No Good Men Among the Living

by Anand Gopal

  Then he spotted a pair of headlights off in the distance, bouncing toward him. It was soon followed by a second pair of headlights. Two tankers. Something must have gone awry. Then the lead tanker flashed its lights three times—the prearranged signal—and Akbar Gul knew that he was in business. Mohmand had recruited an accomplice.

  He casually slipped his station wagon ahead of the vehicles. Turning back onto the gravel road, he led them straight into the Tangi.

  * * *

  By that spring, there were twelve small, nearly autonomous Taliban groups operating in Wardak Province, all under the authority of former field commanders like Akbar Gul. Each group was left to its own devices to raise funds and weapons, resulting in a weak and divided movement. Commanders were scrounging for money, some even traveling to Pakistan in search of donations and often returning empty-handed. In this atmosphere, news of a Taliban commander wheeling two fuel trucks from the hated Americans through the Tangi must have seemed like the heist of the century. Sure enough, word of the conquest spread through the valley as farmers gossiped, and the tankers multiplied in the telling.

  Within days, Akbar Gul sold off all the fuel, split his share with Mohmand and the other driver, and set the trucks ablaze. News outlets reported that the two trucks had been attacked.

  With this windfall of cash, Akbar Gul contacted Jabbar, an old acquaintance adept at finding whatever was needed and ready to deal with anyone for the right price. What Akbar Gul needed was weapons: Kalashnikovs, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, mines, mortars, and—his weapon of choice—the DShK, a Soviet-made heavy machine gun.

  Jabbar took Akbar Gul on a three-hour drive to Behsud, a Hazara district at the far western edge of Wardak. Many Hazara warlords, enthusiastic backers of the Americans and the Karzai government, were being forced to surrender their weapons for nominal compensation as part of a UN disarmament program—weapons that would fetch a far higher price on the black market. So they were selling their stocks to Hazara arms smugglers instead, and Jabbar was in contact with one of them. Akbar Gul returned home with mortars, RPG rounds, Chinese-made AK-47s, and a gritty old PK machine gun.

  The irony ran deep: the main former Taliban commanders in Wardak had sided with the Americans after 2001 and publicly surrendered their weapons only to end up in prisons, while not long after, US-backed commanders like these Hazara strongmen began secretly selling their weapons to the newly reconstructed Taliban.

  Back home, Akbar Gul called his group in and showed off his haul. No one could believe that he had gotten guns so quickly. He handed one to each man.

  That evening, long after the village had retired, he and his fighters stepped out onto the darkened macadam road near the bazaar. The shops were shuttered and the night was as perfectly still and black as a country night could be, save for the occasional headlights of an oncoming vehicle. Akbar Gul studied the traffic. Then he walked into the middle of the road and pointed his gun at an approaching car.

  It was the very first Taliban checkpoint in Chak District.

  * * *

  The summer of 2005 was long and hot and angry. American fatalities countrywide began to rise, nearly doubling from the previous year, and kidnappings and assassinations of government officials came in record numbers. Newspapers started writing about the resurgence of the Taliban, and for the first time Washington contemplated sending in more troops.

  For Akbar Gul, the summer officially commenced late one June night when he directed his men to dig a hole under the highway leading to the turnoff to his village. Jabbar had provided the bomb, smuggled in from Pakistan and triggered by a pressure-plate mechanism. To ensure that they took out a suitable target, Akbar Gul posted observers about a mile ahead to radio back when the right vehicle approached. Sometime after dinner, a police Ranger drove slowly up the highway. As it neared the turnoff, it exploded into flames. Everyone inside was killed.

