Peace In Afghanistan Comes At A Price War-Torn Nation Trades Liberties For Security

Peace has finally come to this city and most of Afghanistan, and with it the order that people longed for during the long, nightmare years of civil war. But there has been a price, unbearably high for some.

“Now I can walk out onto the street and feel safe,” said Ismail, 21, an office worker for the International Committee of the Red Cross who is the sole source of support for an eight-member family. He pointed to his worn, Western-style trousers. “But if I go out in these, I might be beaten.”

In a middle-class house decorated with sumptuous Afghan carpets and silk flowers carefully arranged in vases, a female surgeon in her 30s, the mother of a 3-1/2-year-old girl and a 1-1/2-year-old boy, agonized over recent lifestyle changes she has been forced to make.

“Even when there was fighting, I was not so afraid as I am now,” the physician said. “We’re like prisoners here. It’s not a life, just being at home, cooking and looking after the kids. My daughter asks me every day: ‘Mommy, Mommy, why aren’t you taking me to school? Is it because of the Taliban?’ She is very intelligent. She knows what’s going on.”

With the bulk of Afghanistan’s territory now under its control, the Islamic militia known as the Taliban has offered the warweary population of this country a Faustian trade-off of sorts.

There will be peace, but under Taliban rule, Afghans will have to conform to a harsh interpretation of Muslim Sharia law that even dictates what they should wear and whether men should shave. (They shouldn’t.) It is a bargain many Afghans have appeared ready to accept.

“At least we are not hearing the sound of rockets or explosives, and we are now sleeping with the assurance that we will not be robbed in the night,” said a Foreign Ministry official who is no fan of the Talibs. “At the moment, peace and security are the essential thing.”

Under the Talibs, who captured Kabul last week, life in the capital has returned to some semblance of normalcy. The markets are thriving and prices are down, electricity has been switched on, and Ariana Afghan Airlines, the national carrier, has resumed flights abroad.

But the Taliban have inherited a bankrupt and ineffective government, a countryside laid waste by 17 years of fighting, a capital bombarded into ruins and a population afflicted with appalling levels of injuries, poverty and joblessness.

The Koran may have inspired the Talibs on the battlefield for the last two years, but their tasks now will be different: reviving the state bank, wooing friends and donors abroad, forging a foreign policy, and rebuilding an economy and government devastated by war.

To have a hope of governing effectively, the Taliban will be forced to call upon the 130,000 government employees in Kabul who served the Communist leaders who ruled this country from 1978 to 1992 and the feuding victors of the anti-Soviet “jihad” who succeeded them.

Those bureaucrats, secretaries and even the gardeners who tend the lawns and flower beds are still coming to work, minus the women, whom the Taliban have told to stay home. In the halls and offices, the civil servants are now joined by Taliban fighters, illiterate rural youths in the main, who wander around in wonder, their Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders.