Sher Mohammed Akhunzada, senator, warlord and former governor of Helmand, is a cheerful little chap with very small hands, eyes that are three-quarters kind and a wide smile. He is also a man regarded by Britain as so divisive to security in the southern province that Gordon Brown reputedly attempted to extract a promise from President Karzai of Afghanistan never to reinstate him. Something about this combination suggests that life as his prisoner may involve howling and pain, and that not all he says is true.
Nevertheless, over tea and sweets one recent afternoon at his house in Kabul the alleged drug lord and despot was utterly charming.
“I don't know why the British had me removed,” he told me. “I was always kind to them and things were all right in Helmand when I was governor.” Removed from his post in 2006 at Britain's behest as a precondition for the deployment of the UK's 16 Air Assault Brigade to southern Afghanistan, Akhunzada is at present launching a comeback campaign and was at the centre of last month's stinging criticism by Karzai of Britain's strategy in Helmand.
The British claim that Akhunzada, a son of one of Helmand's most prominent families and famed for fighting the Taleban, was hugely involved with drug trafficking (three years ago he was found to have nine tonnes of opium in his offices), and that his cruelty as governor promoted rather than suppressed the insurgents. But Akhunzada can do little wrong in Karzai's eyes.
Among the series of deeply accusatory remarks, Karzai said that he had regretted listening to Britain's demand for Akhunzada's removal, which he claimed had dramatically strengthened the Taleban in Helmand.
The comments appeared as ungrateful as they were undiplomatic. But they were also accurate. In a rare moment of decisiveness, the Afghan President had illustrated an unwelcome fact: removing Akhunzada has contributed to the mess in Helmand. In Akhunzada's absence, violence flared and poppy cultivation soared. Despite recent military improvements, ten of Helmand's fourteen districts remain either lawless or under Taleban control, and the poppy crop has increased by up to 40 per cent.
Akhunzada's return to Helmand's governorship, once considered an impossibility, is now being seriously considered by a number of Afghan and foreign officials against the backdrop of Britain's weakened political influence in Helmand and the imminent retirement of the province's current incumbent, Governor Wafa. And Britain could do much worse than drop its coy opposition to Akhunzada and sup with the devil once more.
“Temporarily, Akhunzada could calm the situation in Helmand,” one senior diplomat said. “He could beat the Taleban in the south [of the province], and talk to them in the north.”
The Akhunzada issue cuts to the heart of the huge dilemma challenging every Nato country struggling to stabilise Afghanistan. “Do you accept working with a big bad bastard and trade off an improvement in security against human rights abuses and drug smuggling?” one Western diplomat surmised. “Or find someone clean but without the local clout and accept a shortfall in the security situation?”
Inside Afghanistan the question carries a far greater significance than the row over Nato's reluctance to commit more troops. Besides, many experts agree that the presence of more foreign combat troops could complicate rather than improve the security situation in the conservative south.
In Helmand the British, wary of being seen to do business with a man such as Akhunzada, chose the soft option. But it has not worked out. Governor Daud replaced Akhunzada at Britain's request. With no local tribal affiliation and amidst worsening violence, he was in turn replaced by Governor Wafa. Wafa has proved utterly useless. Barely literate, famously inept, unable to unite the tribes, fight the Taleban or curb poppy cultivation, he did, however, provoke the first of the series of recent rifts between Britain and the Afghan Government in December, when he mistakenly accused two widely respected diplomats, Irish and British citizens, of colluding with the Taleban when in fact they were on a sensitive mission to set up a rehabilitation camp for a large group of Taleban fighters seeking amnesty. Karzai then expelled the two men as a “threat to national security”, poleaxing the UK's attempts to divide the Taleban by reconciliating biddable elements. So much for the soft option.
The political fallout from this and the continuing unravelling of governance in Helmand suggests that, after all, the British might be better off dealing with Akhunzada and his henchmen, at least as an interim measure. Security remains the biggest concern of Afghans and foreigners alike.
If reinstated as Helmand's governor, Akhunzada could prove an unlikely bond linking the drifting relationship between Karzai and the British. He is Karzai's choice after all, feared by the Taleban and widely supported by the dominant Alizai tribe in the province. And the main argument against him, his drug involvement, seems irrelevant when compared with the track record of many Afghan government officials and governors with whom Nato are already doing business. Afghanistan's political aristocracy is a veritable melange of warlords and narco-barons.
Besides, Britain's abysmal counter-narcotics efforts in the south are in need of a dramatic revision. Akhunzada could limit the drug boom into his own spheres of interest and divert drug profits away from the Taleban. Better the Don you know.
Britain may not have much choice in who succeeds Governor Wafa in Helmand anyway. But if it stopped being shy and got real, then it may just find that a big bad bastard in diminutive form may be just what Helmand needs.
Anthony Loyd