  Later, Akbar Gul complained to Mufti Latif that pressure-plate bombs were too dangerous and indiscriminate, requiring constant supervision if civilian deaths were to be avoided. Latif arranged for a visitor from Pakistan, a bespectacled, clean-shaven Arab in his twenties, to instruct the group on more advanced bomb-making techniques. This would be the first and last time Akbar Gul met anyone from al-Qaeda. The relevance of bin Laden’s organization to Afghanistan had diminished since 2001. Still, the group wielded a certain tactical influence on the resurgent Taliban movement. In that 2005 summer, for example, suicide bombings first began occurring in Afghanistan in significant numbers. The Taliban’s senior brass had been divided on their use, with many in the old guard, including Mullah Omar, pointing to Koranic prohibitions against suicide and harboring a general distaste for the sort of indiscriminate violence then tearing Iraq apart. But politics has a way of making a virtue of necessity, and soon suicide bombers became the outgunned Taliban’s answer to B-52s and up-armored Humvees.

  It would be some years before Akbar Gul saw his first suicide bomber. For now, he was content to deploy the newfangled Arab bombs, command-detonated and devastatingly effective. Soon, his unit was burying roadside bombs up and down the highway near Chak, then waiting, hours sometimes, for a target. Within a week they had taken out four police vehicles. Twice, American convoys drove right into their trap. The first time, Akbar Gul hit the lead vehicle and watched from a nearby field as it popped straight up in the air, landing armor cracked and smoking. The second time he struck a middle vehicle with a large antenna, which he hoped signaled the presence of a commander inside. The blast tore a hole clean through it and left the trailing vehicle jackknifed.

  By summer’s end, that stretch of road had come to be known among Americans as IED Alley, a billing that, when Akbar Gul learned of it, filled him with pride. The police, in fact, quit patrolling the road after dark altogether. Americans passed through rarely and only with their lights off. He had been in business for less than a year, and already he owned the night.

  In winter, snows set upon Wardak and many roads become impassable. Orchards frost over and only a few scattered pine forests survive, and people stay indoors, feeding wood or sawdust to their bukhari heating stoves. Akbar Gul stored his gun and retired to his village for the season. Only when the valleys thawed in late spring did he return to work. It was now 2006, and with a successful year under his belt he set his sights on a new goal: daytime missions. He was intent on keeping his promise: to operate unafraid of the enemy, hitting them “out there.” The first such assault took place in late May, when he and Ghulam Ali, another local commander, brought their men—about thirty in all—to a Tangi hilltop overlooking a police outpost. Akbar Gul could see seven poorly equipped policemen eating lunch, their guard down in the daylight. On his command, the two teams swarmed down the hillside firing RPGs. The police barely had a chance. Four were killed instantly. The three others fled into the open scrubland near the highway, where Akbar Gul’s fighters picked them off like hunted game.

  Inside the outpost, the fighters discovered cases of precious ammunition and four Kalashnikovs. Using his cell phone, Akbar Gul snapped a photo of himself standing triumphantly amid the weapons and sent it to Mufti Latif. This was how Taliban commanders now proved their worth; the movement that had once shunned moving images and photography could no longer operate without them. The photographs wound up in the possession of Taliban leaders in Pakistan, and Akbar Gul was soon rewarded with a few thousand dollars. With the fresh infusion of money and weapons, he was able to attract more farmers to the group. His force expanded to fifteen.

  That summer, his attacks grew ever bolder. Each one left him wanting more, each a high for which the only fix was greater, grander, showier. In August he again teamed up with Ghulam Ali, attacking and briefly overrunning the Chak district governor’s compound, the first such conquest in Wardak. To carry out the raid, he had resorted to tricking some of his own men. “Whenever we went on big missions, the important ones,” he recalled, “there were a few of my guys who’d volunteer to stay back a
nd guard the village. They were terrified of bullets.” He grinned at me. “Two of them were newly married. They liked to spend time with their wives. You know, they were addicted to it.” He had convinced them that they were only going to attack a small outpost near the governor’s mansion—until the very moment when he opened fire at the mansion itself, leaving his shocked fighters no choice but to join in.

  The momentary capture of a government headquarters made the national news and brought Akbar Gul further acclaim from the leadership. His group now numbered thirty strong.

