SIkander

by M. Salahuddin Khan

  The sound of keys jangling, a lock unlocking and the door swinging open was followed by the voices continuing into the room. Sikander pretended to be asleep and then to stir as if the noise of the two men’s arrival had been the cause of his awakening. He looked at them and saw that one of them was balding and probably in his forties. He wore a dark brown qamees and shalwar. He had some instrument or piece of plastic in the upper breast pocket of his qamees and in his hand was a translucent plastic bag containing what looked to Sikander like bananas and some other fruit. The other man was much younger, in his twenties, and was sporting a Kalashnikov with a bandolier around his body. He wore a cream-colored pakol similar to Sikander’s own.

  “Who are you? Where am I?” Sikander asked instinctively in Pashto. His throat was parched and he was weak with hunger.

  “Ah! Finally you awaken. We were hoping you’d be conscious by now,” remarked the older man, switching to Pashto and in an affable tone. He seemed pleased, which was probably a good sign, thought Sikander. “Huh! You’re lucky,” he continued. “You were hit by a sniper. The bullet went through your back and missed almost everything! Just a little part of your left lung was impacted. I had to plug it for a while to prevent the lung from collapsing, but it’s going to heal. You still need to rest but you’re young and strong so it shouldn’t take many days, perhaps a week, to be on your feet.” The man poured water from a nearby bottle into a glass by the side of Sikander’s bed then continued. “I’m Dr. Atiq Mohammed, and this is Rashid Ehsan. You’re in Qunduz. Here, let me help you drink this.”

  The doctor sat by the bedside and helped Sikander to slake his thirst. “You may not know this, but Qunduz is under siege by the Northern Alliance. We found you on the street, bleeding but alive. We had driven the Taliban further back into the town where several thousand are holed up. We were negotiating their surrender,” he said, “but the message doesn’t always reach everyone all the time. The Taliban who shot you must have thought you were one of us. We thought the same thing initially.”

  Rashid Ehsan exchanged a glance with the doctor then looked back at Sikander. He pulled a piece of paper from his upper breast pocket. It seemed vaguely familiar to Sikander.

  “We uh, found this on you,” said Rashid. Sikander could see it was Junaid’s letter to gain him re-entry to the airport. His eyes met Rashid’s and then the doctor’s, not knowing what to expect from the men who were helping him back to health.

  “Yes, I was expecting to join my family heading back to Pakistan,” remarked Sikander.

  “We think it means you must be Pakistani ISI or at least an associate and that you were attempting to get out of the country with your Taliban friends,” said Rashid. Inexplicably, Rashid had a smile on his face, suggesting little concern or even indignation toward Sikander, which even in his condition Sikander found puzzling.

  “Huh! Taliban friends!” Sikander exclaimed with whatever disgust his injury allowed him, while he turned his head away from the two men.

  “You being Pakistani, and not having left on the airlift, means you’re the…uh…the subject of this…” said Rashid cryptically enough to regain Sikander’s attention. Rashid held up another piece of paper. It was a leaflet of some sort, written in Pashto, with a message suggesting a sizeable reward for turning in non-Afghan Taliban or al-Qaeda fighters.

  Sikander read the flyer and cast his eyes back toward Rashid and then Dr. Atiq. “What does this have to do with me?”

  “The Americans are looking for Pakistanis, Arabs, Chechens, and others who have been over here helping the Taliban and al-Qaeda. If you’re Pakistani and didn’t leave on any of those flights, you’ll be considered one of these people. That means you’re worth…um…almost five thousand dollars to us, especially if we can deliver you alive to the Americans when we meet up with them.”

  “But I’m not a Taliban!” protested Sikander, feeling his strength sapping away. He was too weak to mount an argument much less a fight about his status.

  “Look, Sikander Khan,” said Rashid as he re-examined Junaid’s letter naming Sikander, “that kind of money is just too much to ignore. If you’re innocent according to the Americans, then I’ve no doubt they’ll let you go. If not then, well, then you’ll have to deal with consequences. To us you’re worth five thousand dollars regardless. But first we need to get you back to health and wait out the siege, so you need to rest.” Rashid added.

