No Good Men Among the Living

by Anand Gopal

  A NOTE ON SOURCES

  In southern Afghanistan, there’s an old joke that goes like this: a group of inmates at an asylum are gathered around a hole in the ground. They’ve been staring at it intently for hours. A doctor comes by, peers into the hole, and looks at the inmates with bemusement. “I don’t see anything,” he says. “What are you looking at?”

  Comes the reply: “How can you expect to see anything? You just got here. We’ve been staring at it for hours, and we still haven’t seen anything.”

  In Afghanistan, truth is an evasive thing. Part of the reason is that human memories are notoriously unreliable—especially when those memories are ones that people would rather forget. It is also because Afghan storytellers are often less concerned with literal truth than they are with the deeper moral truth of a story.

  This doesn’t mean that a truthful rendition of events is impossible, only that it takes effort. The stories in this book are the result of countless hours of interviews over the course of three years. The names of some individuals, such as Akbar Gul, have been changed for their protection. Where relevant, I’ve interviewed multiple witnesses for the events in question. I have traveled to nearly every province, district, and village detailed in this book, and in many cases I was able to retrace my subjects’ steps. There are newspaper accounts and official documents detailing aspects of many of the events I’ve described, and I’ve made use of them to verify and augment my reporting. You can find the sourcing below. In the end, though, there are still elements of any story that are by their nature unverifiable—someone’s thought process, for instance—and in those cases I’ve relied on my feel for the person in question, on his or her track record for accuracy and demonstrated understanding of my project.

  NOTES

  The page numbers for the notes that appeared in the print version of this title are not in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device to search for the relevant passages documented or discussed.

  Some of the links in the eBook may no longer be active.

  1 • THE LAST DAYS OF VICE AND VIRTUE

  Mullah Cable. The very name spoke of: There were at least three people known as “Mullah Cable” on the front lines. It is unclear if the other two are still alive.

  President George W. Bush’s warning: Kathleen T. Rhem, “Bush: No Distinction Between Attackers and Those Who Harbor Them,” U.S. Department of Defense, American Forces Press Service, September 11, 2001.

  The Taliban, for their part, doubted the objectivity: Abdul Salaam Zaeef, My Life with the Taliban (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 136–39.

  “Osama is like a chicken bone”: Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, An Enemy We Created: The Myth of the Taliban/Al-Qaeda Merger in Afghanistan, 1970–2010 (London: C. Hurst, 2011), 166.

  President Bush increased the pressure: “Bush Gives Taliban Ultimatum,” Telegraph, September 21, 2001.

  “You just care about your posts”: Van Linschoten and Kuehn, An Enemy We Created, 225.

  Twice he sent his top deputy to meet covertly: George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA (New York: HarperCollins, 2007).

  a gas mask by his side: Scott C. Johnson and Evan Thomas, “Mulla Omar Off the Record,” Newsweek, January 20, 2002.

  Contravening dictator Pervez Musharraf’s stated policy: Ahmed Rashid, “Intelligence Team Defied Musharraf to Help Taliban,” Telegraph, October 10, 2001.

  On October 6, he received word from Pakistani agents: Interview, Kandahar, 2010.

  “My family, my power, my privileges”: Claudio Franco, “The Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan,” in Decoding the New Taliban: Insights from the Afghan Field, ed. Antonio Giustozzi (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 272.

  The next evening, a few minutes before nine p.m.: This scene is drawn from interviews with Mullah Omar’s driver and from news accounts (2010).

  “He had very bad abdominal injuries”: Charlie Bain, “Omar Came into the Hospital and Said: This Is My Son. Please Help Him,” Mirror, October 22, 2001.

  “Go! Go to Sangesar!”: Interview with Mullah Omar’s driver. See also “Taliban Leader ‘Survived Direct Hits,’” Reuters, January 21, 2002.

  Late on November 12, 2001, Mullah Cable entered Kabul: This description of Kabul is based on my interview with Mullah Cable and interviews with others who were in the city at the time.

  A New York Times reporter traveling with them: David Rohde, “Executions of P.O.W.’s Cast Doubts on Alliance,” New York Times, November 13, 2001.

  2 • THE BATTLE FOR TIRIN KOT

  Karzai vowed to do whatever it took: Material on Karzai in this chapter is based on interviews with aides, relatives, and publicly available sources.

