“The Incident Unit, they are now famous,” acknowledged Sidiq Sidiqqi, the spokesman of the Interior Ministry, which oversees the police.

He even had his own experience to recount. Shaking his head, he told of how his government vehicle had recently been hit by another car. He quickly called the traffic police to the scene, he recounted. But both drivers became frantic, warning him that if the Incident Unit came, there would be trouble. The driver of the other vehicle quickly paid up for the damage and went on his way.

“We are trying to put programs and policies into place to fix things,” Mr. Sidiqqi said. “We have the funding. We just have poor training.”

As for the infamous impound lot, General Khan, the traffic police chief, knows the widely held nickname for it. But he bristles and insists on using its official title: the Kabul Traffic Police Parking Lot.

By any name, it is busy. Every year, about 3,000 cars, 3,000 motorcycles and an undetermined number of bicycles are imprisoned in Car Guantánamo, according to government figures. General Khan did not have readily available figures for how many are released, but suggested visiting the lot to ask people their thoughts about the system. A steady drizzle accompanied a throng of dejected car owners during a recent visit to the impound lot. The men stared at a half-dozen police officers stationed behind the gates, sipping chai and chatting casually.

Rows of vehicles fill the lot in varying states of degradation — scores of the omnipresent Corollas of Kabul, armored S.U.V.s, a few colorfully painted Pakistani transport trucks. Hundreds of motorcycles line the edges of the mud lot. A mangled mass of metal sits in the center of the area, the size of several football fields, where wrecked motorcycles are piled. A confiscated bicycle pokes through the top of the heap.

The men waiting outside share similar stories. Illegal parking. Expired tags. Arguing with the traffic police. They have waited anywhere from a single day to more than two months to retrieve their vehicles. Confused by the byzantine system, most simply plead with the police to return their cars. No luck there.