on.

The tower is just one of many construction projects in the very center of Mecca, from train lines to numerous luxury high-rises and hotels and a huge expansion of the Grand Mosque. The historic core of Mecca is being reshaped in ways that many here find appalling, sparking unusually heated criticism of the authoritarian Saudi government.

“It is the commercialization of the house of God,” said Sami Angawi, a Saudi architect who founded a research center that studies urban planning issues surrounding the hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, and has been one of the development’s most vocal critics. “The closer to the mosque, the more expensive the apartments. In the most expensive towers, you can pay millions” for a 25-year leasing agreement, he said. “If you can see the mosque, you pay triple.”

Saudi officials say that the construction boom — and the demolition that comes with it — is necessary to accommodate the ever-growing numbers of people who make the pilgrimage to Mecca, a figure that has risen to almost three million this past year. As a non-Muslim, I was not permitted to visit the city, but many Muslims I spoke to who know it well — including architects, preservationists and even some government officials — believe the real motive behind these plans is money: the desire to profit from some of the most valuable real estate in the world. And, they add, it has been facilitated by Saudi Arabia’s especially strict interpretation of Islam, which regards much history after the age of Muhammad, and the artifacts it produced, as corrupt, meaning that centuries-old buildings can be destroyed with impunity.

That mentality is dividing the holy city of Mecca — and the pilgrimage experience — along highly visible class lines, with the rich sealed inside exclusive air-conditioned high-rises encircling the Grand Mosque and the poor pushed increasingly to the periphery.

There was a time when the Saudi government’s architecture and urban planning efforts, especially around Mecca, did not seem so callous. In the 1970s, as the government was taking control of Aramco, the American conglomerate that managed the country’s oil fields, skyrocketing oil prices unleashed a wave of national modernization programs, including a large-scale effort to accommodate those performing the hajj.

The projects involved some of the world’s great architectural talents, many of whom were encouraged to experiment with a freedom they were not finding in the West, where postwar faith in Modernism was largely exhausted. The best of their works — modern yet sensitive to local environment and traditions — challenge the popular assumption that Modernist architecture, as practiced in the developing world, was nothing more than a crude expression of the West’s quest for cultural dominance.

These include the German architect Frei Otto’s remarkable tent cities from the late 1970s, made up of collapsible lightweight structures inspired by the traditions of nomadic Bedouin tribes and intended to accommodate hajj pilgrims without damaging the delicate ecology of the hills that surround the old city.

Fifty miles to the west, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s Hajj terminal at King Abdul Aziz International Airport is a similar expression of a form of modernity that can be sensitive to local traditions and environmental conditions without reverting to kitsch. A grid of more than 200 tentlike canopies supported on a system of steel cables and columns, it is divided into small open-air villages, where travelers can rest and pray in the shade before continuing their journey.

The current plans, by contrast, can read like historical parody. Along with the giant Big Ben, there are many other overscale developments — including a proposal for the planned expansion of the Grand Mosque that dwarfs the original complex — in various mock-Islamic styles.

But the Vegas-like aura of these projects can deflect attention from the real crime: the way the developments are deforming what by all accounts was a fairly diverse and unstratified city. The Mecca Clock Tower will be surrounded by a half-dozen luxury high-rises, each designed in a similar Westminster-meets-Wall Street style and sitting on a mall that is meant to evoke traditional souks. Built at various heights at the edge of the Grand Mosque’s courtyard, and fronted by big arched portes-cocheres, they form a postmodern pastiche that means to evoke the differences of a real city but will do little to mask the project’s mind-numbing homogeneity.

Like the luxury boxes that encircle most sports stadiums, the apartments will allow the wealthy to peer directly down at the main event from the comfort of their suites without having to mix with the ordinary rabble below.

At the same time, the scale of development has pushed middle-class and poor residents further and further from the city center. “I don’t know where they go,” Mr. Angawi said. “To the outskirts of Mecca, or they come to Jidda. Mecca is being cleansed of Meccans.”

The changes are likely to have as much of an effect on the spiritual character of the Grand Mosque as on Mecca’s urban fabric. Many people told me that the intensity of the experience of standing in the mosque’s courtyard has a lot to do with its relationship to the surrounding mountains. Most of these represent sacred sites in their own right and their looming presence imbues the space with a powerful sense of intimacy.