  * * *

  Another winter came and went, and 2007 brought more violence than anyone had seen since the civil war years. The UN estimated that the Taliban had reclaimed control of more than half of rural Pashtun territory countrywide. By year’s end, officials had logged more than five thousand security incidents—roadside bombings, kidnappings, assassinations, ambushes. Akbar Gul and Ghulam Ali were no longer alone in Chak, as farmers and religious students of all stripes began to join the fray. By now, there were a half-dozen Taliban groups active in that district alone.

  In the winter of 2007, for the first time, some Taliban groups remained active despite heavy snows, as ever more villagers flocked to the Taliban’s side. And after only a few months, 2008 had already broken the previous year’s record for violence. Most of this was unfolding far from the eyes of Kabul-based reporters. Through contacts with the Taliban leadership I was able to secure permission to venture into Taliban country, and that summer I hopped on a motorcycle with an Afghan friend and headed for Chak.

  We zipped along the country’s main arterial highway connecting Kabul to Kandahar, which slices right through Wardak Province. Paved five years prior, to the tune of millions of dollars, it now stretched out before me as a roadway devoured, pocked and cratered with culverts here and there burst open. We passed the disemboweled remains of fuel tankers, charred vendor stalls, and small police outposts where the officers holed up, refusing to step out day or night.

  In Chak, we pulled into a small village. We spent the afternoon with the malek eating watermelons in the shade of almond trees, near a small stream of tea-colored water with a few sun-blanched mud homes on the opposite bank. Village children sat nearby, watching us talk. Occasionally a Taliban fighter walked past, looked at us, and continued on.

  The malek told me that the village had been under Taliban control for nearly two years, and in that time crime had vanished. The Taliban court adjudicated disputes and sentenced criminals, something only a bribe would have achieved in government courts. He explained how Taliban “police” had captured a known child molester and turned him over to Islamic justice, with judges tarring his face, parading him around Chak, and forcing him to apologize publicly. If caught again, he was told, he would be executed.

  The malek would not say it, but this service, as important as it may have been, was the extent of the Taliban’s governing activities. For the rest, life remained frozen—no jobs, no development, no aid. Still, for the time being at least, people preferred Taliban austerity to government and foreign impunity.

  These transformations were unfolding only fifty miles from Kabul, with its embassies and aid offices and government ministries. Wresting control of Wardak—which the Americans referred to as “Kabul’s doorstep”—from the Taliban would become a major goal of the Obama administration’s attempts to turn the war around. Shortly after assuming office, President Obama ordered a mini-surge of troops into the country, including a battalion from the Tenth Mountain Division dispatched to the strategically crucial Logar and Wardak Provinces. The Americans were coming to Chak.

  * * *

  The first time Akbar Gul saw a US soldier, he was amazed. “You know, I’ll never forget it,” he recalled. We were sitting in a guesthouse, nursing steaming cups of cardamom tea. It had taking him a while to get to the Americans in his story, perhaps because in the early days of our meetings he could never quite shake the suspicion that I was a spy. “I was in the bazaar, chatting with some shopkeepers who were my friends. I didn’t have a weapon or anything with me, I was just relaxing, and all of a sudden they came by.” He counted more than a dozen soldiers. “You know, they were all different colors. I was so surprised. I saw white ones and black ones.” He pointed a bony finger in my direction. “Even some that looked like you. I realized on that day that I didn’t know the first thing about these people.”

  The soldiers were swaddled in gear—helmets, vests, wires poking out of various pockets. They walked uncomfortably, as if in great pain. Akbar Gul glanced down at his own unadorned salwar and sandaled feet and couldn’t decide which of the two sides was more foolish. The soldiers worked their way through the bazaar single file. When they reached his stall the man in front turned to Akbar Gul and smiled, but the others eyed him coldly. An Afghan translator, looking awkward in his uniform, followed close behind. Within seconds, the group had passed, and soon they returned to their vehicles and drove off. Akbar Gul knew that he must be on some list of theirs, but fortunately no public photographs of him existed. Still, he decided to play things safe and spend a few nights away from home with his friend Ismael.

