With a black and silver turban and an assault rifle over one shoulder, former Taleban commander turned Afghan police chief Jon Baz should be a poster boy for Afghanistan's amnesty offer to former militants. He is not.
The former mid-ranking Taleban commander surrendered as part of an Afghan government offer to the estimated 2,000 Taleban rank-and-file fighters who are still conducting a guerrilla campaign against US-led coalition and Afghan government forces.
One month before landmark parliamentary elections on September 18, the amnesty offer has attracted around 200 fighters including Baz.
But it has failed to remove the sting from a mounting insurgency.
In return for promising to give up violence and pledging support to the government of President Hamid Karzai, they are granted an amnesty. Officials are trying to find government jobs for the best qualified of the former militants. "The general plan is... the ones who want to serve the national interests of the country be offered a job," said Sayed Sharif Yosofi, spokesman for the commission heading the amnesty program. Naka district where Baz is police chief lies 30 kilometres (18 miles) from the rugged and remote Afghan-Pakistan border in south-eastern Paktika province, which has long been a haven for Taleban fighters.
The district has been the scene of frequent bomb attacks on US and Afghan government troop convoys in recent months, raising questions among US forces about which side Baz is actually backing - the government or the fundamentalist Muslim Taleban whose regime the US helped to overthrow almost four years ago. Naka's district headquarters are filthy and chaotic, and the perilous security situation has stalled reconstruction in the area.
"Even if he was pure of heart and wanted to be a good police chief he would be under a lot of pressure because enemy commanders are still in the area," said US Army Captain Joseph Geraci, of 1-508 Battalion, 173rd Airborne. He recently lead a 55-man Afghan-US patrol from their base in the town of Urgun out to Naka.
Most aid agencies no longer venture down to south-eastern Paktika province and US troops who have made headway building schools, roads and clinics in inland parts of the province can't carry out development work in Naka because of the security situation.
Baz is adamant that poor security in his district is not his fault. "I've handed in rockets and weapons caches. It's not true that I am working with the Taleban anymore. Anyone who says that is my enemy and I have a lot of enemies," he tells Geraci during a meeting.
By contrast, in neighbouring Zuruk district just 30 minutes' drive away, US troops have funded the construction of a girls' school and say their cordial ties with local leaders have enabled them to do reconstruction work. More than 900 people have been killed across the country since the start of the year, most of them militants in southern and eastern Afghanistan, compared with 850 for the whole of 2004.
And with more than 40 US soldiers killed in action, this has been the worst year for US troops in Afghanistan since 2001. Six of the US deaths have come in Paktika province of which Naka is a part. Taleban loyalists and their al Qaeda allies have no hope of toppling the government and little chance of derailing the country's first parliamentary polls in nearly 30 years, but their presence remains an irritant to the US-led coalition force of about 20,000 troops.
Frequent hit-and-run attacks or home-made bombs can stall reconstruction in the worst-hit areas which are badly in need of development after 23 years of war. US and Afghan officials say Taleban surrenders reflect how tired the commanders are of fighting, and the futility of their cause.
But once the former fighters have surrendered, finding them an honest living can be a challenge. After years of battling the US and flegling Afghan authorities, many former Taleban have few other skills. Some maintain close links with militant commanders in southern and eastern Afghanistan.
Making a living is difficult in Paktika, a poor province without even the opium crops which hold up 60 percent of the Afghan economy.
Mohammed Akbar, another mid-ranking commander from Paktika, surrendered in mid-June along with 16 of his men. He told AFP that he laid down his gun because he no longer agreed with the Taleban cause. "I came back from Pakistan because people in Pakistan had commanded me to kill school teachers and parliamentary candidates and burn schools. I did not believe in this. I thought it was wrong because I had wanted to make jihad against the Americans," he told AFP. But Akbar has few skills, and instead of wanting to kill Americans has now turned to them for help.
"I offered to come and help the Americans but I need support. I don't have anything here. I don't have much money so I need them to pay me," Akbar said at the US base in Orgun.
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