WILD WEST JUSTICE RULES REBEL LANDS

Local Officials Decide Guilt, Punishment In Rebel-held Afghanistan

KHOJA BAHAUDDIN, Afghanistan -- Soldiers caught Hakeem, a 29-year-old
Afghan, early Wednesday as he sneaked through the woods near the Panj
River, trying to smuggle 55 pounds of heroin into Tajikistan.

By early afternoon the prisoner was in the center of the marketplace here
with four bags of heroin attached to a yellow rope slung around his neck
and the rest of the drugs in a large white bag at his feet.

A man with a megaphone, Abdul Mumin, was announcing Hakeem's crime and
calling people to come over and look at the prisoner.

Soon a crowd of hundreds of men and children gathered at the center of the
dirt street while Mumin used his megaphone to warn the growing crowd that
drug smuggling doesn't pay.

"Anyone who transfers drugs to this area will be punished,'' Mumin
announced, as Hakeem stared blankly into the crowd, the bags of heroin
hanging from his neck.

Moments later Mumin led Hakeem through the noisy marketplace with hundreds
of men and children, some on horseback and donkeys, following behind,
kicking up a cloud of dust.

"This man will walk through the market," Mumin shouted through his
megaphone as the crowd ran behind.

Forget lawyers, judges and juries. This is how justice works in the part of
Afghanistan held by the Northern Alliance, the rebel group fighting the
Taliban. Hakeem's fate will be decided by the governor of this village,
which is the Northern Alliance's military headquarters. In areas controlled
by resistance forces, law is for the most part in the hands of local
military commanders and whatever civil administration they have set up.

By afternoon when a reporter visited Hakeem in the mud-walled jail here,
his wife and three children still had not been informed that he was in custody.

And he was unsure of how long he would stay in prison.

The jail commander, who returned on a motorcycle to the prison Wednesday
afternoon in a cloud of dust, was also uncertain how long Hakeem would stay
in jail.

"The punishment is up to the governor,'' said Emam Qool, the jailer, who
explained that the governor would investigate and impose a punishment.

By way of illustrating the scale of penalties, Qool said there are
murderers who serve four or five years in jail, while drug smuggling might
bring one or two years.

Many of the 150 inmates in prison here are Taliban prisoners of war caught
during the past several years of fighting with the Northern Alliance.
Occasionally, the two sides trade their prisoners.

Inmates live five to six men to a cell in a small building built of mud.

There are carpets on the floor but no furniture. There were a couple of oil
lanterns in the cell area and an inmate emptied a bucket of water into the
passageway after washing in it.

A young man with a bayonet-tipped Kalishnikov assault rifle patrolled the
roof of one of the mud buildings. Young guards carrying homemade rubber
whips, similar to those used on donkeys, walked through the compound. A
horse chewed hay in the courtyard under a small lean-to with a straw roof.

Last year Afghanistan was the world's leading producer of heroin, with much
of it going to the outside world through Tajikistan, a neighbor to its north.

The Taliban last year ordered an end to poppy cultivation, labeling it
"un-Islamic.''

Before that order, Afghanistan had been the world's largest producer of
opium poppies. The U.S. State Department has estimated that $100 million to
$200 million in drug money is made in Tajikistan by assisting the drug trade.

The primitive legal system here shows how difficult it would be to combat
drug trafficking in this region, where there is no law enforcement to speak
of and the area is awash in weapons.

Hakeem said his drugs came from a contact in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, a
Taliban stronghold. He said the drugs cost $800 for 2.2 pounds and that he
would earn between $100 and $200 for transferring the drugs to a contact in
Tajikistan.

"I work for someone from Jalalabad,'' he said in an interview in the prison
courtyard. "I do it sometimes when I don't have any money.'' Hakeem said he
was arrested crossing through some woods as he neared the river in the
village of Yang Qale, his hometown.

"The Tajiks go to the river and we cross the river by boat,'' Hakeem said.

The Northern Alliance itself has been accused of making money from drug
smuggling, and it's possible that some people are arrested because they
didn't pay off the right people or because they cut in on some commander's
business.

But the local administration was putting on a show in the marketplace on
Wednesday.

Mumin, a 45-year-old who has a graying beard and is missing some front
teeth, shouted his anti-crime message as he led the prisoner through the
market.

The crowd became so thick that a handful of young men with rifles swung
long sticks to push the crowd back. Mumin said the prisoner had frequently
smuggled drugs but eluded authorities until Wednesday.

"What is your name?'' Mumin yelled to Hakeem.

"Drug dealer,'' Hakeem replied without expression. The crowd was mostly
silent and impassive.

Mumin is the town crier, paid by merchants, usually in the form of food, to
yell messages everyday in the marketplace. In addition to occasionally
leading a criminal through the market, he yells out prices of produce and
also news items.

After Hakeem was bundled into a car, Mumin used his aging yellow megaphone
to announce that a 12-year-old boy dressed in black trousers was missing.
If anyone had information about him they should tell the authorities. It
was all part of the town crier's day.