by Nir Rosen
Yusuf called a fellow commander and told him he was bringing over a journalist. The man on the other end of the call called me a devil and told him not to bring me. So we headed to another commander instead. Yusuf passed by a school called Ghams al-Ulum, which his predecessor, Mullah Mu’min, had built fourteen years earlier. There had once been three hundred boys studying at the school, but it had been closed since the Americans arrived. Three years earlier the Americans and Afghan army had used it as a base, he said, “but we fought them and they left.”
We drove in the desert to the village of Khodzai and entered a mosque. Eight men and two boys sat on the floor drinking tea. An RPG and several AK-47s were on the floor or against the wall. In addition to Yusuf, another senior commander from Andar was present. The men talked about fighting the Afghan army two days earlier in the nearby Naniki village. The commander I spoke to told me they had ambushed a logistical convoy of trucks using machine guns and RPGs; they killed twenty Afghan soldiers, and one Talib was injured. The Americans didn’t come here, and there was no Afghan government, he said. “We control this area. The Taliban is the government here.” All the older men agreed that the Russians were more dangerous than the Americans. I asked to take a picture of some of the fighters. The commander wrapped his young son up with a scarf and showed him how to hold the AK. Everybody laughed as I took his picture with the others. The men got ready to go on a patrol, putting on their vests, checking magazines, slinging AK-47s on their shoulders, and wrapping scarves around their faces. We all went out, standing in a sunny courtyard. Small boys and girls emerged to watch the men ready themselves. They got on their Honda motorcycles and carried their RPGs. Suddenly a coalition military helicopter flew low overhead, nearly coming to a hover above us. I clenched my fists in terror waiting for the helicopter to fire a missile at us. I struggled to control the urge to flee. The other men ignored it and laughed at me. One told me that he had fired an RPG at a helicopter the day before, and that they would fire at this one if it attacked us. To my relief, the helicopter continued flying. The men took off on their motorcycles. We drove away in the Corolla. Shafiq told me he had killed more than two hundred alleged spies. After a trial, if the judge gave a verdict of guilty, he explained, they would cut the spy’s head off. “First I warn people to stop, and if they continue I kill them,” Shafiq said. He explained that they could only fight for about twenty minutes before the helicopters came: “I can’t fight for two or three hours.”
As we drove he played more Taliban chants about brave boys going to fight. We passed by another school that had been closed. The sun shown bright on old mud houses. Many were worn out and looked like sand castles after the first wave hit them. There was only one school open in the area, Shafiq told me as we drove through the village of Kamalkhel. He pointed to a new yellow school, explaining that it was a government school run by the Taliban. “There are no government people here,” Shafiq said. One month earlier the Americans had arrested Mullah Faizani, the Taliban commander of Kamalkhel.
As we drove through villages a bearded man with his face partially concealed by a scarf stopped us on his motorcycle. He demanded to know who I was, and Shafiq told him I was a guest. He asked me if I was Pashtun. “Pukhtu nayam,” I said. “I am not Pashtun.” He glared at me and drove off.
We entered an old adobe home built seventy years ago. Livestock brayed past the gate. A large group of Taliban were seated around the room. I met a seventeen-year-old called Isa. Like Muhamad, he had been a Talib for only two weeks. He had studied at a local Islamic school in Andar. I asked him why he had joined. “I like the mujahideen,” he said, “and I want to do jihad.” I asked him why. “Because the Americans are here,” Yusuf said. Isa repeated Yusuf’s answer. He hoped to continue studying religion when he was done fighting. Food was brought out. More shurwa and chunks of meat. They got most of their news from listening to BBC on the radio. They could not watch television because of lack of electricity, they said. In the past the Taliban had prohibited television. One of the Talibs told me he thought the Americans would leave in one year. “When the Americans leave I want to fight them, because why did they attack Afghanistan?” said one man. “America is at war with Islam,” said Shafiq. “The war started with the Prophet Muhammad,” said Yusuf.
