help from Saudi individuals, as well as Pakistanis, but he did not know of any state assistance. Iran did not help them, he said. “Whoever is fighting with America,” he said, “he is my brother.” Shafiq had a friend called Mullah Agha Jan, who was killed while fighting in Baghdad. They had benefited from the Iraq experience when remote- controlled bomb techniques were imported to Afghanistan. Shafiq had heard of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who had run a training camp in western Afghanistan before leading Al Qaeda in Iraq. “He is a big mujahid,” Shafiq said, “famous in Afghanistan.” Shafiq had met Osama bin Laden twice: once before the Taliban took over and once during its reign. He had been impressed by bin Laden’s knowledge of Pashtu. (He must have had a better book than I did.) Shafiq had met Mullah Omar as well. He thought both Mullah Omar and bin Laden were very friendly. Arab, Pakistani, and Uzbek fighters had come through the Andar district, Shafiq said, mostly as suicide bombers but also as fighters. Some Afghans from Kandahar had also come to fight in Andar. The Kandaharis were the best fighters he had seen; they were not afraid. The Russians had fought fiercely, like dogs. He did not have a high opinion of his American foes. “Pakistan and Iran are not friends of Afghanistan,” Shafiq said. “They want to take Afghanistan, they don’t want peace.” In this he was representative of most Afghan Taliban, who despite their extremely conservative views were fundamentally nationalists. Like most Afghans, he was against suicide bombings as well. “Suicide attacks are not good because they kill Muslims,” he said.
I asked Shafiq what he thought of a recent attack that had killed the women and driver working for International Rescue Committee in Logar. It was not good to kill women, he said, even infidel women. The Taliban didn’t know it was women, he said. The windows were tinted, and they couldn’t see the passengers. On the other hand, UN staff were infidels. Human rights were American, so they were bad. The Koran gave all the rights. “People spent seven years in Guantanamo,” he said. “Where are the human rights?” Shafiq told me he had recently purchased weapons in Kabul, where a man gave him two PKMs and an RPG for free. Shafiq bought two jeeps from the Afghan police, who later told the Interior Ministry that the vehicles were lost in an attack. “Some police work with us,” he said. Shafiq told me that Taliban representatives visited different villages in the area to teach people about the Taliban and recruit on their behalf.
It was late, and the men washed themselves with a bucket of water for the final prayer of the day. We all lay down on the mattresses where we had been sitting and took the pillows that had been against the wall. Shafiq’s older brother brought a thick flannel blanket and covered me. In the morning they took turns washing themselves again for the first prayer of the day. Shafiq’s older brother brought tea and some dry bread for breakfast. I asked him if he was also with the Taliban. He was just a farmer, he said, pantomiming digging and pointing to the grapes. Shafiq had an eighteen-year-old brother at Ghazni University who was also a Taliban fighter. Another younger brother was in a local school. They owned a generator, which was their only source of occasional electricity, but fuel was expensive at five liters for four hundred Afghans, about eight dollars. I asked about a bathroom. Kamal told me there wasn’t any, and instructed me to go outside in the yard.
Shafiq and Kamal went to the bazaar, leaving me with the young Taliban fighter Muhamad, but they said I could walk in the garden as I waited. It was untended and wild. Sunflowers towered over the large mud wall compound, bushes and dry trees grew in rows. There was a deep pit for a well and a crude pump to irrigate the field and draw water for personal use. As we sat waiting in the guest room Mullah Yusuf showed up with a companion called Qadim, who was missing his front teeth. Shafiq carried his AK-47, and the larger Qadim carried a heavier PKM. Mullah Yusuf played with a pair of binoculars he found on the floor. Yusuf wore a vest with pockets for magazines of ammunition, and he had several grenades stuffed in as well. Shafiq returned and spoke on the phone with a fellow Talib fighter from Meidan Shah in Wardak. They had conducted a successful attack, capturing four trucks and drivers.
We got back into the Corolla, loading the PKM, RPG launcher, and four rockets into the trunk. Shafiq and his PKM were in the front passenger seat. Yusuf drove, with his AK-47 beside him. I hoped we wouldn’t hit too many bumps. Qadim rode his Honda motorcycle alongside us, an AK-47 strapped to his shoulder, a scarf around his face to protect from the sand and dust. As we drove I finally got to see the environment. It was flat and starkly arid. Everything was the color of sand, including the occasional man-made structure, the mud bleached by the sun. Yusuf pointed to a police checkpoint in the distance. The police knew him but did nothing, he said. “Every night I go on patrol and they don’t fight me,” he said. “They don’t have guns, and they are afraid.” I asked Shafiq and Yusuf what services or aid the Taliban provided people in Ghazni. They complained that they had no money to help.
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.
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
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