  A Taliban guard pointed to the large sack: Bette Dam, Expedite Uruzgan: De weg van Hamid Karzai naar het paleis (Amsterdam: Arbeiderspers, 2008).

  The elders listened politely, but it soon became apparent: Ibid.

  “Have the Americans bomb the Taliban command”: Eric Blehm, The Only Thing Worth Dying For: How Eleven Green Berets Fought for a New Afghanistan (New York: HarperPerennial, 2011), 73.

  Mullah Manan rose nervously to greet me: “Manan” is a pseudonym that I have given him.

  “Hey, what the fuck is going on?”: Blehm, The Only Thing Worth Dying For, 130.

  every available air asset across the theater: Ibid., 131.

  When he looked up, he saw smoke and blood: Description of US bombing from interviews in Shah Wali Kot, 2010. Description of Karzai from Nick B. Mills, Karzai: The Failing American Intervention and the Struggle for Afghanistan (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2007). Details of US casualties and Amerine from Thom Shanker, “Applying Early Lessons to Build Afghan Security,” New York Times, May 20, 2013.

  “What’s your reaction to being named as prime minister?”: Author interview with Lyse Doucet, August 2013.

  “believe only in Islam and my Afghan bravery”: Franco, “The Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan,” 272.

  bouts of boundless terror that brought him close to tears: Interviews; and van Linschoten and Kuehn, An Enemy We Created.

  Mullah Omar and other senior Taliban leaders were huddled together: This and subsequent info on Mullah Omar’s actions from interviews with Taliban official, Kandahar, 2010.

  3 • THE WAR FROM YEAR ZERO

  financed textbooks for schoolchildren in refugee camps: Matthew Hansen, “Soviet-Era Textbooks Still Controversial,” Associated Press, September 23, 2007.

  “Aleph [is for] Allah”: Craig Davies, “A Is for Allah, J Is for Jihad,” World Policy Journal 19, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 90.

  The US-backed mujahedeen branded those: See, for example, “Afghanistan,” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 39, no. 6 (June/July 1983): 16–23.

  permissible to rape any unmarried girl over the age of twelve: US Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, “US Department of State Country Report on Human Rights Practices 1994—Afghanistan,” February 1995.

  outlawing love songs and “dancing music”: John Baily, “Music and Censorship in Afghanistan, 1973–2003,” in Music and the Play of Power in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, ed. Laudan Nooshin (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), 143–64.

  “schools are whorehouses and centers of adultery”: Helena Malikyar, “Development of Family Law in Afghanistan: The Roles of the Hanafi Madhhab, Customary Practices and Power Politics,” Central Asian Survey 16, no. 3 (1997): 396.

  “Women are not to leave their homes at all”: Hafizullah Emadi, Repression, Resistance, and Women in Afghanistan (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2002), 124.

  Sher Muhammad climbed to the roof of his house: John Pomfret, “Rocket Attack Terrorizes Musicians’ Neighborhood,” Associated Press, May 5, 1992.

  Muhammad Haroun was arrested by an ethnic Hazara militia: Afghanistan Justice Project, Casting Shadows: War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity: 1978–2001 (Afghanistan Justice Project, 2005).

  Haz
ara militiamen stormed the house of Rafiullah: Interview, Kabul, 2009. (“Rafiullah” is a pseudonym.)

  fighters broke into apartment number 38: “From Fundamentalism-Blighted Afghanistan” (excerpts from Payam-e-Zan reporters in 1992–96), Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, accessed October 9, 2013, http://www.rawa.org/reports.html.

  A month later another group came to the housing complex: Ibid.

  lobbing mortars blindly into the densely populated neighborhood: Human Rights Watch, Blood-Stained Hands: Past Atrocities in Kabul and Afghanistan’s Legacy of Impunity (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2005).

  “They held him and asked where his father was”: Afghanistan Justice Project, Casting Shadows, 87. Here, I have given her the pseudonym “Mina.”

  Some Hazaras, like resident Abdul Qader: Human Rights Watch, Blood-Stained Hands. Here, I have given him the pseudonym “Abdul Qader.”

  An unknown number of people—probably at least one thousand: Afghanistan Justice Project, Casting Shadows, 20.

  Fazil Ahmed was decapitated: Human Rights Watch, Blood-Stained Hands, 87.

  Human rights investigators subsequently found: Ibid.