I asked the men who they thought should lead Afghanistan. It didn’t have to be Mullah Omar, they said, as long as Islamic law was imposed. I asked them if they would allow people like Osama bin Laden and other foreign fighters in once they controlled Afghanistan. “Islam has no borders,” said Shafiq affirmatively. I asked why most Taliban were Pashtun. “Pashtun people have more principles and religious faith than others,” said Shafiq. “It’s also because Pashtuns are the majority.” This is not exactly accurate: Pashtuns are the largest group in Afghanistan, but they are not the majority. “Life was better under the Taliban because it was an Islamic regime,” said Yusuf. They asked me questions about the Americans: what they thought of their being in Afghanistan, and if they thought they would win. I struggled to find the right answer. One of the commanders told Shafiq that I was an American CIA agent. Shafiq told him I wasn’t. I heard the words “istikhbarat” and “jasus,” which meant “army intelligence” and “spy,” as we readied ourselves to leave.
We left to meet more fighters. Yusuf stopped the car at a house where an American strike had killed two Talibs a year earlier and asked me to photograph it. We crawled through rocky paths between mud homes, a vast labyrinth. Everything looked the same to me. We got stuck in the sand, and a dust storm hit us, blinding and suffocating us as we struggled to push the car. We stopped in front of a shop with the PKM in full view and Taliban music playing. The people in the shop greeted Yusuf warmly. Six men came out to greet us as we sat waiting in the car. Yusuf bought many shoulder straps for AK-47s and put them in the car.
We drove to another mosque and found twelve men inside. A large shoulder-fired missile was on the floor, an anti-armor weapon I had not seen before. Most of the men in this room were older. Shafiq told me we were waiting to meet the commander who would approve my trip. I thought it had all been approved already. One of the men was called Abu Tayyeb, an Arabic nom de guerre. He spoke Arabic, so we were able to talk to each other. He told me he commanded two thousand men in Wardak and was visiting. He had lived in Saudi Arabia for one year and spent three months in a Saudi prison for mujahideen-related activities. He had joined the mujahideen fourteen years ago, he said, and under the Taliban he was a commander in the northern Kunduz province. He told me the large shoulder-fired weapon on the floor was an RR82, or some kind of recoilless rifle. I continued to ask him questions, but then the angry man—the one who had asked me if I was a Pashtun—came in holding a walkie-talkie and barked at him to stop talking to me until the commander, called Dr. Khalil, showed up. I noticed that some other men had walkie-talkies too, and that Kamal was nervous. There was a problem, he told me; the judge would decide what would happen to us. Upon hearing the word qazi (judge), I started to panic inside. As Shafiq had told me, a meeting with a judge could end with your head getting cut off.
We got up to go, and when we were out I was told to get in the car with the angry man and other strangers, who would take me to the judge. Yusuf was praying and Shafiq said he would pray and catch up with us. I told him I was not leaving him, that I was his guest. A desperate feeling was beginning to take over me. Holding their rifles the commander’s men shouted at me to get in their car. Yusuf came out, told me to get in our Corolla, and assured me he wouldn’t leave us. He put Qadim in the car with us. A standoff ensued. I called and sent text messages to my contacts back in Kabul to let them know I was in trouble. Qadim sat menacingly with an AK-47, his face concealed by a scarf. His phone rang: its ring tones were machine-gun fire and a song about the Taliban being born for martyrdom. Lack of water, fear, and the dust had dried my mouth, and I felt as though I had lost my voice. My friend in Kabul who had helped arrange the trip called Shafiq and told him he shou
ld not leave me, that I was Shafiq’s responsibility and he would hold him personally responsible if anything happened to me.
After an hour Shafiq told us we could get out. Abu Tayyeb, the Arabic speaker, tried to reassure me and told me not to worry. The angry man and his companions departed, taking the rocket launcher with them. I thought it was over, and put my hand on my heart as they left, to indicate no ill will. Then Shafiq told us Dr. Khalil was coming to see us. Abu Tayyeb had tried and failed to get them to let us leave. I wondered if all the increased phone traffic and movement of Taliban commanders would attract the attention of whatever American intelligence agency might be spying on us, and if we would be attacked. Abu Tayyeb apologetically explained that there were many Taliban groups and that the one causing me problems was different. Then the order came for us to go see Dr. Khalil ourselves.