But that experience, too, is certain to be lessened with the addition of each new tower, which blots out another part of the view. Not that there will be much to look at: many hillsides will soon be marred by new rail lines, roads and tunnels, while others are being carved up to make room for still more towers.

“The irony is that developers argue that the more towers you build the more views you have,” said Faisal al-Mubarak, an urban planner who works at the ministry of tourism and antiquities. “But only rich people go inside these towers. They have the views.”

The issue is not just run-of-the-mill class conflict. The city’s makeover also reflects a split between those who champion turbocharged capitalism and those who think it should stop at the gates of Mecca, which they see as the embodiment of an Islamic ideal of egalitarianism.

“We don’t want to bring New York to Mecca,” Mr. Angawi said. “The hajj was always supposed to be a time when everyone is the same. There are no classes, no nationalities. It is the one place where we find balance. You are supposed to leave worldly things behind you.”

The government, however, seems unmoved by such sentiments. When I mentioned Mr. Angawi’s observations at the end of a long conversation with Prince Sultan, the minister of tourism and antiquities, he simply frowned. “When I am in Mecca and go around the kaaba, I don’t look up.”

Related articles

• Mecca goes upmarket but commercialism unnerves some - Reuters Africa (news.google.com)
• Mecca makeover: how the hajj has become big business for Saudi Arabia - The Guardian (news.google.com)

Somalis are desperate for a new life, but refugees face a dangerous road

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, December 26, 2010; 1:44 AM

GALKAYO, SOMALIA -- Deka Mohamed Idou sat under a tree, exhausted after a grueling six-day journey. She touched her belly, yearning for her unborn child to kick.

This is why she took the long, bumpy road out of Mogadishu: War. A missing husband and three missing children. A shattered house.

This is why she's here in this wind-swept no man's land between Somalia and Djibouti: Peace. Work. An education for her two other children. She can't see what awaits them. Perhaps sanctuary. Perhaps more suffering. But she's certain of one thing.

"I will deliver my baby in a place without gunfire," she said.

For Somalis, the road out of Mogadishu is a last resort. Those traveling on it have fled homes abruptly with terrified children, and crossed a wilderness of thieves, armed Islamists and marauding tribesmen. Many have been robbed, beaten, raped, even killed.

The situation in Mogadishu has become so bad that nearly 300,000 Somalis have made their way out this year, swelling the ranks of what is, after Iraq and Afghanistan, the third-largest refugee population from any country in the world. Most are women and children. The men who have survived have stayed behind to protect their homes, or they went ahead. Some have vanished in the chaos. Others are fighting.

The road, and the places along it, is the most visible evidence of a population still disintegrating, amid hopelessness and death, two decades after the collapse of Siad Barre's government plunged Somalia into an endless civil war.

Today, al-Shabab, a militia linked to al-Qaeda, controls large chunks of the Muslim country and seeks to overthrow the fragile U.S.-backed government. The militia's Taliban-like decrees and recruitment of children provide more reasons for Somalis to flee.

They travel north, often to places they have only imagined, arriving hungry and desperate. They join the hundreds of thousands who have fled since 1991, leaving behind a city that once had 2.5 million people.

Many remain too poor to flee. The ones with some means head for camps in Somali towns like Galkayo, Bossaso and Hargeisa, searching for peace and support. The ones with a few dollars more head for foreign lands - Djibouti, Yemen, Saudi Arabia - searching for a new life.

Those who succeed enter a world where they can be deported at any moment, where they are increasingly viewed as a security threat. Those who fail, and most do, are trapped in a humanitarian limbo, resigned to hardship, dependency and a broken life.

Or they die.

"They travel from one hell to another hell," said Ahmed Abdullahi, a U.N. refugee protection officer in Galkayo, 470 miles northwest of Mogadishu and often the first stop on the journey toward Djibouti and Yemen.

These are the stories of women who have taken this road, from the places they end up. Galkayo


Six miles north of Galkayo, in a place called Halabokhad, 473 families are stuck in a makeshift settlement. The landscape is hot, dusty, bleak as their lives.

They live in round, cramped tents made from clothing and straw. They become isolated, unable to afford transportation to town.

Local officials are in charge of the settlement, which is supported by the United Nations. But there is only one borehole for water. Food and medical care are also scarce. Bone-thin children have yellowish skin, a sign of malnutrition in a country where one of every seven children dies before age 5. Women deliver babies inside their tents, sometimes without help.

