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For the Taliban, the night letters are a cost-effective way to exploit such anxieties. "They don't have weapons to come to town to fight," says Captain Jammilla Bargzai, head of the Kandahar police department's crime-investigation unit. "Their only weapon is to scare people." Her bravado fades when she begins to talk about her own fears. Bargzai hasn't seen any night letters posted in her neighborhood, but her neighbors have told her that strangers on motorbikes have asked about her and marked her house. She has moved six times in the past year. "If I see a strange man in my neighborhood more than three times in a week, I know it's time to move," she says. She used to carry her AK-47 to work but was worried that the gun's silhouette under her burqa betrayed her identity. Now her Smith & Wesson pistol--a gift from coalition forces--is her only source of protection. "I want to stay and do my job," she says. "But I have an 8-year-old daughter. If the government can't protect me, I will have to leave."
The Taliban isn't relying just on violence to shake Afghans' faith in the authorities. The rise in crime in Kandahar has provoked a new round of letters, reminding people how safe the city was under the Taliban regime. Many are starting to listen. "Life under the Taliban was not good," says Hyatullah Rafiqi, Kandahar's education administrator. "But it's not good now. At least with the Taliban we had security." Rampant corruption, police abuse and an unchecked drug trade have bolstered the Taliban claims. A former mujahedin commander who fought with the Taliban against the occupying Soviet army in the 1980s says the Taliban now has a dedicated propagandist who furthers the cause by perpetuating and promoting rumors of police graft and government failures. The Taliban even maintains a website that lists occurrences of police corruption and reports of coalition attacks on innocent civilians www.alemarah.org in Pashto and Arabic).
Critics fault Karzai and the 26,000 allied troops in Afghanistan for failing to strengthen institutions like the police. In Kandahar, Asadullah Khalid, the governor, is desperate to counter Taliban propaganda with a more robust police force. He estimates that he has only 40 officers for every 100,000 citizens. (By comparison, New York City has 40 officers for every 8,000 civilians.) He says he has petitioned Karzai's government for funding for a larger police force but says he has received little response. The police situation in Kandahar province is emblematic of the country as a whole. That there is widespread police corruption is no surprise given the lack of training, funds and firepower, notes Abdul Salaam Rocketi, a former mujahedin commander and a Member of Parliament. "If you have a dog and you don't feed it, it will knock on other doors."