Aftermath

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 should 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.