By Matt Robinson
YAHYA KHEL, Afghanistan, March 6 (Reuters) - Insurgents are exploiting a governance vacuum in Afghanistan's remote eastern hinterland, finding funds and safe haven to fuel an escalating war against NATO-led forces.
In the border province of Paktika, U.S. and Afghan intelligence officials describe a "shadow" Taliban authority that levies taxes on the harvest of pine nuts, skims money from the salaries of teachers and runs a network of governors from over the border in Pakistan's lawless tribal belt.
They mediate in disputes where the government cannot. In this province of at least 400,000 people, there are just three judges, and only one who actually lives here.
Western officials say government staff lists are full and salaries being paid, but officials rarely venture to the villages due to security fears. The frustration is palpable.
"When you talk to the people, when was the last time the governor was here? When was the last time the minister of education was here?" U.S. army Captain Al Lemaire said in Yahya Khel, the most hostile district for U.S. forces in Paktika.
"Nobody knows, because they don't come here, they don't care about it. You do kind of wonder -- why are we here?"
Remote, mountainous and poor even by Afghan standards, U.S. forces say Paktika is a priority neither for them, as they battle the Taliban in their southern heartland, nor for the Afghan government.
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But Paktika is riddled with supply routes channeling fighters and weapons across the border from Pakistan to feed an insurgency that is spreading from traditional Taliban strongholds in the south such as Kandahar and Helmand.
Failure to entrench the central government, and reverse spiralling violence, is reinforcing doubts about the viability of a plan for the gradual withdrawal of NATO's 150,000 troops and handover of security by the end of 2014.
SUPPORT ZONES
Insurgent attacks in Paktika were up 137 percent last year, according to a report by the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office.
"It's enemy routes, sustainment zones, support zones, so the enemy can move to those highways or up those passes," said Colonel Sean Jenkins, commander of Taskforce Currahee in Paktika.
U.S. commanders acknowledge resources are limited, even after a 30,000-strong troops surge last year. Some of those extra troops went to Paktika but most went to the south, where NATO says it has driven back insurgents ahead of an expected spring offensive by the Taliban.
Under the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, U.S. soldiers are tasked with building up the central government and bringing it to the areas they patrol.
But the priority is large towns and cities. In Paktika, villagers are being asked to shun the Taliban in favour of a government they rarely see.
"Where you have civilian leadership and good governance ... makes a huge difference," said Major General John F. Campbell, commander of NATO-led forces in eastern Afghanistan.
"You can't kill yourself out of this, you've got to really build the governance and development piece up."
"You can't be everywhere at once, you have to prioritise."
In Yahya Khel, an Afghan intelligence officer who asked not to be named described a town that had gradually slipped from government control due to tribal feuding, corruption and neglect.
The Taliban seized the opportunity, he said, and now use the large bazaar and a cowed population to provide shelter and sustenance to fighters trying to reach the nearby Highway 1, the main artery linking the capital Kabul to Kandahar.
"In the beginning we had control of Yahya Khel, then step by step we lost it," he said.
Lemaire's Alpha Company sacked the town's police force for stealing from the people and the local governor for cooperating with the Taliban.
NEGLECTED REGION
The new governor, Mohammad Sarwar, lives behind sandbags on the U.S. base, with a satellite phone but no hot water. Insurgents have blown up the mobile phone tower and shuttered schools.
Meanwhile, U.S. forces have stepped up a campaign in eastern Afghanistan to kill or capture insurgents, offering the results as proof the tide of the war is turning.
But observers question the effect.
Paktika is "one of the focus points of the ongoing strategy of hunting down the Taliban, and especially its local version the Haqqani network," said Thomas Ruttig, co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN) research group.
"It has not changed anything," he said. "All the indicators by which security is measured are going up."
Government in Paktika is "very weak and this has really been, in Afghan circumstances, a neglected region", he said.
At Alpha Company's headquarters in Yahya Khel, a family tree of Taliban commanders, fighters and "facilitators" is pinned to the wall. There are more than 60 names.
Three of the company's soldiers were killed in as many weeks late last year around Yahya Khel. When the third was shot through both thighs, they called in air strikes and a Hellfire missile destroyed the mosque from which they say the shot was fired.
Lemaire said he expected fighting to pick up again from mid-April with the warmer weather and the return of fighters from Pakistan, using Yahya Khel and the surrounding villages as a staging ground for attacks.
"The villagers are just trying to survive," said a Western official working in the region. "They don't know what's going to happen when we leave, and who's going to be in charge."
"They're hedging their bets, and trying to survive."
(Editing by Paul Tait and Miral Fahmy) (If you have a query or comment about this story, send an e-mail to news.feedback.asia@thomsonreuters.com)
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