  Still, when Zbigniew Brzezinski: Zbigniew Brzezinski interview, “The CIA’s Intervention in Afghanistan,” trans. Bill Blum, Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, January 15–21, 1998.

  4 • THE SEWING CENTER OF KHAS URUZGAN

  Only 12 percent of Afghan soil is arable: World Bank, World Development Indicators, 2013 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013).

  typifying what some sociologists call a culture of honor: See, for example, Dov Cohen and Richard E. Nisbett, “Self-Protection and the Culture of Honor: Explaining Southern Violence,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 20 (October 1994): 551–67.

  mountain clans even tattooed their animals and their women: Emadi, Repression, Resistance, and Women in Afghanistan, 32.

  may have helped spark violent riots in Kandahar: Some scholarship suggests that the riots had more to do with taxation than with women.

  British documents from as early as 1901: A. H. McMahon and A. D. G. Ramsay, Report on the Tribes of Dir, Swat and Bajaur Together with the Utman-Khel and Sam Ranizai, reprint of 1901 edition (Peshawar, Pakistan: Saeed Book Bank, 1981). See also Magic ud-Din, “1901 Taliban,” Language, Politics, Pakistan (blog), http://languagepoliticspakistan.blogspot.com/2011/10/1901-taliban.html.

  “The religion of God is being stepped on”: Husayn ibn Mahmud, The Giant Man (At-tibyan publications, http://ebooks.worldofislam.info/ebooks/Jihad/The_Giant_Man.pdf, accessed November 4, 2013), 16.

  5 • NO ONE IS SAFE FROM THIS

  The sky clotted gray: This scene is from interviews in Maiwand (2010) and the 2010 TLO report “Maiwand” (unpublished).

  fifteen truckloads of weapons: Interviews, Kandahar, 2010; Bill Powell, “Warlord or Druglord?,” Time, February 8, 2007.

  via clandestine meetings with US officials: James Risen, “An Afghan’s Path from U.S. Ally to Drug Suspect,” New York Times, February 2, 2007.

  in January 2002, he showed up at an American base: Gregg Zoraya, “Taliban Money Man Reportedly Freed,” USA Today, January 25, 2002.

  “the Taliban system is no more”: “Taliban Official Asks Pakistani Islamists Not to Collect Donations in the Name of Militia,” Associated Press, December 16, 2001.

  “If a stable Islamic government is established”: Hilary Mackenzie and Michael Petrou, “Mujahedeen Routs al-Qaeda, But bin Laden Remains at Large,” Edmonton Journal, December 17, 2001.

  “Ministers of the Taliban and senior Taliban are coming”: Brian Knowlton, “U.S. Seems Sure to Oppose Amnesty Proposed by Afghan Captors: 3 Taliban Leaders Said to Surrender,” New York Times, January 9, 2002.

  the Taliban ministers of defense, justice, interior: Anand Gopal, “The Battle for Kandahar,” in Talibanistan: Negotiating the Borders Between Terror, Politics, and Religion, ed. Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012).

  “We are giving advice to Hamid Karzai”: Amir Zia, “Taliban Leaders Defect Orthodox Islamic Militia,” Associated Press, December 9, 2001.

  At Kandahar’s soccer stadium: Ellen Knickmeyer, “Afghans Rally for Peace on Former Taliban Execution Ground,” Associated Press, January 24, 2002.

  fields were lavender bright: Author interviews in Kandahar, 2010.

  Abdullah, the family driver, would usually be dispatched: “Abdullah” is a pseudonym.

  ran into the courtyard with other guests: Jon Stephenson, “Eyes Wide Shut: The Government’s Guilty Secrets in Afghanistan,” Metro (New Zealand), May 2011.

  “The war in Iraq drained resources from Afghanistan”: Seth Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires: America’s War in Afghanistan (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010), 127.

  one of Sherzai’s lieutenants met Master Sergeant Perry Toomer: Michael Phillips, “Battlefield Business Deals Are Cut in Afghanistan as Marines Find Willing Contractors Among Locals,” Wall Street Journal, December 19, 2001.

  an $8-a-load job: Sarah Chayes, The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban (New York: Penguin Books, 2006).

  “Get Wealth and Power Beyond Your Dreams”: Herbert A. Friedman, “Psychological Operations in Afghanistan,” Psywarrior website, http://www.psywarrior.com/Herbafghan02.html, accessed November 4, 2013.

  constantly scratch and massage his back: Christopher Torchia, “Short of Money, Staff and Equipment, Kandahar’s Intelligence Chief Directs Search for Taliban Leader,” Associated Press, December 18, 2001.