  Sikander stared at Rashid and then back toward Dr. Atiq. A bounty hunter doctor was something he couldn’t come to terms with. Yet here was one staring back at him and seeing in his return to health a pecuniary benefit quite different from medical fees. Sikander was consumed by revulsion.

  “You’re weak and you must be very hungry. We’ve brought some fruit. It’ll be best if you just take a little of it now,” Atiq said, taking some bananas from the bag. They were the miniature variety, and he peeled a couple of them and put them by the side of Sikander’s bed, next to the glass of water. He set the bag with the remaining fruit on the table before leaving the room with his partner, locking the door behind them.

  Atiq and Rashid made two visits each day, bringing food and drink and tending to Sikander’s wounds and bodily needs. Progressing faster than Atiq had expected, after only a few days, and with the continued attention of his captors, Sikander was able to sit upright on the bed. It was still a challenge to stand without support, but when he was finally able, he slowly maneuvered himself to the wall where the open window was located, and peered out. To his dismay, he could see that he was four stories above the street. Escape through the window was out of the question.

  In Qunduz city, negotiations were underway between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. Having suffered hundreds of losses through desertion or defection, the Taliban were in a corner. They offered to give themselves up in exchange for safe passage back to their homes and safe escort out of Afghanistan for the non-Afghan combatants. By November 22, surrender negotiations were complete and a force of some five thousand Northern Alliance troops made its way to Qunduz from Mazar-e-Sharif to take the surrendering force into custody. This would leave the Taliban holding just one major city in Afghanistan. Qandahar.

  On Saturday, November 24, the Taliban surrendered en masse in Qunduz and fighting in the city was over. By now, Sikander was up on his feet and able to walk with minor assistance. His wounds had not completely healed but the process was well underway.

  All that day, Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters were being herded, bound and immobilized, into groups out on the streets in different parts of the city. Altogether, between three and four thousand men had surrendered mostly without a fight, expecting to be sent home eventually.

  Sikander’s sense of foreboding was hard to suppress. He decided to focus on thoughts of escape but having confirmed his room was locked from the outside and with him in no shape to break down the door, no avenue of escape seemed to present itself. Slowly, he began to rationalize his situation. In a curious way, he didn’t seem to mind being a captive. Perhaps it was the courteous, though ill-motivated, treatment he was receiving or perhaps it was his own sense of needing to rest before attempting anything risky.

  As the day drew to a close, it was clear that several new prisoners had arrived on the street, while several had already been taken away. That evening when the two men brought dinner up to Sikander, Atiq decided it was time to prepare him mentally for his impending departure.

  “You’ve probably seen outside that they’ve started the transportation of prisoners. It will continue over the next few days,” explained Atiq.

  “We’ll delay your transfer until the last day, considering your injury,” added Rashid, hoping to keep Sikander calm. Sikander understood that argument was futile but he had one last idea.

  “Do you know who I am?” he asked.

  Rashid frowned with curiosity. “You’re a pro-Taliban Pakistani with the ISI,” he replied.

  “No! That’s not correct. I’m Sikander Khan, a Pakistani
, it’s true, but I’m a successful businessman based in Peshawar. I married an Afghan woman many years ago. I was a mujahid with your people against the Russians more than ten years ago. I came back to retrieve my wife’s family and bring them to Pakistan. We came to Qunduz for the airlift. I just entered the city to dispose of some mules and obtain food when I was shot…so…so you see? I’m not the kind of person the Americans would be interested in. Besides, if you let me out of here and help me back to Pakistan, I could give you twenty thousand dollars.” Sikander paused.

