When I first met Ismael Khan in 1987, he had been living in the saddle for years, leading thousands of mujahedin against the might of the Soviet Army. I traveled through occupied Afghanistan with him for several weeks, and was present at the first-ever commanders' conferences, which Khan organized in remote caves in the central region of Ghor.
A leader of the original Afghan anti-communist rebellion in 1979, Khan was later captured by the Taliban when they took control of the country in 1995. He escaped from a Taliban prison in 2000, and rallied his troops in support of the U.S. invasion to topple that repressive regime in 2001. Although Khan is a hero of the resistance by almost any definition, he is now most commonly known as a warlord. But what I found in Herat last month suggests the picture is far more complex.
Ten years ago the Western suburbs of Herat were a Hiroshima-style sea of ruins, where burned-out tanks littered empty streets full of mines and unexploded ordnance. Today it's a busy commercial area transected by a new ring road, with hundreds of shops and businesses. The airport road--once a string of potholes, which I crossed in 1987 with guerrillas avoiding Soviet tank patrols--is a busy commercial thoroughfare. An industrial park has risen on one side. Modern apartment blocks and hotels with Internet access stand on the other. And Herat, unlike Kabul, has a steady electricity supply and streetlights with orange, energy-efficient sodium bulbs. Thanks to the just-completed, $12 million project, families now picnic in the parks until midnight--unthinkable anywhere else in Afghanistan.
So how has Khan brought about this transformation? He began by bringing relative security to the province, enabling trade routes from Iran and Central Asia to reopen. Until a year ago, he kept most of the customs revenue from this trade for Herat, rolling vast sums into ambitious public works projects. An efficient and tireless administrator, Khan has bypassed the U.N. and foreign NGOs in favor of Afghan companies, who better understand local conditions and come in under budget. And Khan has developed political skills, too: the electricity grid, for example, was established in the poorer quarters first. A recent opinion poll gives him just over 50 percent approval ratings.
To be sure, Khan's administration has been hounded by allegations that it benefits from the drug trade, and factional fighting has broken out in the region. But for the moment, his brand of Islamic paternalism is certainly preferable to either the communists' forced secularization or the Taliban's repression. And it is far more cost effective than working with the U.N. and foreign NGOs, who are likely to cut and run when violence erupts. Regionalism should be allowed to flourish in what has always been a diverse country. If Khan succeeds in his moderate, Islamic-style modernization, it will be a good day for Afghanistan.
Radek Sikorski directs AEI's New Atlantic Initiative.