This is where Amina Aden arrived three months ago with her exhausted children and nothing else. Her neighborhood was engulfed by war. Her husband was killed in crossfire a day before they fled their home carrying only what they could. A few miles outside Mogadishu, masked men stopped their minibus filled with refugees. The youngest women were ordered out. Aden heard them scream while they were gang-raped.

The men returned, and Aden braced herself. Her eight children surrounded her, crying, tugging at her clothes. The men looked at them, then grabbed another woman. "My children saved me," Aden, 35, recalled with a feeble smile.

After the rapes, the men delivered one final blow: They robbed all the passengers of their meager possessions. "They even took our sandals," Aden said.

Her children, ages 3 to 15, do not attend school. For breakfast, they drink tea. For lunch, they eat a bland porridge. There is never any dinner.

"I cannot even buy milk powder for my baby," said her neighbor, Kaltoom Abdi Ali, 37. She, too, fled Mogadishu with her seven children after mortar shells crashed into her house two months ago. In the mayhem, she was separated from her husband.

"I don't know where he is," Ali said.

Her 14-year-old and 16-year-old sons work 14 hours a day, washing cars, cleaning houses or collecting garbage for local residents. On most days, they earn $1. "I want my children to have an education, but if we leave here, life could be worse," Ali said. "No one cares about us."

For the most part, help is limited. After two decades of conflict, famine and drought, the United Nations has had difficulty raising funds to assist Somalis, U.N. refugee officials say. There's donor fatigue and, in a post-9/11 world, nations are preoccupied with terrorism, security and other global crises. The United States, Somalia's main donor, has provided more than $185 million to Somalia's government and an African Union peacekeeping force, but withheld humanitarian funding this year, fearing that al-Shabab was siphoning off foreign aid.

More than 2 million Somalis have sought haven in U.N.-supported refugee camps in neighboring countries and in settlements in nearly every region of Somalia. The conflict has significantly blocked the ability of U.N. and humanitarian agencies to deliver aid to south and central Somalia, which are under al-Shabab's control.

Here, and in other settlements around Galkayo, women fear the night.

Two weeks ago, three masked gunmen entered Asha Muse's tent. In front of her four children, they beat her and her niece, Muna. The men tore the women's clothes off and took turns raping them for two hours. One attacker stabbed Muna in the thigh with a knife.

Another turned to Ali's son.

"If you make a sound, we will kill you," Muse recalled him saying.

Before they left, the men stole $85 and some clothes.

"Everybody rapes women. The soldiers, the militias, everybody," said Hawa Aden Mohammed, an activist who runs a women's shelter in Galkayo where victims of rape and other gender-based violence seek shelter.

Muse and her niece did not inform the police or aid workers. Muse has stopped collecting garbage, fearing her attackers will spot her. Her neighbors, who helplessly listened to their screams, look at her sympathetically.

"We can't go back to Mogadishu. We can't afford to leave here. We know we will get raped again," said Muse, her tears filling her eyes. "But there's nothing we can do." Bossaso


They arrive in this coastal town, filled with pirates and smugglers, with dreams of sailing to Yemen.

A few months ago, as the war edged closer to his house, Ali Osman Ado took his pregnant wife and five children out of Mogadishu. A trader, he had saved enough money to move them to Bossaso - $135 from Mogadishu - and to pay smugglers to take him to Yemen, then Saudi Arabia.

"He told me when I get there, I will find a better life. I will come for you and the children," recalled Hassina Abubaker, 30, two months pregnant at the time.

He didn't know that Yemeni authorities, fearing that al-Shabab militants could infiltrate and join al-Qaeda's Yemen branch, were cracking down on Somali refugees, his wife said. He didn't know that Saudi Arabia had sent more than 9,000 Somalis back to Mogadishu. He didn't know the smugglers would be ruthless.

Three days after he left, his friends called her from Yemen.

"The ship was overcrowded. The crew started to throw people off the boat to make it more stable," said Abubaker, staring listlessly at the dirt floor of her tent. "My husband was one of them."

Over the past three years, 1,066 migrants died or went missing - they were in boats that capsized or they were killed by smugglers, according to U.N. officials.

In another tent, Fatima Ali Omar held her baby. When he turns 1, she plans to go to Yemen because she heard they "treat refugees well." Eventually, she wants to be smuggled into Saudi Arabia to work as a maid. She knows that women have been raped along the way. She knows that many are forced into prostitution. She knows that if she complains, she will be deported.

