A Kingdom of Their Own

by Joshua Partlow

“Fucking some people were thinking I was sitting in a helicopter. I wish I had that much power. That I was sitting in an Apache helicopter and shooting it from there. Are you crazy? God is doing his justice. Not me. I mean, maybe that was written.” He chuckled. “We have a saying in our language: ‘Whatever you grow, you got to cut it.’ Yar Mohammed did what he did, and God gave him his punishment.”

  One of the top American generals in Kandahar at the time would later tell me that he did not believe that Yar Mohammed was the “legitimate target.” But if he wasn’t, it is not clear who was. One of the neighbors apparently sold guns, according to the cousins, but that would not seem to warrant a second look from military targeters, given the Taliban activity in Kandahar at the time.

  “My recollection is, I think it was the middle of the night,” the general said. “And my recollection was he went to the window with a rifle in his hand. Bad idea. When you have a lot of really good snipers covering your actions, and a guy shows up in a window with the rifle, he’s voted. It doesn’t matter who you are.

  “It was a good operation,” the general said. “Unfortunately, part of it was that it ended up killing that guy. Even when you look at why he was killed, it was the right thing to do. To be honest, it wasn’t of great significance, in hindsight.”

  14

  MAKING THE COUNTRY GREAT AGAIN

  MAJOR RAHMATULLAH, a district police chief, had standards. He was proud to be a policeman. He did not abide the untrained gunmen, greedy mercenaries, tribal henchmen, the hashish-addled, bribe-demanding, arms-trafficking, drug-running little-boy-molesting Taliban sympathizers who made up a good chunk of the Kandahar police force.

  On any Kandahar day, you would see them under the feeble shade of a shredded tarp, listless in the stagnant heat in their sandbag outposts, dressed in drab gray, poorly paid, cradling old AKs. They looked miserable, and you could hardly blame them. Afghan police were sacrificial, frontline cannon fodder massed in the beds of green Ford Rangers, action-movie extras dying nameless and unmourned at rates faster than any other uniformed forces in the war. Police here felt almost like a prop, a concession to the United States—who paid the salaries, bought the trucks, filled them with gas—for the sake of appearances. At least half of them, some fifty thousand, had no training. The police were so new that the institution had not yet developed its own sense of tradition or loyalty. People might wear the uniform of the Afghan police, but they often worked for someone else.

  Inside the Kandahar police headquarters, a downtown base encircled by layers of razor wire and concrete walls, the chief at the turn of 2011 was a man called Khan Mohammad Mujahid. He had a placid manner, almost relaxed, but the bags under his eyes matched his black turban. He worked from an overstuffed brown armchair in a fetid second-floor office that was decorated with bouquets of pink plastic flowers and pastel yellow drapes. When I met him there in late February, he had survived three assassination attempts within the past month. A car bomb had blown up his house while he was out. His convoy had been ambushed on the highway while returning from the airport. Then one Saturday morning, a group of Taliban entered a wedding hall across the street from the police station, scaled five flights of stairs to the roof, and started firing rocket-propelled grenades down at his office. At the same time, three rickshaws and two Toyota Corollas exploded at different points around the perimeter of the station. Hand grenades were lobbed over the walls. Mujahid’s police, and the U.S. Army advisers stationed inside, fought back, putting so many bullets into the wedding hall’s façade that they shattered every window and it looked like someone had stripped the paint. Eleven of his policemen died but not him.

  Credit 14.1

  Two Afghan police officers stand on top of a wedding hall in Kandahar City that was destroyed by the Taliban.

  “There was no doubt I was the main target,” he told me. This did not seem to bother or surprise him. He’d been hardened by battle while fighting the Soviets and took pride in his bravery. After he was offered the job as police chief, he told a U.S. Special Forces commander about a courtesy phone call he had taken from Mullah Omar. The Taliban’s supreme leader, another veteran of many Kandahar wars, told him, “I love you like a brother, as you love me like a brother. But if you take that job, I’m going to kill you.” The commander remembers Mujahid laughing away the threat as he told Mullah Omar, “No, I’ll kill you, you one-eyed son of a bitch.”

  Credit 14.2

  Khan Mohammad Mujahid, the commander of the Afghan police force in Kandahar, who would be killed not long after this photograph was taken.