  Atiq and Rashid looked intently at Sikander and then at each other before Atiq responded, “Mr. Sikander Khan, you might well be who you say you are, but by your own admission you’re a Pakistani. The rest doesn’t matter. The Americans are looking for foreigners and they will pay. We can’t take a chance on your story. Maybe the Americans will understand and believe you and let you get home. We just want to be paid.”

  Sikander didn’t have the energy to persist. It was a long shot and whatever moral deficits they might have had, these men weren’t stupid. Sikander’s thoughts turned once more to his seemingly inevitable future. Though he had never been there, he had a sense of familiarity with America and Americans. He could handle himself in English, and if he could survive long enough to be handed over to them, then perhaps his two captors were right and the Americans would let him go once they understood his story. He would just have to be patient. He completed his isha prayer and went to sleep. The following day was a virtual repeat of the previous one.

  At a vast and ancient Persian fortress called Qala-i-Jangi, just outside Mazar-e-Sharif, November 25 was to be far from a repeat of anything, even by the standards of the latest conflict.

  Being a fortress, Qala-i-Jangi was an ideal choice to house the Northern Alliance’s newly arrived prisoners. On the previous day, several hundred Arabs and Pakistanis had surrendered to Abdul Rashid Dostum’s troops under the assumption that they would be questioned and repatriated. Instead, they were imprisoned and made ready for questioning by American interrogators.

  The prisoners had evidently not been searched and had concealed weapons with them. They had even used them to kill two of Dostum’s officers. Even so, no security protocol was in place. On this day, they and other prisoners newly arrived from Qunduz were questioned about how and why they joined the Taliban and why they were there. At that moment, several of the prisoners jumped their questioner, CIA Special Activities Division Officer, Captain John Michael Spann. He fought them off first with an AK-47, and after emptying it, with his pistol until it, too, was empty. As the prisoners kept on coming, he fought hand-to-hand until they mobbed him, scratching and gnawing at him until he died. His partner, Dave Tyson, also emptied his AK-47 on the assailants. Unsure of the extent of the prisoners’ armament, the Northern Alliance fighters, Tyson, and some news crews who had been there to film the prisoners took refuge in the northern part of the fort.

  In Johnny “Mike” Spann, America’s global war on terror suffered its first combat casualty, and the CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia, had yet another star—its 79th—carved into the wall of fallen heroes and painted the customary black. It would later lighten with age and match the gray of its neighbors.

  Qala-i-Jangi had been well known to the Taliban and they made for the weapons armory at its southern end, which enabled them to take control of the entire southern half of the massive nineteenth century fort. In the northern part of the fort, Tyson managed to use the TV news crew’s satellite phone to contact the U.S. embassy in Uzbekistan asking for reinforcements. American air strikes were called in over the southern half of Qala-i-Jangi. In addition, a Soviet era T-55 tank was moved into the fortress compound and fired on the southern half. Several bombs were dropped on the armory but the prisoners were doggedly persistent.

  The following day, the battle of Qala-i-Jangi raged on. Northern Alliance soldiers directed mortar fire at the prisoners and again called in close air support. By nightfall, so-called “smart bombs” were dropped, but in confusion over coordinates, one close air support team directed bombing onto its own coordinates by mistake, killing and injuring several Northern Alliance fighters as well as injuring four British Special Forces personnel. By late that night, two AC130 Specter gunships circled overhead, firing into the armory and setting off several explosions. Fires raged into the night.

  On the morning of November 26, Rashid and Atiq returned for Sikander and woke him. He had gone to sleep after performing fajr. With his recovery progressing well, Sikander’s expectation of being turned over to the Americans had grown more palatable. He would reason with them; convince them of his true situation and purpose. At least he could expect humane treatment, in stark contrast to what he recalled from the many stories Abdul Latif had told him about the civil war following the Soviets’ departure. Neither the Taliban nor the Northern Alliance had demonstrated meaningful codes of conduct for treatment of prisoners during that conflict, and unless there was bargaining value, surrender would as likely as not be followed by massacre. Now, with the return of his captors, the time had come for him to discover precisely what treatment he would be receiving and at whose hands.

