Afghanistan's north also lawless

One often hears of the "lawless" south in Afghanistan, but in fact the north is also lawless as warlords and commanders behave in lawless ways.

Residents of northern districts like Taher Youwaldish say that the reason the Taliban has been able to make inroads in the area is because of the weak and corrupt justice system. "The main reason for Taliban success in northern Afghanistan," says Noorullah Shahryar, of Mazar, "is the lack of law enforcement and the intimidation of local people by powerful individuals."

One example of this is the Afghan prison system. Last year, reports surfaced of sexual assaults on women by guards in Pulcharki Prison. The victims claimed that they were raped by their guards and some were impregnated. Charges were never brought against the guards.

The same goes with the Afghan Police that NATO is trying to build up to ensure "order". In fact the police can be very lawless. For instance in Helmand villagers complained that the police there is "a bigger problem than the Taliban".

The problem is that police forces were constituted by the US and NATO after they invaded Afghanistan by using men who were then fighting the Taliban, like members of local militias controlled by strongmen and warlords. In Helmand province, the police came from the militia of the local warlord, former Mujihideen commander Sher Mohammed Akhunzadeh, a member of the Alizai tribe, who had dominated the province before the Taliban took control of the Pashtun south in 1994. Akhundzada became the governor of Helmand province in 2002. The restoration of Akhundzada to power gave the warlord and his militia the opportunity to use the police to take revenge on their Ishaqzai rivals (another tribe in Helmand). If you are the police under these circumstances "you take the people's land, their women, you steal from them – it's all part of one package."

So it's no surprise that the police force is lawless.

The predatory rule of Akhundzada and his militias was interrupted for a second time when the Taliban took control of large areas of the province in 2008.

It is interesting to see how Karzai has allied himself with warlords and drug lords to control vast areas of the country, as Gareth Porter reports:

Akhundzada maintains his power in Helmand in part because of a firm political alliance with President Hamid Karzai. Karzai was forced by British pressure to remove Akhundzada from office in January 2006, after a British-trained counter-narcotics team found nearly 10 tonnes of heroin in the warlord's basement.
But Karzai also ensured that Akhundzada retained his full power in Helmand, forcing Akhundzada's replacement as governor, Mohammad Daud, to accept the warlord's brother Amir Mohammed, as his deputy. That signaled that Akhundzada was effectively still in control.
Then Karzai began forming what would eventually be called "Afghanistan National Auxiliary Police", the new recruits for which came straight out of Akhundzada's 500-man private army and those of other warlords.
By the end of 2006, Karzai had removed Daud (a favourite of the British because he was free of links with the drug lords). Karzai replaced him with an aged and infirm official who was less likely to refuse to cooperate with Akhundzada.
As recently as September 2008, Karzai was hinting to Afghan MPs that he would have reinstated Akhundzada had it not been for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's threat to withdraw British troops from Helmand if he did.

Helmand province is the epicenter of the Afghan drug industry, which generates an annual income for those who manage it estimated by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime at three billion dollars. Much of that income is siphoned off by the local warlords like Akhundzada who protect the drug lords' operations.

Here is an article illustrating how Karzai pardons drug traffickers who are related to some of his allies.

As the BBC reported, people's lives have mostly not changed since 2001, including in the north. Development has not been forthcoming, due to corruption and the fact that foreign troops are in Afghanistan primarily on a military mission in which long lasting development is absent. In the south, the Taliban make people's lives harder, and in the north, it is the militias affiliated with warlords, many of them in position of power in the government, that terrorize people.