Intimidation on the rise in Kabul

KABUL, Afghanistan -- For Sayeed Odi, the international peacekeepers can't get to the Afghan capital fast enough.

Last week, thieves in camouflage-style uniforms and armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles scaled the wall of the 33-year-old merchant's family compound, beat him and his wife, and made off with almost everything of value they possessed.

"They were soldiers," Odi, a thin, gentle-faced man, recounted Tuesday, his voice rising with disbelief. "I said to them, 'Brothers, what are you doing?' And they told me to be quiet, or else they would shoot my belly full of bullets."

In the five weeks since the Taliban fled Kabul, the capital has been jittery but relatively calm, spared the widespread plunder that has traditionally occurred, through generations of warlord rule, whenever an Afghan city changed hands.

The post-Taliban climate in Kabul has been less lawless than in some other major cities -- including, at various times, Kandahar in the south, Jalalabad in the east, and Mazar-e-Sharif in the north -- and along the roads linking them.

Unpaid soldiers

Lately, though, people living in the capital say they have seen an inexorable creeping upward of violent crime -- some of it at the hands of restive soldiers who say they have not been paid in weeks.

"I have no money at all," said a slight, wispy-bearded alliance soldier of 18 named Sultan Mohammed, cradling his assault rifle as he spoke. "We were told by our commander not to loot and steal, but I have not been paid in two months. I wish I could leave this place."

Reports of robbery and intimidation are widespread but anecdotal, because Kabul at the moment has no police force to keep track of such matters. An estimated 3,000 northern alliance troops are now the de facto enforcers.

The vanguard of a British-led international peacekeeping force is expected to be in place by the time the new government takes power on Saturday, but preventing crimes like armed robbery may lie largely beyond its mandate. The peacekeepers' principal mission, at least initially, will be to guard public buildings and provide security for the incoming interim administration.