Taliban town skeptical of NATO promises

MARJAH, Afghanistan - The Taliban's white flag no longer flies over villages across this militant stronghold. Afghan and NATO troops have replaced it with Afghanistan's official green-and-red banner, which they promise heralds new schools and clinics and good governance.

But residents have heard that before, and for many, Taliban rule hasn't been all that bad. Plenty of Afghans have made a living off the opium trade, which also funds the insurgency. While some residents greet NATO forces with tea, others just want the troops to clear their streets of explosives and leave.

No one here needs liberating, they say.

"The Taliban didn't create any problems for people. Every Thursday there was a court session, and if someone had a problem, he would go in front of the Taliban mullah who was the judge," said Samad Khan, a 55-year-old poppy farmer in the village of Saipo on the outskirts of Marjah. The Islamist militant group levied a 10 percent yearly tax on his poppy crop, and let him be.

Now, Khan says, he's worried that the assault, which began Saturday, is putting his family in danger.

"I'm afraid for my children, for my village, because the fighting is increasing," he said. He's looking for a way to flee to the nearby provincial capital of Lashkar Gah but said he's scared to pick his way through the explosive-laced fields to get there. The Taliban planted countless bombs in the area in preparation for the U.S.-led attack.

NATO officials say they are confident that once the 15,000-strong military force secures the area, they can win the population over by providing both dependable security and government services. Plans have already been drawn up to build schools, repair roads and install well regarded government officials.

But that means NATO and the Afghan government have to make good on pledges to stay and make sure the government works. Promises have gone unfulfilled before.

In March 2009, about 700 British troops invaded Marjah in an operation that they hailed then as a dramatic success. They declared the town back in government hands after a three-day assault.

Afghan district officials quickly started building bridges, repairing clinics and roads and clearing ditches, NATO said at the time. But without enough troops to truly hold the area, Taliban fighters slipped back in. Two months later, NATO officials were again describing Marjah as a Taliban command node.

After NATO and Afghan troops took control of Qari Sahib village outside Marjah on Sunday, they tried to hold a meeting with local elders about the government services they'd be bringing. But most of the elders ignored the speeches, laughing and talking to one another throughout, according to an Associated Press reporter at the meeting.

The villagers seemed indifferent to the changing of the guard, though it had been dubbed a liberation. A white Taliban flag was still waving in Qari Sahib village a day after it was reclaimed by the government. Afghan military officials finally changed it to an Afghan flag on Monday.

Inside the town of Marjah, the poppy business boomed under the Taliban. Nearly every house in the north of the city has a plot of poppy growing in the yard.

Sharecropper Mohammad Khan said the Taliban didn't use draconian methods such as public executions and limb amputations to impose their reign in Marjah as they did in Kabul and other parts of the country when they ruled most of Afghanistan in the late 1990s.

"Honestly, they didn't bother us. They mostly just came and went," the rough-faced 55-year-old with a long beard said as Marines searched his neighborhood of northern Marjah.

"They weren't very organized," said Khan, who wore a white turban. Khan said most town matters were handled by a council of local elders, who worked to smooth relations between villagers and insurgents.

He said the Taliban's rule over the town was "mostly peaceful."

Haiti quake camps turn into shanty towns

By JONATHAN KATZ

Associated Press writer

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - First there was an empty field. Then came rows of makeshift tents. Now those camps are turning into shanty towns - with bakeries, lottery stands and homes - that show no sign of moving soon.

In the five weeks since the quake struck, aid workers, officials and Haiti's government have debated where and how the 1.2 million people left homeless by the disaster should live. Should they be given ready-made tents or plastic tarps? What land should be made available to house them?

A long-delayed announcement on where government camps might go could be made today.

But the people are not waiting. On a former landing strip-turned-boulevard called Route de Piste a cluster of ramshackle villages is rising.

Row upon row of corrugated tin and wood shacks stand against the wind as dusty men walk between them carrying saws and hammers. Children look for the snow cone man at the crossroads, near where a lottery dealer named Max has set up his booth. In a shack marked "Boulangerie Pep La" - the people's bakery - the smell of dough wafts from the oven, and two flat rolls cost 5 gourdes, about 12 cents.

These shanty towns are redrawing the map of the capital, filling open fields with new versions of the joyful life and harsh crime and abuse that always marked existence in the slums - with an extra helping of disease, hunger and misery brought on by the Jan. 12 disaster, which killed more than 200,000 people.

This means people are planning to stay in some very dangerous places: at the bottom of hillsides they know will collapse in a heavy rain or near riverbeds that are bound to flood. They are crowded into polluted areas where sanitation is limited and disease is already starting to spread.

That's one problem. Another is that people simply do not want to go far from where they always lived and worked.