Crime in Afghanistan: The Kabul Police Chief, the Plague of Kidnapping, and the Meaning of Fear

General Ali Shah Khan Paktiwal, the chief of the Kabul criminal investigation department, sits forward in his chair, stubs out a Marlboro Red and stabs the air with his finger. "Paktiwal knows no fear," he says quietly. "Paktiwal does not even know the meaning of the word fear."

In Kabul these days, Paktiwal is in a minority. For many are very scared. Not necessarily of the Taliban or the suicide bombings that regularly strew corpses across the potholed pavements - but of kidnap.

A mild-mannered university doctor, convinced he is being followed, has come to Paktiwal to plead for protection. He dared to hint the police might be avoiding confrontation with the criminals. "Go to the morgue, count the bodies of those we shoot each day and then tell me if Paktiwal is not a man of action," the general tells him.

But many allege that Paktiwal, or at least the police, or at the very least some elements within the security forces, are in league with the kidnappers. As evidence, they cite the frequency with which the criminals wear police uniforms, carry police identification and use police cars complete with sirens. And the failure to catch many of them.

Paktiwal denies any charge of complicity. "The police are not involved in any crime," he said. "I am an optimist. Crime rates are going to drop."

The general is backed by Saeed Ansari, a spokesman for the Afghan intelligence service. "In the last year we have investigated more than 100 cases of kidnapping and have found no involvement of police officers," he told the Guardian.

"The criminal gangs are linked to terrorists and militants who aim to destabilize Kabul and the provinces because kidnapping businessmen scares many into exile and damages the economy."

Many important figures in the Afghanistan business community have relocated to the United Arab Emirates in recent months, taking tens of millions of pounds of much-needed investment capital with them. The slowing of the Afghan economy's previously impressive growth rate this year is in part due to the exodus. Much-needed commercial experience and drive is bleeding away. And, despite the reassurances, few in the Kabul business community have much faith in those supposed to protect them.

"Business is very bad, not due to the insurgency but due to the mafia and the kidnapping," said Hamidullah Farooqi, of the Kabul International Chamber of Commerce. "Of course the security forces are involved. At the very least there is collusion between the police and the criminals. At the worst the police are the kidnappers."

Narrow escape

Businessman Farzad Alam returned to Kabul in the aftermath of the war of 2001 but fled with his family to the UAE two months ago after narrowly escaping a kidnap attempt in his office, 100 meters from the interior ministry in central Kabul.

Alam was able to call Paktiwal, based a few hundred meters away, and then stall his attackers long enough for the police to arrive. He told the Guardian the would-be kidnappers fled into a government compound.

"I'm one of the lucky ones," he said by telephone from Dubai. "I escaped. But most are not so lucky and they have to pay up. The gangs are all connected to high-level people and unless you are connected, too, you are finished."

Local businessmen were shocked by the murder of a moneylender carrying more than $1m in cash who was gunned down on the road to Kabul airport 200 meters from a police checkpoint in July. Corruption is acknowledged as a big problem at all administrative levels in the new Afghanistan and is one of the key reasons for the ease with which insurgents have established a parallel administration in large areas of the country.

President Hamid Karzai himself has frequently been accused of being soft on corruption. However, kidnapping is a new phenomenon. Senior western officials in Kabul describe the interior ministry as "particularly dysfunctional" among the new Afghan ministries.

Some reserve their harshest words for Paktiwal himself. But Kabul's CID chief does not care about the allegations. With his personal bodyguards - known as Petrol, Glass Eater, Bulldozer, Livewire and Switch - posted in front of his office, he spends his days writing orders, drinking tea, signing off on petitions, interrogating suspects and deploying his 431 detectives around the city - as well as answering calls from ministers, journalists and the various supplicants who have managed to obtain his private numbers.

Those sitting on the sofas in his office one morning included a man wanting a new passport, a worried shopkeeper who has seen "suspicious characters" in the bazaar, a local employee of the US army seeking the release of some impounded fuel trucks, a crew from local Afghan TV, a police officer reporting the seizure of 12kg (26lb) of cannabis resin, a pimp waiting to be questioned, a bewildered peasant farmer caught with an unlicensed handgun, a young man with a split lip complaining about gang violence in his Kabul suburb and two kidnappers caught on the Shomali plains, the agricultural valley north of Kabul.

Scared and accused

Young, scared and accused of hiding a businessman in a pit after abducting him from Kabul, they stand trembling before Paktiwal, who barely slows the flow of orders, signatures and phone calls while he questions them.

"Who are you? Where did you hide him? You think killing someone is easy? You think asking for $300,000 was a good idea?" he barks. "Look, the victim is going to tell us what happened and then we'll know everything. So tell us the truth and it will be better for you and you'll be out of here in no time."

One of the pair stammers: "All we did was hit him once." Paktiwal laughs. "Look, you spend one single hour in our detention center and there will be no need for you to be questioned by a prosecutor as you will have told us everything," he says. The two suspects look close to tears as they are hustled away.

Half the general's bodyguard file in to join him as an early lunch of rice and meat is served. Glass Eater remains standing, playing with the knuckleduster in his flak jacket. There is silence in the room. All eyes are on the television in the corner, where a Bollywood film award ceremony fills the screen. "I am optimistic about the crime rate," says Paktiwal again, almost to himself. "It will come down. We are going to take action."