  “could get into places and exact payback”: Anonymous, Hunting al Qaeda: A Take-No-Prisoners Account of Terror, Adventure, and Disillusionment (St. Paul, MN: Zenith Press, 2009).

  a poisoned tablet for $100,000: Stephenson, “Eyes Wide Shut.”

  “an elderly father died while in custody”: David Pugliese, Shadow Wars: Special Forces in the New Battle Against Terrorism (Ottawa: Esprit de Corps Books, 2003).

  “we hope we got some senior Taliban”: Vernon Loeb and Thomas E. Ricks, “1 Killed, 59 Held in Raid on Suspected Taliban Camp,” Washington Post, May 25, 2002.

  “If we did any crime, they must punish us”: Patrick Quinn, “All but Five Villagers Detained in U.S. Raid on Suspected al-Qaida Leadership Released,” Associated Press, May 30, 2002.

  “If they touch our women again”: Michael Ware, “We Were Better Off Under the Russians,” Time, June 10, 2002.

  “She was the laughter of the house”: Ibid.

  As Major A. C. Roper explained: Nahlah Ayed, “Majority of Suspects Captured by Canadians and U.S. Special Forces Released,” Canadian Press Newswire, May 30, 2002.

  announced that the captives were “al Qaeda-Taliban”: “Afghan Military Arrests 95 After Receiving Reports of Links to al-Qaida, Taliban,” Associated Press, August 29, 2002.

  “The government paid for their salaries”: Tini Tran, “Afghans Cry Foul over Police Roundup,” Associated Press, August 31, 2002.

  the captured policemen in US custody were beaten: Author interviews in Kandahar, 2010.

  admitting that officials “never had hard evidence”: Tini Tran, “U.S.-Afghan Raid Speaks Volumes,” Associated Press, September 1, 2002.

  If the government could do this “to their own people”: Tran, “Afghans Cry Foul.”

  this time detaining Hajji Nasro, a local leader: Matthew Rosenberg, “U.S. Special Forces Take Seven People into Custody; Find Large Weapons Cache,” Associated Press, September 19, 2002.

  “to make the situation in Afghanistan stable”: Powell, “Warlord or Druglord?”

  “Why don’t we have any Afghan drug lords”: Ibid.

  the home of Akhtar Muhammad Mansur: Gopal, “The Battle for Kandahar.”

  6 • TO MAKE THE BAD THINGS GOOD AGAIN

  Abdul Ali approached the main schoolhouse: “Abdul Ali” is a pseudonym.

  “US Pat. No. 5651376”: Interviews, Uruzgan, 2010; and Michael Ware, “How the U.S. Killed the Wrong Afghans,” Time, February
6, 2002.

  a sound unlike any of them had heard before: Ware, “How the U.S. Killed the Wrong Afghans.”

  Shah Muhammad, one of Qudus’s bodyguards: Carlotta Gall and Craig S. Smith, “Afghan Witnesses Say G.I.’s Were Duped in Raid on Allies,” New York Times, February 27, 2002.

  As Pryor later recounted it: Gregg Zoraya, “Inches Divide Life, Death in the Afghan Darkness,” USA Today, October 19, 2003.

  “they are our friends”: Gall and Smith, “Afghan Witnesses Say G.I.’s Were Duped.”

  “We’re friends! Friends, friends, friends!”: Molly Moore, “Villagers Released by American Troops Say They Were Beaten, Kept in ‘Cage,’” Washington Post, February 11, 2002.

  “Have a nice day. From Damage, Inc.”: Craig S. Smith, “A Nation Challenged: U.S. Raid; After a Commando Operation, Questions About Why and How 21 Afghans Died,” New York Times, January 28, 2002.

  twenty-one pro-American leaders and their employees dead: Figures from Khas Uruzgan government officials, interview, Uruzgan, 2010.

  “We’re Karzai’s people!”: Interviews, Uruzgan, 2010; and Moore, “Villagers Released.”

  “walking on our backs like we were stones”: Moore, “Villagers Released.”

  “I did not expect to remain alive”: Carlotta Gall, “Released Afghans Tell of Beatings,” New York Times, February 11, 2002.