We left in a heavy dust storm. The car crawled forward slowly, rocking back and forth on the rocky paths, and I felt as though I were in a boat being tossed about by waves. Yusuf said not to worry, that if they came to take me he would fight them. We drove from village to village with Qadim ahead on the motorcycle. In my loneliness it occurred to me that we had driven through an entire district, through many villages, and there was no authority other than the Taliban, who seemed completely comfortable in their territory and not half as concerned about the Americans as I was. “We have problem,” Kamal said, but he didn’t elaborate when I asked what it was. On the road I struggled to find network reception for my phone, cursing as the bars appeared and disappeared. I reached another one of my contacts. “I spoke to Dr. Khalil,” he said. “If they behave bad with you, don’t worry. They just want to punish you, but everything is okay. I have only one more guy to call, who is bigger than Dr. Khalil.” Shafiq also told me not to worry; he would get killed before he left me. We crawled at a snail’s pace to our denouement in a dark empty desert, which only made me more tense. I could see nothing on the horizon; it was clear we had a long way to go. I asked Shafiq if Dr. Khalil was a nice guy, a good guy. “He’s like you,” Shafiq answered cryptically. “No Muslim is a bad man. Don’t worry, the Doctor has a gun and I have a gun.” Dr. Khalil, apparently, was a Tajik, not a Pashtun, which was very unusual for a senior Taliban commander like him, and he was from the Tajik village of Asfanda in Ghazni. He had recently been released from an Afghan prison in a prisoner exchange. Shafiq later said that as soon as Dr. Khalil heard I was a foreigner, he thought he would be rich. He called his superiors and told them he caught Shafiq with a foreign spy. He called Mansur Dadullah and told him, “I arrested a foreigner and an Afghan in Wardak and brought them to Ghazni.” Mansur Dadullah was the brother of the slain Mullah Dadullah, who had commanded Taliban military operations after the 2001 American invasion until he was killed in May 2007. Mansur Dadullah was released with other Taliban prisoners in March 2007 in exchange for the Taliban release of an Italian journalist. He then commanded Taliban operations in some of the most dangerous southern provinces and served as a spokesman until he was reportedly demoted by Mullah Omar.
Mullah Abdillah called to say that he had reached a Taliban leader in Quetta in Pakistan and somebody in the United Arab Emirates, and they had promised to call Dr. Khalil and tell him not to harm us. “The Doctor will fight with me, not with you,” said Shafiq. My contact called again to tell me “they might slap you, but they won’t hit you or kill you, just punish you for coming without permission. They might keep you overnight as a guest. You are lucky you called me.” I felt some relief, but I was not convinced. Later he told me that Dr. Khalil had told him, “Don’t worry, we won’t do anything that isn’t Sharia,” but this was little consolation, since they considered Islamic law to permit beheading.
We drove through a Shiite village called Kara Barei on our way to the area between Gabari and Sher Kala village. “I’m a martyr, I’m a star,” sang the Taliban chants on the tape. “I’ve reached my goal, I’m a martyr . . . I will testify on behalf of my mother on Judgment Day. When I was small my mother put me on her lap and spoke sweetly to me . . .” We finally arrived at the mosque where Dr. Khalil was waiting for us. Upon entering I inadvertently stepped on a pair of Prada sunglasses. Dr. Khalil walked in at that moment and picked them up to examine them somberly. He was a burly man with light skin and a dark brown beard. He had thick hands and was stern. He wore a cap on his head. After everybody prayed together, Dr. Khalil told everybody to leave the room except for Kamal, Yusuf, and me. We sat on the floor. He put his sunglasses on. “Deir obekhi,” I said, apologizing for entering his territory without permission. He did not react but accused Kamal and me of being spies for the Afghan army. He asked how I got a visa to Afghanistan and why, and how I got visas to other countries. I told him I was there to write about the mujahideen and tell their story. If I liked them so much, he said, why didn’t I join them? He asked about my contact. I said he was a former mujahid from Jamiat-i Islami. He scoffed dismissively, telling me they were not mujahideen. Suddenly he got up and said he would make phone calls to Pakistan and elsewhere to investigate us, so we had to spend the night in the mosque—he would come back for us in the morning. He got up and left in a hurry as I tried to protest.