  “If I flee now, that means we have handed over all of Kandahar to the enemy,” Mujahid told me. “If I leave the battlefield, people will see no reason to fight. I have thirty years of military experience, I’ve been a commander for thirty years; if I leave, people will lose their morale.”

  They killed him two months later. One of his own policemen, or a man wearing the uniform, walked up to him in the courtyard as he stepped out of his office. The man timed it so that the vest of explosives strapped under his shirt would blow up at the moment they embraced in greeting.

  This was the sort of treachery that made Major Rahmatullah hold his colleagues in such low regard. He liked to say he was one of only sixteen professional police officers in all of Kandahar. Only those who had completed the four-year Soviet-run police academy, he believed, deserved to call themselves law enforcement officers. The major could speak Russian, Dari, Pashtu, and Urdu. He valued education and encouraged his daughter to study English, so that she would know more than the smattering of vocabulary he possessed. He was chief of police of Dand, one of the districts that made up Kandahar Province, commander of 120 men, and he took that responsibility to heart. For all those reasons, he had no intention of accepting Sardar Mohammad into his ranks.

  “He is very, very big teef,” Major Rahmatullah had told Lieutenant Colonel David Abrahams, his U.S. Army mentor.

  “A teef?” Abrahams asked.

  “Big thief. Very, very big thief.”

  On old maps of Kandahar, Dand used to encircle the downtown. When the district boundaries were redrawn, what remained was farmland south of the city: grape fields, brick-baking kilns, mud huts. It was important because of this fertile agricultural land and because the president’s ancestral village, Karz, fell within its border. Two of the main north–south roads spoke to the division of power in the district. One of them ran through Barakzai tribal territory to the estate of Gul Agha Sherzai, the former governor and the Karzais’ chief rival. A parallel paved road to the east passed through Karz and the Popalzai lands. Barakzai militiamen controlled the first road. The other was the responsibility of a young man with sun-darkened skin and brown eyes a bit too far apart, and slightly crossed: Sardar Mohammad.

  Mohammad had spent years in service of the Karzai clan. The son of a well-known mullah, he grew up in Mashroor, a village in Dand, then moved to Zakir-e Sharif, the next village down the road from Karz. Within the Karzai brothers’ trusted circle of loyalists, the guards, drivers, and servants who dedicated themselves to protecting the lives and property of the country’s ruling family, many came from Zakir-e Sharif. For them, menial positions paid off over time. Mohammad Shah Kako, one of the three men who crossed over from Pakistan with Hamid Karzai on motorcycles to foment rebellion against the Taliban, was rewarded with a position of command in the palace Presidential Protective Service. Another from the village, Ruhullah, had been a Karzai bodyguard before he parlayed that access into his defense contracting fortune. Before the Karzais came to power, Sardar Mohammad farmed and sold watermelons from the roadside. When the war started, he joined Jamil Karzai, a young English-speaking cousin of the president, who was working as a fixer and translator for ABC News out of a downtown Kandahar villa. Jamil traveled across the south helping American correspondents with their stories, while Sardar was one of the guards at the house. Looking back, Jamil says he saw Sardar as a liability. “He was always smoking hashish,” he r
ecalled. “I put him on night duty and I never let him come inside.”

  Ahmed Wali Karzai later took Sardar on as a guard and a driver, and his stock grew within the family. He was a strong young man—lean and wiry, with ropy forearms, a thick black mustache, and a jutting jaw—who behaved toward his bosses with a deference that approached worship. When Qayum Karzai built a lavish home in Zakir-e Sharif—a triple-domed mansion elevated on a rock and surrounded by turreted walls, a house with marble floors draped in colorful carpets and fronted by seven arched windows—he put Sardar in charge of its protection. “Ahmed Wali came to me and said, ‘This is the best man I have,’ ” Qayum recalled.

  Around the Karzais, Sardar behaved like a servant. When the family gathered for meetings or meals, he refused to sit down or, if ordered to, would squat on the ground in a corner. He drove to Ahmed Wali’s house daily, even on Fridays, his day off, to see if he could be of service, leaving his two daughters in the care of his wife. In the room for guests in his village home, Sardar mounted four large framed photographs, two of Ahmed Wali and two of President Karzai. “If I said a single word against these guys,” his brother-in-law Abdul Malik told me, pointing to the photos, “he would have killed me.”

