KABUL ��" At around midnight on July 1, I was startled awake by the sound of heavy gunfire as it ripped through the silence of Kabul's normally quiet Vazir Akbar Khan neighbourhood. My housemates and I rushed out to see what had happened, only to be told by our pajama-clad neighbours that someone armed with a Kalashnikov had been chasing a car, shooting as it sped out of the neighbourhood. “They are ekhtetafchian (kidnappers),” my neighbour whispered to me as we stood outside in shock. In Kabul, residents fear two things mequally. They are afraid of the Taliban and suicide bombers, and they are afraid of kidnappers. The threat of kidnapping in Afghanistan has been extremely profitable for the private security firms in the country, and miserable for Afghans who are wealthy enough to live in 'safe' neighbourhoods such as Vazir Akbar Khan. This situation in Kabul is just one reflection of Afghanistan's dismal security situation. It is now glaringly clear that the national Afghan police won't be able to provide security in the near future ��" not next year, and not even a few years from now. The old Vazir Akbar Khan neighbourhood is one of the few areas of Kabul that managed to escape the largescale damage wrought by decades of political upheaval, violence and civil conflict. Built when Afghanistan's last monarch Zaher Shah was still in power, Vazir Akbar Khan was originally built for Kabul's wealthy, educated classes. Today, the neighbourhood has some of the few gardens that can still be found in Kabul, and is peppered with western-stylevillas that are inhabited by old Afghan families or rented to foreigners. The presence of foreign embassies, NGO headquarters and foreign media in Vazir Akbar Khan gave the neighbourhood a sense of safety and stability that made it akin to a 'Green Zone' in Afghanistan. However, every morning I see my neighbour drive to work in a bullet-proof car flanked by a pickup truck full of armed men wearing flak jackets. He pays a security firm $500 a month for each of these private guards. Each month, the firm pays each guard, who is licensed to shoot if his client is in danger, around $250. Shir Pour, another more recently built wealthy neighbourhood, has adapted to the tough security situation. Each building in the heavily guarded neighbourhood, which houses many newly wealthy former warlords and drug dealers, has security bars out front. This embattled situation serves both the interests of corrupt people inside the government and also their partners in the business sector, but there is currently a strong feeling that with the departure of General Stanley McChrystal's, there will come the advent of a new US policy in Afghanistan. As General David Petraeus has predicted, everyone expects a very tough summer in Afghanistan. If Karzai's policy of making deals with insurgents and pursuing peace must shift to one that more intensely confronts the Taliban, then the US may soon be pitted against the Afghan president. Is it possible that after nine years of the war on terror in Afghanistan, the US will finally get tough with the Afghan president? Entekhabifard is a New York-based correspondent of The Egyptian Gazette. She is currently in Afghanistan.