"Nothing matters as long as I find a good life at the end of the journey," Omar said. "I will forget I was raped." Hargeisa


This is the capital of the Other Somalia, a place barely touched by war, where gunfire is seldom heard. Known as Somaliland, this region broke away from Somalia in 1991 and today has its own elected, functioning government. The streets are bustling; new construction rises from nearly every corner.

Fatima Ahmed Noor fled here from Mogadishu after al-Shabab tried to recruit two of her nine children, after the war drove her husband insane and he separated from the family.

She has found anything but peace. The clans that rule Somaliland look at her with suspicion and disdain because she is from southern Somalia, where al-Shabab rules. Somaliland considers itself an independent country; the world does not recognize it as such. Authorities treat Somalis like Noor as foreigners. She and her children live in a refugee settlement and have little access to health care, education or jobs.

"They say, 'When we get recognition, we will also recognize you. You are displaced from another country, so you have to be treated as a foreigner,' " Noor said. "Everyone from Mogadishu is in the same condition."

She and her children earn $3 a day washing clothes, if they are fortunate.

As she spoke to this reporter, a community leader came over and glared at Noor. "I want to listen to what you are saying," she said harshly. She is among those who hurl verbal insults at Noor and her children.

What makes Noor equal to the other women in the settlement is this: "Rape is very common here," Noor said. "There is no discrimination." Along the Djibouti border


Six days ago, Deka Mohamed Idou was in a different world. She had a house, a family. She had somehow survived 20 years of civil war in the capital.

Then, in a blur, her life fell apart. A clash between al-Shabab and the government forces erupted in her neighborhood. In the chaos, she was separated from her husband and three of their children. With their two other kids, she fled Mogadishu.

Along the way, she was robbed. She had to borrow $60, the cost of coming from Galkayo to this forlorn border. Two months pregnant, in a rattletrap minibus on a bumpy road, she constantly worried that she would lose her baby.

Now, on the edge of a foreign land, she worried as much about what she left behind as what lay ahead.

Idou looked down the road, at the Djiboutian border police, at the U.N. refugee workers preparing to register her, at the white gate that would open a new life for her family. Soon, they will be transported to Ali Addeh, a desert camp across the border in Djibouti.

"How will they treat us there?" Idou asked. Ali Addeh camp, Djibouti


A bazooka shell struck Aisha Mohammed Abdi's house in Mogadishu, killing her uncle. She fled the capital with her husband and five children. Two died of hunger along the way. Days later, they arrived in Djibouti.

"I dreamed of a better life," she recalled.

That was 20 years ago.

She still lives in this camp, hundreds of miles from the capital, on a barren, oatmeal-colored landscape ringed by tan mountains. The Somalis call it "Tora Bora" because the region resembles Afghanistan. This is where Djibouti's government, worried that newcomers would take jobs away from its citizens, sends Somali and Ethiopian refugees.

The U.N. rations of wheat flour, oil, lentils and sugar are not enough to feed Abdi's family. There is also a shortage of water. Every day, Abdi walks six miles to fetch wood. She sells most of it; the rest is for cooking and heating their tent. There is no electricity.

Rapists are here, too. Two policemen guard the camp of 14,000 refugees. Darkness is the rapists' accomplice.

"Women can't identify their abusers," said Ayan Mohammed, a Djiboutian social worker. "Everyone is afraid."

Abdi once dreamed of being resettled to another country. No longer. Only 64 Somalis left for the United States and other Western countries this year, less than half of 1 percent of the Somali refugees living in Djibouti.

She once dreamed of returning home. No longer.

"It is worse in Mogadishu now than when I left," she said.

Today, she no longer dreams.

"I have been a refugee for 20 years," said Abdi. "Whether I stay longer here or leave for another place, only God knows. But I have lost all hope."

Related articles

• Somali Refugees: Rapists Stalk Women In Camps (huffingtonpost.com)
• Rape with impunity (bbc.co.uk)
• Yemen's tragic tide of trafficked humanity (independent.co.uk)
• UN seeks $530 million for Somalia 'catastrophe' (sfgate.com)
• Dadaab Journal: Somalia's Wars Swell a Refugee Camp in Kenya (nytimes.com)
• Somali Islamist insurgents threaten US attack (thenewstribune.com)
• Somalia: All Sides Losing? (sahelblog.wordpress.com)
• Somali militants announce merger, threaten attacks (msnbc.msn.com)

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Taliban takes hold in once-peaceful northern Afghanistan

Image via WikipediaWashington Post

By Joshua Partlow
Sunday, August 15, 2010; A01

QAYSAR, AFGHANISTAN -- In squads of roaring dirt bikes and armed to the teeth, Taliban fighters are spreading like a brush fire into remote and defenseless villages across northern Afghanistan.

