The Long, Steep Road to Democracy

"Every week they come [Kabul police] asking for 100,000 Afghanis ($1,500)."
"But this month we finally started rejecting the bribes and this is why they are retaliating."
Malik Ahmad Shah, head, Hotak shura, Banayee, Kabul, Afghanistan

"They came to our home, spewed bullets everywhere, shot my brother in his neck, and dragged him out while he was bleeding to death. He was innocent! Unarmed!"
"They shot him in the neck without even a warning shot for him to surrender."
"Does anything like this ever happen in your country?"
Nawid Hotak, brother of Engineer Hotak, shot to death by Kabul police

"This was unexpected [last week's suicide bombing in Kabul]. We must now investigate whether the bomber came from among them [the Hotak clan] -- that this was revenge."
"Their so-called demonstration on the road was just a typical obstruction technique aimed at preventing us from entering farther into their village. That is perhaps what stopped us from finding the explosive vests that we suspect they possess and sell."
Major General Mohammed Salem Ehsas, Kabul police chief

A suicide attacker blew himself up near a crowd of police and protesters in Kabul on Thursday, killing at least 11 people and wounding 25 others, in the latest deadly violence to bring carnage to the Afghan capital.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant regional affiliate in Afghanistan has certainly been actively involved in suicide bombs in the country's capital. And when a dozen police officers were killed last week in yet another such bombing it was expected that they had been responsible; either ISIL or the Taliban, but ISIL took credit. Maj.Gen. Ehsas failed to be convinced. He felt that the blast that took place where residents of a Kabul suburb had established a roadblock to stop police from entering their main street, was mounted by the villagers themselves.

Previous to that blast a drug bust took place with city police raiding the home of the Hotak family, members of a a Pashtun clan known for selling black market liquor, narcotics and weapons. During the raid, the youngest of three brothers of the Hotak family known as 'Engineer' Hotak was killed. And it was that killing and the confiscation of a cache of illicit goods that Maj.Gen.Ehsas was convinced was behind the bomb blast as police were assembled and stopped from proceeding into the village.

Confiscated items, ranging from heroin to homemade liquor in water bottles, are displayed at Kabul police headquarters after the raid. (Kabul Police)

He felt that the suicide blast occurred too quickly during the impasse between militant villagers and the police, to have been carried out by Islamic State. The spontaneity with which it occurred belied the obvious need for planning, communication, arrival and execution, leaving the only reasonable suspect, in his opinion, to have been a local from the Banayee neighbourhood of Kabul. It was the Hotak clan that clogged the major highway stopping the police from proceeding, and his conclusion seemed logical to him.

Police claim to have discovered two kilograms of heroin, three of opium, over 500 ecstasy tablets, and hundreds of litres of homemade alcohol stored in buckets and water bottles, along with guns and grenade at the home. The police took possession of all of that contraband, and left behind a living room carpet deeply soaked in blood, a metal door kicked in, living room walls pocked from bullets ricocheting about the interior of the Hotak home. The blood was that of Engineer Hotak, smeared down the staircase to the front door.

The Hotaks consign the police display of confiscated goods to an elaborate setup to hide the corruption of Kabul's police. As for the suicide bombing, obviously a militant group took swift advantage of the presence of police. The head of the Hotak shura described how police have been extorting shopkeepers in Banayee since 2014. They had supported Ashraf Ghani who had won the presidency, while the police had given their support to Ghani's rival, Abdullah Abdullah. While at one time Banayee was known with reason to sell drugs and alcohol that is no longer the case.

Nawid and Ziarmal Hotak hold pictures of their brother, Engineer Hotak, 22, who was killed in a police raid in the Banayee neighborhood of Kabul on Thursday. (Max Bearak/The Washington Post)

It was the refusal by shopkeepers, said Malik Ahmad Shah, to continue to pay the bribes to the police that led to the raid, the killing of Engineer Hotak, and the display of planted weapons and drugs, 'confiscated' from the home by police. It is generally acknowledged that Kabul's police are corrupt, with bribery and extortion widespread. Maj.Gen.Ehsas went so far as to admit that to be the case. Still, he told a Washington Post reporter, the police raid demonstrates just how seriously the police force takes its Islamic duty to eradicate "mafias" like the Hotaks.

Seems like Afghanistan qualifies as a "shithole" nation, despite its pledges of reform and aspirations to democracy, albeit Islamist-style.