  He woke late that night to the sound of distant thunder. Straining to listen, he could hear a helicopter hovering somewhere nearby. Americans, he thought. He reached for his Kalashnikov. Lights flashed outside. Every few minutes, he heard a dull thud and realized these must be explosions. They were doing house searches. Blowing off gates.

  Ismael appeared in the doorway. “What do you want to do?”

  Akbar Gul studied the window. If he ran for it, he might make it to the fields abutting the village. But if the Americans were there already?

  “We’ll stay here,” he decided. “They won’t search every house.” He knew that they were probably looking for him. He was, after all, one of the most prominent commanders in the province, and the only one in this village. He looked over at Ismael, who was a worried mess. He was a civilian, a poor farmer, who opened his guesthouse to the Taliban, tribal elders, or whoever else passed through; he had certainly not signed up for this.

  “You should get out of here,” Akbar Gul said. “I’ll take care of it.” Ismael shot him a grateful look and left.

  Akbar Gul hid his weapon and for the next hours sat in the guesthouse, waiting. The Americans, he knew, would be angry. In the previous week he’d planted a bomb that destroyed one of their vehicles and probably killed one of their soldiers.

  By the morning’s first light the explosions had ceased and the sky had fallen silent. He decided to test the outdoors. Slipping through a warren of donkey trails between the houses, he emerged onto the escarpment leading away from the village. At the next village, he took shelter in the house of a friend and waited. The sun was high by the time he sent the friend out and learned that the Americans were again approaching. He was spirited away to a small hut, perched atop a hill from which he could observe the houses below. He scanned the roofs and the narrow lanes. And then he saw them, gathered around the compound of an elder: meaty men in sunglasses and hats. One of them sat down with the elder. On a nearby hill, four soldiers stood guard. Four exposed soldiers, he realized, for all the world to see. That was when he got the idea.

  He stole back to his village to retrieve his walkie-talkie and radioed Ghulam Ali and three other commanders, asking them to rendezvous in a nearby fruit orchard with men ready to fight.

  It was late afternoon when the four commanders gathered in a thicket of apple trees near the occupied village. They had nearly a hundred fighters under them, but only twenty had shown up. Ambushing the Americans, after all, was a far cry from hitting the hapless Afghan police. Akbar Gul divided the group into four: two teams moving under tree cover toward the hill, one in a nearby graveyard with a good line of sight to the target, and the fourth in the orchard as a rear guard.

  He led one of the mobile teams through the fruit farm. About half a mile ahead, he could see the small knoll and the Americans still pacing a
top it.

  He came to a ten-foot-high mud enclosure, the back wall of a farmer’s compound, at the foot of the hill. Climbing onto the shoulders of one of his men, he peeked over, balancing an RPG launcher with one arm.

  The Americans stood talking among themselves. This is it, he thought. This is how great men are made.

  “Ready for lunch,” he spoke into his walkie-talkie. “Let’s eat.” Within seconds, gunshots erupted from the far side of the hill. As the American soldiers scrambled for cover, Akbar Gul aimed his launcher and fired. The Americans were shooting back wildly. He reloaded and fired again. There was gunfire coming in now from multiple directions. His man was beginning to wobble under him, so he climbed off and onto another fighter. Three of the Americans had taken cover behind some boulders; the fourth was nowhere to be seen.

  Many minutes passed as the firing continued, and in a haze of smoke and dust Akbar Gul could no longer see what he was shooting at. He began to worry about American reinforcements. He had just radioed his concern to Ghulam Ali when the air pulsed with a sound that did not belong. Suddenly, the world exploded.

  Unbearable heat. Smoke mud-thick. A ringing in his ears. He’d fallen off his compatriot’s shoulders, and he could hear the plane returning. Reaching for his walkie-talkie, he spoke in the calmest tone he could muster. “It’s okay! Just run! Don’t worry—just run, run, run!”

  * * *

  That evening, the commanders regrouped in the mountains. Remarkably, there were no injuries. They spoke among themselves of how cowardly the Americans were, how without their airplanes this war would be over in months. The mood was triumphant, their narrow escape evidence that God was on their side.