The fighters swarm into town, assemble the villagers and announce Taliban control, often at night and without any resistance.

With most Afghan and NATO troops stationed in the country's south and east, villagers in the path of the Taliban advance into the once-peaceful north say they are powerless and terrified, confused by the government's inability to prevail -- and ready to side with the insurgents to save their own lives.

"How did the Taliban get into every village?" Israel Arbah asked from his mud hut in the Shah Qassim village of Faryab province. "They are everywhere. And they are moving very fast. To tell you honestly, I am really, really afraid."

In the past year, security in northern Afghanistan has deteriorated rapidly as insurgents have seized new territory in provinces such as Kunduz and Baghlan, and even infiltrated the scenic mountain oasis of Badakhshan, where 10 members of a Christian charity's medical team were massacred this month. Each new northern base is becoming a hive of activity, with fighters rotating in and out, daily planning meetings and announcements at the mosque.

For the first time this year, the U.S. military sent 3,000 troops to the north, based in Kunduz. A senior NATO official said that the soldiers have made progress in Kunduz and commanders are more confident than six months ago that they can halt growth in the north but that insurgents still find sanctuary in sparsely populated provinces where NATO and Afghan forces are undermanned.

The U.S. military does not believe the Taliban has made a strategic decision to target the north to avoid the bulk of NATO forces in the south, according to a U.S. military official. But a former senior Afghan intelligence official based in the north said that is "absolutely" what has happened.

One of those places is Faryab, a swath of rolling desert hills along the Turkmenistan border where a lone U.S. battalion of abut 800 soldiers arrived this spring. Starting in the Gormach district and moving through a belt of Pashtun villages that have tribal links to Kandahar and the south, insurgents have spread to nearly all the districts in the province, according to Afghan officials.

They move constantly on unmarked dirt roads outside the cities to ambush Afghan police and soldiers and to kidnap residents. They execute those affiliated with the government and shut down reconstruction projects. They plant homemade bombs, close girls' schools, and take by force a portion of farmers' crops and residents' salaries.

"This is the new policy of the Taliban: to shift their people from the south to the north, to show they exist everywhere," said Faryab Gov. Abdul Haq Shafaq. "They're using the desert, where there are no security forces at all."

Letter precedes invasion

Before the Taliban invades a village, its arrival is sometimes preceded by a letter.

"Hello. I hope you're healthy and doing very well," Mullah Abdullah Khalid, a Taliban deputy district shadow governor, wrote recently to four tribal elders in a Faryab village. "Whatever support you could provide, either financially or physically, we would really appreciate that.

"We hope that you will not deny us."

But this is just a formality, because the Taliban is coming anyway.

In early November, the villagers of Khwaji Kinti awoke to the rumble of motorcycles. The next morning, they discovered that 30 to 40 Taliban, armed with Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled-grenades, had taken charge. Tribal elders pleaded with police to send help. None arrived.

The Taliban was welcomed by a sympathetic mullah and set to work quickly. From the shepherds, it expected "zakat," or charity: one sheep out of every 40; and it took "usher," an Islamic tax, from the wheat farmers: 10 percent of the harvest, according to villagers. Its members shut down the lone girls' school and demanded shelter and meals from different homes each night. Mohammad Hassan, a wheat farmer, said insurgents knocked on his door about once a week after the evening prayer, asking for food. "We're afraid of the Taliban and the government," he said. "We're caught in the middle -- we don't have any power."

Taliban members executed a man known as Sayid Arif, who they said worked for the Afghan government, by pulling him from his car and shooting him. They left him in the road with a note on his chest that said for whoever works with the government, "this is the punishment," said a tribal elder named Abdullah.

The Taliban began to settle disputes with arbitrary punishments -- which some consider its main public service. In one case, a dispute between a pair of brothers and another man escalated until the third man was shot. Without evidence, the Taliban chose one of the brothers, 22-year-old Mahadi, as the guilty party, villagers said. The Taliban assembled dozens of people, handed the wife of the victim a Kalashnikov and ordered her to shoot him, which she did.