  “He was an uneducated person, but he was always serious,” Hameed Wafa, one of the governor’s aides, recalled. “The reason Ahmed Wali kept him was because of his loyalty to the family. He trusted him so much. Nobody could carry a gun in his house expect Sardar Mohammad.”

  Their bond was so sure that Ahmed Wali would bring his mother to visit Sardar. “In our culture, being a tribal elder is like being a president, or a king,” Qayum Karzai said. “And he treated us that way. He grew up with us. We knew him our whole lives. He was part of our home. I had enormous respect for him. I would tell people, ‘If everyone was like Sardar Mohammad, this country could be great again.’ ”

  His loyalty won him more responsibility. He took command of more checkpoints in concentric circles around Zakir-e Sharif, encompassing the Karzai family cemetery and strategic hills and intersections. Ahmed Wali’s other bodyguards estimated that Sardar oversaw three hundred to four hundred men. He built a new concrete home and a separate guesthouse with white columns and ceiling fans on the outdoor portico; standing among the other dirt hovels, it declared unequivocally his status as a man of importance. His militiamen guarded his gate all day behind dirt barriers under a canopy of dried grass. Qayum Karzai bought Sardar a motorcycle. He began to develop a reputation as a man unafraid to use violence. “He was a very good fighter, one of the Taliban’s sworn enemies,” Fazel Mohammed, Ahmed Wali’s personal security chief, told me. “His success attracted attention, and the local government gave him more men and more outposts. He brought tight security to the area.”

  Sardar’s hatred of the Taliban had long roots. In the late 1990s, when the Karzais were in public opposition to the Taliban regime, men such as Sardar were considered their lackeys. If there was something he needed from the government—help dredging a canal or digging a well—the Taliban bureaucrats in Kandahar refused. Once the Karzais’ political fortunes were reversed, Sardar delivered his revenge without remorse. His relatives described how he approached his enemies. “First he would go and talk to them. Tell them not to do bad things. If they didn’t listen to him, he would just kill them,” his brother-in-law Abdul Malik said. “He killed many people.”

  American soldiers valued the security Sardar provided. Dand was generally safer than other embattled districts of Kandahar. American and British commanders would visit Sardar in his home. His connection with Ahmed Wali gave his relatives entrée into jobs they might not have otherwise had. Several of them worked for the Kandahar Strike Force, the CIA-trained militia in Kandahar. “If American forces were suspicious of someone, they asked Sardar to make the arrest,” a relative said. “They cooperated with each other.”

  On the official rolls, ninety men reported to Sardar Mohammad, and even though they technically belonged to the police, they answered only to him. Lieutenant Colonel Abrahams would see them loitering around the Dand district center. Some wore gray cotton police uniforms. Most dressed as they pleased: track pants, soccer jerseys, random camouflage. They were officially on the roster of the headquarters police reserves, collecting salaries as such. In practice, they were untouchables. At their seven privately financed checkpoints—outside the Karzai cemetery, at Qayum Karzai’s palace, in front of the village school, overlooking the tomb of Jamal Baba, at the base of a cell phone tower, and at intersections in Karz and Zakir-e Sharif—they openly taxed villagers who passed by carting bundles of sticks or driving the garishly painted jingle trucks. They also moonlighted for the lucrative private security companies escorting NATO convoys overland from Pakistan. There were rumors that they ran guns and drugs. Major Rahmatullah, the district police chief, was new to Dand, so he could do little more than watch.

  After Khan Mohammad Mujahid was murdered in April, General Abdul Raziq, the boyish border police commander renowned for his ruthlessness, was appointed his successor. When Raziq took over, the police force in Dand was understaffed and meagerly equipped, with just 120 men on the payroll out of an authorized roster of 536. Major Rahmatullah’s men had to share about a dozen Ford Rangers. They had five machine guns and some old AK-47s. Sardar Mohammad’s militia, which showed up periodically and shared the police station, had five times the weaponry: high-powered machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, more and newer Rangers. Their checkpoints were lit through the night by generators and supplied with fresh water from independent wells.

