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For now, political power in Afghanistan is concentrated in the hands of people like Hazrat Ali. On a typical day, Ali chats with visitors while nibbling sugared almonds in the garden of his two-story house in Jalalabad. A few gunmen wearing wraparound sunglasses prowl outside. Ali is stoop-shouldered and has an affable air that belies his steeliness. Since December 2001, when U.S. forces gave Ali control of an area of Jalalabad in exchange for his assistance in the siege of the al-Qaeda stronghold of Tora Bora, Ali has steadily expanded his power, refusing to brook challenges to his authority. Last month, when Ali was the dinner host of a brash young Taliban-friendly commander named Ismatullah, his men opened fire on Ismatullah's bodyguards, killing five of them. Ali now controls town hall, pays salaries to traffic cops and settles land disputes. "Before, I was commander of 100 men, and now I'm in charge of a city of 1 million," he says. "It's not easy."
For the Afghans and the Americans, the rise of warlords like Ali has proved one of the most vexing obstacles to progress. There are more than a dozen major regional warlords, all former commanders in the mujahedin who defeated the Soviet army in the 1980s. The most powerful ones, like Ismail Khan in Herat, lead armies of as many as 40,000 men, with old Soviet tanks and artillery pieces at their disposal.
America's role in supporting the warlords has been mixed. Many, like Ali, owe their power to the patronage of the U.S., which handed control of swaths of territory to local commanders after the fall of the Taliban. That decision was born of necessity: the U.S. never intended to commit a military force big enough to secure the entire country, and Karzai still doesn't have much of an army. "It seemed a reasonable thing to do," says Khalilzad. "If we went in with a large force, then the Afghans might have thought we were behaving like the Soviets." A senior U.S. military official says, "A lot of these guys are doing the right things. They are paving roads and building schools. The rule is this: You don't mess with me, and I won't mess with you."
But that strategy has come with costs. Afghans say the warlords have engaged in behavior almost comparable to the abuses of the Taliban. The Kabul-based Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission last year documented dozens of forced marriages, scores of illegal land grabs in Kabul and several executions committed by Afghan commanders who at some point received U.S. support. Last month the governor of Helmand province allowed a mob of 500 in the village of Kajaki to put on display the corpse of a Taliban fighter.