"I stood there and watched that," one villager said.

Not everyone is unhappy with this. The headmaster of the boys' school in Khwaji Kinti, Agha Shejawuddin, said the Taliban is restoring order based on Islamic law. "The Koran says there should be public punishment," he said. "I think the situation under the Taliban will be better than this government."

On Aug. 5, members of the U.S. battalion, from the 10th Mountain Division, along with Afghan police and soldiers, fought the Taliban in Khwaji Kinti. This sparked an exodus, with hundreds of families fleeing town, villagers said. The U.S. soldiers decided to withdraw after three days "to prevent civilian property damage and loss of life and civilian disruption during the holy month of Ramadan," a military spokesman said.

That left the power balance unchanged, according to villagers reached by phone, and 200 to 400 Taliban members remain. The area "is still under complete Taliban control," one villager said.

Hostages at checkpoint

After a day of road building in January, two Chinese laborers and Saifullah, their 16-year-old driver, rolled up to a Taliban checkpoint on Highway 1.

They did not make it through.

The hostages -- including three other Afghans -- were taken to a village in Gormach, the most Taliban-infested district in Faryab.

"For five days, I had no news of my son," said Saifullah's father, Khairullah. "I decided to go and search for him. I told myself I would find him even if I got killed. I would go to that place."

No taxi driver would take him. He borrowed a car and went alone. In the village, he found a mosque and an adjacent house, with about 40 Afghan-assembled Pamir motorbikes outside. The buildings brimmed with gunmen.

"When I showed up, they were surprised. They said, 'Why did you come here?' " he recalled. "I told them, 'I want my son.' "

For four hours, he argued with the captors, explained his Islamic lineage and paid $1,300. He received his son, with a warning: "You must promise that your son will never work for the foreigners again."

This is the message the Taliban regularly preaches in mosque speeches and in letters distributed to villagers. One such letter, passed out on Taliban stationery in Faryab, told villagers that "you are the nation that defeated the British again and again. Once more we want your compassion."

"Come together as one hand to defeat the infidels of the world," it read. "And make Afghanistan a Jewish and Christian cemetery."

The two Chinese workers captured with Saifullah would not be released for months. In a video of them in captivity, obtained by police, the Taliban taunted them.

"There is no God but God," a Taliban fighter said in Pashto, reciting a Koranic verse known as the Kalima. "Say it. Say it. Loudly."

The Chinese men stared, not comprehending.

"Why are you not learning?" their captor said. "You're not intelligent. You haven't learned anything. We're going to kill you."

Swelling the ranks

One day, a young Taliban fighter rode up on a donkey. Nek Mohammad, 29, hadn't seen him in years but remembered him as a fellow refugee. They had both lived in Iran during the Taliban government, two Tajiks in search of work and peace.

They sat by the river to talk.

"How is your life?" Mohammad asked.

Since he'd joined the Taliban, the man said, he earned more than $400 a month. "They are paying me very well," he said. He asked Mohammad to join the insurgency.

The ranks of Taliban have swelled in Faryab because of such men: young and jobless, according to officials and residents.

They profess little allegiance to a government they view as irrelevant, at best, and exploitative, at worst. They trace the insecurity to the presence of NATO forces.

Afghan officials also see a rivalry between Pashtun tribes at play.

"If one tribe, like the Achekzai, creates 10 Taliban in their tribe, then the Tokhi says, we need 12 Taliban to defend ourselves," said Mohammad Sadiq Hamid Yar, the Qaysar district chief.

Extortion provides much of their funding, Afghan officials said, and Taliban leadership in Pakistan provides training, weapons, ammunition and additional income. Shafaq, the Faryab governor, estimated that at least 500 Taliban members are in his province, although others put the number far higher. The 1,800 police, he said, "are not enough," and the government hopes to form a 500-man militia to bolster them.

Although the new U.S. battalion has helped, Shafaq thinks that NATO troops need a more aggressive approach, including not being afraid to bomb motorcycle gangs as they crisscross the desert. If the Taliban forces have been allowed such freedom of movement, many residents reason, NATO must not be serious about fighting them. "Afghans are very familiar with this type of situation. We see which side of the scale is heavier, and we just roll to that side easily," Mohammad said. "Right now, the Taliban's scale is heavier."

Special correspondent Javed Hamdard contributed to this report.