The Gangs of Kabul

Not a phenomenon one hears much about...if any readers have insights into this, I would be grateful...What is meant here by a 'gang' and how do they operate?

Update: Thanks for the insightful comments...more are welcome.

Fifteen arrested after man killed in Afghan gang fight: (AFP) 10/14/2007 KABUL: Police in the Afghan capital Kabul said they had arrested 15 men after another was stabbed to death in a brawl between gangs, which have reemerged since the fall of the hardline Taliban.

The men were arrested late Saturday after the street fight in a poor area of the capital Friday, the first day of the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of Ramadan, police chief General Alishah Paktiawal told AFP. "After Eid prayers two street gangs fought and one person was killed, stabbed with knives," he said. "We have arrested 15 people in relation to the incident." The gangs were fighting over territory around a mosque in the area, he said. MORE

The fundamentalist Taliban regime, in power from 1996 to 2001, crushed Kabul's street gangs.

But they have reemerged in the past six years alongside criminal gangs behind a spate of kidnappings, including that of a German woman snatched from a restaurant in August and rescued after 36 hours in a police swoop.

Comments

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Today’s Kabul certainly has ‘gangs.’ While there must be ‘bad asses’ all around the city, bad asses from the north of the city—Khair-khana and the outskirts towards shamaali, the kotal area—are pretty much dominating the scene (not to discredit Hootkhail on the Jalalabad road). Daku, Shaka-dara, and Kala-kan and Qarabagh are supposedly the places where most of these guys come from. They mostly former foot soldiers or low-level qumanadans from the civil war and anti-taliban resistance. They happen to have certain bases—in khairkhana you can see them often in resturants/samawars and billiard stalls. They are thought to be in pockets of big deal players in the power and property game inside the city (the property side is quite big!). throwing names such as Rais Khudai-dad can scare quite a few standing people in the city…The word on street is that if you fall on the wrong side of Marshal Fahim’s brother, his gang can make you disappear in no time. Yes his brother is thought to have a good number guys under his command. And a couple of elephant size dogs. One of the leisure activities of the ‘gangs’ of Kabul is dog-fighting bets…

Now, it is bullshit to think the Taliban cracked down on them…Most of what would qualify as a gang from our town actually ended up wearing black turbans and joining the ranks of the Taliban. They became gangs with pick-up trucks. This is just another stint in the nostalgic for Taliban days ‘because there was security’ aura that Kabul is filled with. Speaks loud about the fucked up strategic communications the current government is able to do: when people call oppression security, you really have something gone wrong.