By Mohammad Ilyas Dayee

HELMAND – Sayed Mohammad, 55, is preparing to leave his Marjah home with his children, wife and brother, all piled onto a tractor alongside some furniture and three chickens.

Mohammad’s dirty turban signals his poverty, and his four children, covered in dust, look frightened and try to hide in their mother’s arms.

“Marjah will never be secure,” he said. “In the past, there was only Taliban oppression; but now the government and foreigners have also joined in. I don’t know who is more cruel. I had to leave Marjah.”

Pale-faced and angry, Mohammad claimed that the Taliban warn they will soon triumph in Marjah, and have called for residents to send their brothers and sons to fight in the cause of jihad. “I don’t want my poor brother to be killed,” he said.

Some 15,000 Afghan and international troops forced 2,000 Taliban fighters to retreat from their stronghold of Marjah in Helmand province earlier this year during Operation Moshtarak.

After the offensive, aimed at taking control of a major heroine-producing area, Afghan Defense Minister General Abdul Rahim Wardak told reporters, “Our objectives are to strengthen government control in Marjah, to reconstruct Marjah and to make Marjah people secure.”

But the deteriorating security situation in the province is now causing increasing numbers of Marjah residents to flee. Caught between fear of the foreign forces and counter-attacks by Taliban fighters, many say they have no choice but to seek refuge in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah.

According to the Red Cross office in Helmand, most of the displaced are poor families who have left their homes for Lashkar Gah due to security concerns.

The head of the Afghan Red Crescent Society Helmand office, Ahmadullah Ahmadi, said that 117 families had left in early May alone and he warned that the situation was deteriorating, “People are living in very bad conditions; there are no jobs, the fighting is starting again, and this situation has compelled the residents to leave Marjah. And we don’t have enough resources to help them.”

Crossing the bridge over the Helmand river in a small Mazda lorry filled with women wearing green burqas, and children, Khan Zaman said he was moving to Lashkar Gah because his house had been repeatedly searched by American troops.

“It was terrifying. One day they might accuse me of being a Taliban or al-Qaeda member and send me to Guantanamo prison. So I have to leave,” he said.

A spokesman for US forces could not be reached for comment on the charge but the Marjah district governor, Haji Mohammad Zaher, has denied the existence of any such problem.

At a news conference in early May, he told journalists that reports of internally displaced residents were false, “These families are mainly those who have committed major crimes in the past. Now, when the area is under government control, they do not feel safe and flee the district.”

Colonel Ghulam Sakhi, head of the public order department in Marjah, also claimed the situation in Marjah was satisfactory. He said that those who were leaving the province were not residents.

“I can show you the list of 16 families who had migrated from Uruzgan during Taliban rule and were active in the poppy trade. Now they have harvested their poppy and left Marjah. This has nothing to do with the security situation in Marjah,” he said.

However, a source close to the Marjah district governor, who asked to remain anonymous, confirmed that security conditions were deteriorating and people were leaving the district.

“The Taliban are changing their tactics day by day; they keep planting mines and are also conducting small arms attacks, but they mainly put pressure on those who have connections with the government,” he said.

Since the beginning of Operation Moshtarak, 13 tribal elders have been assassinated by the Taliban for assisting the government, according to security sources.

The head of the Helmand rural rehabilitation and developmentdepartment, Mohammad Omer Qani, also said that people were leaving Marjah because of the troubles they face.

“Those leaving Marjah are not government officials or Taliban fighters who should be afraid of their criminal deeds. The truth is that they are faced with challenges and everybody is making trouble for them,” he said.

Local people complain that the Taliban punish people they find in possession of US dollar banknotes, taking this as a sign they have been collaborating with American forces. Afghan government forces, they also say, punish those they find with Pakistani rupees as a sign of cooperation with the Taliban.

Ata Mohammad, a local driver for the Red Crescent, said, “Arif, my cousin, was arrested by Taliban on his way to Marjah. They found US$60 in his pocket and beat him so badly that he was in bed for a week.”

Mohammad Omer, who ran a fertilizer shop in Karwa Charrahi, in the south of Marjah, said he had left due to fear of both the Afghan police and the Taliban.

“I was selling in rupees, dollars and afghanis, and sometimes I had to stay the whole night in the shop, because I could not leave for fear of harassment by the police and by the Taliban,” he said.

Spokesmen for both the government and the Taliban denied these accusations.

Colonel Sakhi said, “No police officer would bother anyone for keeping rupees or dollars in their pockets and I reject these accusations.”

Taliban spokesman Qari Ahmadi denied that they were making lifedifficult for local people. “I don’t agree with the accusations that the Taliban are making trouble for the people. Those who harass people in the name of Taliban are government people,” he said.

Mohammad Ilyas Dayee is an IWPR staff reporter in Helmand.

(This article originally appeared in Institute for War and Peace Reporting. Used with permission.)