I sat glumly on the floor in the guest room. A few minutes later Shafiq stuck his head in and said, “Yallah,” Arabic for “come on.” I stood up with alacrity, relieved to get out of there though confused about why. But the Talibs sitting with us insisted we drink the tea they had just made. I hurriedly gulped down the scalding tea. We stepped out into the darkness and heard helicopters in the distance. Soon we could spot their silhouettes; everybody ducked behind the car and motorcycle, so I did too, wondering if the men I was with had heard of night-vision goggles. After the sky was silent again, Yusuf apologized for having to leave me and go see his family. Shafiq told me we had to return to this mosque in the morning, and I was once again crestfallen. He drove the Corolla slowly, painstakingly winding through invisible paths. The moonlight was blocked by dust. I could see nothing out the window and wondered what was guiding Shafiq. The mobile phone network was shut down again, and I had no way of updating my contacts in Kabul.
At Shafiq’s house I met his seventeen-year-old brother, who was studying at a nearby state school and knew some English. I was surprised that a Taliban commander would let his brother attend a government school. Shafiq’s brother told me he wanted to study engineering and didn’t want to fight. He had been with Mullah Abdillah all day, he said, and Abdillah had spent much of the day calling Taliban commanders to try to release me from Dr. Khalil. He had even called Mansur Dadullah in Kandahar.
Shafiq carried a television into the guest room and turned on the generator. He was able to read the English titles on the guide and found Al Jazeera, the Arabic satellite news channel. We watched coverage of attacks on the road from Kabul to Jalalabad and the ones we had driven by in Wardak. Boys were shown taking pieces of the trucks away. Shafiq got bored with Al Jazeera and put on Ariana, an Afghan channel, to watch an Indian soap opera dubbed in Dari. Women were shown in revealing Western attire. I was amazed that he would watch something so anathema to the Taliban. It was okay, he said. “It’s a drama about a family.” Later he put on a British Muslim channel called Islam and moved on to an Iranian American pop-music satellite channel. A portly singer with stubble and long hair imitated ’80s rock in Farsi. The next video showed an Iranian pop singer dressed up in leather like Davy Crockett and wearing brand-name tank tops. It was terrible stuff, but Shafiq told me he had no problem with these things. Qadim and Shafiq’s brother chatted. Shafiq read him something, and it became clear that Qadim was illiterate.
I finally managed to fall asleep, but at 11 p.m. there was shouting outside, and Kamal told me to wake up. “The Taliban are here for us,” he said, and my heart started racing again. Three young men carrying AK-47s with scarves and blankets draped around their heads and shoulders walked in. My knees felt weak as I stood up to greet them. “They’re a different group,” Shafiq’s
brother said. They were not here for us at all. They hadn’t even heard of us but were merely a night patrol passing by. One of them sat on the floor with his barrel pointing at Shafiq. I eyed him nervously as he played with the trigger absentmindedly until Shafiq’s brother told him that his safety was off and it was dangerous. They left and came back again, this time leaving with Shafiq.
In the morning, I woke up to the sound of military planes overhead. I stepped out of the qala and saw a convoy of American armored vehicles a mile away. I fought the strong urge to walk to them and be rescued, knowing they might shoot me themselves and that it would doom everybody who had helped me. I waited impatiently for the phone network to go back up. One of my contacts in Kabul told me that he had spoken to senior Taliban people everywhere and had told Dr. Khalil not to harm us, but Dr. Khalil insisted we were spies. My contact thought he was just trying to assert his independence and hoped to exchange us for a large ransom. Mullah Nasir, a one-armed Kandahari who served as Taliban governor for Ghazni, was also helping us. Zaibullah Mujahed, the Taliban spokesman, had promised to call Dr. Khalil as well. I tried to persuade Shafiq to drive us to Ghazni’s capital, but he said that if he didn’t return us to Dr. Khalil, then Khalil would arrest him.
Shafiq’s nephew had been arrested the night before after a Taliban patrol spotted him walking with a girl. Shafiq left us to go release him. In the meantime I spoke to a contact in Kabul, who told me that we had gotten caught in a rivalry between Mullah Abdillah and Shafiq, on one side, and Dr. Khalil, on the other. Mullah Abdillah and his men had killed nearly a dozen Pakistanis and Arabs for trying to burn down a girls’ school, but the foreigners were commanded by Dr. Khalil, so bad blood lingered. My contact told me he had been told by senior Taliban that we would be released in the afternoon but that once we were on the road we should take the batteries out of our phones. Shafiq had to deal with more headaches when other Talibs called to complain that they had heard music coming from his house when they called him the night before. Exasperated, Shafiq protested that it was only Al Jazeera.