  Filling the many empty slots in the Dand police had some wider strategic significance for the U.S. military. If Major Rahmatullah could grow his force, that would allow the one thousand men from the U.S. Army battalion responsible for Dand to leave that area to the Afghans and move their fight to the far more violent battleground in Panjwayi. To accomplish this, one of Abdul Raziq’s early orders as the new Kandahar police chief was for Major Rahmatullah to incorporate Sardar Mohammad and his militia into the Dand police. This order served several agendas. For the American military, it would give the appearance of relying less on warlord militias and more on the official Afghan police force. To Raziq, taking control of this Popalzai militia would strengthen his authority as police chief, while conveniently undermining a potential rival to his own Achekzai militia. Rahmatullah stood to benefit as well, because the Dand police would nearly double in size and reap a bounty of weapons and trucks. The biggest loser in the transaction would be Sardar Mohammad.

  But Major Rahmatullah refused. He considered the Popalzai militia a collection of untrained thugs and wanted nothing to do with Sardar Mohammad. The major would rather keep fighting undermanned and underequipped than work alongside the Karzai family’s chief henchman. He considered Ahmed Wali and his followers above the law. “He would roll his eyes when we talked about dealing with the poppy issue,” said Lieutenant Colonel David Raugh, a battalion commander who worked in Dand. Rahmatullah’s refusal set off weeks of negotiations with Raziq. Abrahams, who lived with his Security Force Assistance Team at the Dand district center, heard of the struggle from Rahmatullah as it unfolded each day that summer. Finally, the major budged.

  “I’ll take the Popalzai police,” Rahmatullah told Abrahams. “But not Sardar Mohammad.”

  Raziq eventually agreed with this decision to incorporate the militia without Sardar Mohammad involved. Within five hours of Raziq’s order, the studded tires of the Popalzai police trucks crunched into the gravel lot of the Dand district center. Abrahams watched as every machine gun, rocket-propelled grenade, and Ford Ranger from the Karz checkpoints were unloaded and submitted for inventory. Rahmatullah redistributed the weapons and men across the district. “The acquisition of all these Popalzai police basically quadrupled the capabilities of the police force in terms of mobility,” Abrahams told me. That left Ahmed Wali Karzai’s most loyal and trusted lieutenant in charge of a grand total of nine policemen at two chec
kpoints: the first was Qayum Karzai’s empty palace; the second was the family graveyard.

  The following Tuesday morning, July 12, 2011, Major Rahmatullah hosted his weekly checkpoint commanders meeting in the Dand district center, a routine established by Abrahams to enforce a bit of order and military discipline. They discussed the latest security picture, relevant intelligence, plans for the week ahead—the normal tedium of the war. During the meeting, Rahmatullah’s cell phone rang. He held it to his ear and listened for several seconds. He hung up and turned to Abrahams.

  I have to go disarm all of Sardar Mohammad’s men, he said.

  Abrahams was confused. Why?

  “Sardar Mohammad just killed Ahmed Wali Karzai.”

  15

  THE FIVE FINGERS

  IT HAD BEEN A NORMAL TUESDAY morning at Ahmed Wali’s house. He had visitors to attend to and lunch plans with General Ken Dahl at Kandahar Airfield. By ten a.m., a couple of dozen people had already deposited their sandals in the foyer and were waiting for their audience in groups downstairs, along the wall, and up in the second-floor sitting room. Outside the temperature reached one hundred degrees and kept climbing.

  Agha Lalai Dastageri, one of Ahmed Wali’s colleagues on the provincial council, had dropped in for a word. Dastageri was a man-giant with a thick beard who spoke in a slow, emotionless drone that felt deeply unnerving. One U.S. diplomat told me Dastageri was the “only guy that, honestly, I was just afraid of. He’s got some eyes that are really hard to hold.” Dastageri seemed to be a loyal acolyte to Ahmed Wali, but there were also signs of rivalry. Not long before, Ahmed Wali had learned that tribesmen from Kandahar had traveled to Kabul to meet with the president and complain about Ahmed Wali’s abuses of power. Ahmed Wali had been told that Dastageri, with an eye toward usurping him as council chief, had dispatched the tribal elders to the palace. Ahmed Wali confronted Dastageri at one of the regular weekly meetings at the governor’s palace. “He was shouting and sounding crazy,” recalled one of the governor’s aides. “He said, ‘If you ever, ever do it again.’…And in front of all these people.”