  While Rashid held the gun on Sikander, Atiq tied his hands behind his back with a scrap of cloth. They marched him carefully down three flights of stairs and onto the street. As he came out, similarly bound Taliban prisoners were still being brought into the street and made to sit cross-legged on the ground to await transportation. Those of them who were not Afghan were to be transported separately as “high value” captives not to be mixed up with the others.

  Rashid held guard over Sikander while Atiq talked with a Northern Alliance fighter who seemed to be in charge of transporting the prisoners. After an exchange in Dari bearing the unmistakable signs of haggling, Atiq was handed some money by the man. Sikander was clearly being sold, and although they would be paid less than the full five thousand dollars, Atiq and Rashid would be rid of him and free to go about their own business, while the buyer would collect the full amount on turning Sikander over to the Americans.

  With the transaction complete, the man approached Sikander, his boots kicking up dust in their wake. Barking something unintelligible, he grabbed Sikander’s arm and pulled him toward a gathering of what were plainly non-Afghan prisoners, including several from Pakistan. Sikander never saw Rashid and Atiq again. Strange men, who had treated him well to get him to health, only to sell him.

  The Northern Alliance leaders in Qunduz had arranged for shipping containers to be used to transport prisoners to the jail at Qala-i-Jangi fort. Over a dozen containers were lined up alongside each other. Sikander saw the Taliban prisoners being herded into each one, and only when they were crammed full were the doors closed and sealed. There must have been at least two hundred men in each of the long containers, Sikander guessed. Although the negotiated commitment not to shoot the Taliban was being honored, packing them into containers in that manner was likely to be deadly to many of them given a long enough trip. Sikander stared at them, imagining such a journey, when suddenly the man who had paid for him, having brought along several other helpers, pushed him and about four-dozen other prisoners harshly toward a much smaller container.

  The container doors were closed and the space became immediately dark with the exception of thirteen large caliber bullet holes in the metal walls glowing white with daylight. After a few moments, Sikander could make out the others’ faces from just that small amount of light. Dark and silent, they awaited their fate. Following some metal-on-metal banging and clanging sounds, the men inside groaned as the container lurched and swayed like some evil fairground ride, until it came to rest. They could hear it being secured. A moment later, with a jolt, the truck began moving.

  Sikander was leaving Qunduz.

  The truck proceeded out from the south side of the city back to Baghlan and Pul-i-Khumri. Every bump in the road seared Sikander’s wounds. But soon, his attention shifted to a more ominous issue. The air in
the container became stifling. The men inside were burning oxygen faster than the thirteen tiny holes could replenish it and before long a sense of panic began brewing. Sikander asked aloud if anyone spoke Urdu, Pashto, or English. Almost everyone was able to answer positively. Sikander proposed that each man place his mouth over a hole for five minutes in turn. That would allow each person access with about twenty minutes between turns. Meanwhile, those awaiting a turn were asked to consume the least possible oxygen by sitting perfectly still, not panicking, and breathing slowly. Some of the Pashto speakers could also speak Arabic and communicated the same information to their “Arabic-only” companions.

  The truck ride was an unrelenting black hell. Often vomiting on each other in the darkness, the occupants of the container had to endure hours of tossing and swaying, especially while the truck was moving through canyon country. Sikander couldn’t help wondering how the other, more crowded container travelers might have fared.

  That night, as the truck rolled into the area of Qala-i-Jangi, those of the men in the container who were still conscious could hear sounds of gunfire, heavy weapons, and bombing. From the bright flashes lighting up each bullet hole on one side of the container, they could only imagine what might be going on. But the reality of the raging battle was beyond any imagining. Unlike the prisoners, the truck driver could see everything. Angry tracer rounds rained down from the circling AC130 gunships while the din of explosions came from behind the fort’s twenty-meter high walls. Every so often, bright flashes, silhouetting the fort’s walls to all outsiders, punctuated the night’s blackness.