Despite our falling out, I didn’t relish Sabit’s humiliation. It implied that Afghanistan was dangerously fragile—not because the Taliban was so strong but because the government was so weak. Karzai just kept bending. When anyone challenged him, he folded. And his handling of various crises indicated that he cared more about the foreigners than the Afghans, which made him even more unpopular.
One such crisis involved Ajmal Naqshbandi, the poet of a translator who had helped me when Farouq got married. He was the Afghan everyone talked about, the example of the lack of justice, of the compromises Karzai made. Since I had worked with him three years earlier, he had grown as a journalist, dangerously so. Ajmal had repeatedly traveled to risky parts of the east, developing sources with insurgents there, and he was crazy enough to meet them face-to-face. I saw Ajmal occasionally when he worked with friends or waved from a passing car. Sometimes we ate at the pizza restaurant and guesthouse run by his family.
But that March, Ajmal had taken an Italian journalist to meet the Taliban in Helmand Province. The two men were immediately kidnapped; their Afghan driver’s throat was slashed in front of them. The Taliban made their ransom demands. After two weeks, in exchange for five high-level Taliban prisoners and possibly money, the Italian journalist was released. Ajmal was also supposed to be freed—but the Taliban kept him, maybe to make the Karzai government look bad. Three weeks later, after several dramatic appeals by Ajmal, his throat was slit.
At the time I was in Pakistan. As soon as I could get to Afghanistan, Farouq, a few Afghan journalists, and I went to visit Ajmal’s family. His new wife, now a widow, was about to give birth. His mother had heart problems. His father could barely talk. His brother looked just like him. The entire family seemed colorless, drained of all emotion. We sat against cushions on the wall and paid our respects before walking out to Ajmal’s grave, near his family’s home. I stood there, looking at the colorful flags poking out of the dirt, surrounded by these Afghan journalists, men I knew would give their lives for me without even thinking.
And that was it. Two fixers—Sami and Tahir—would still meet the Taliban, would still drive anywhere. But I made a decision. From then on, I had no interest in taking Farouq to Kandahar or Khost. I had no interest in trying to meet the Taliban in person, except in prison.
“If we were kidnapped, you know I would never leave you,” I told Farouq as we walked back to our car.
“I know, Kim.”
“What am I even talking about? I’m never going to make you meet the Taliban. I’m a crap journalist.”
He laughed. Some journalists felt that they could only tell the story of Afghanistan if they met the insurgents, if they spent time with them, and maybe they were right. But I wasn’t that reporter, maybe because I was more of a chicken. The price tag on foreigners had also just jumped dramatically. If an Italian could be traded for five Taliban prisoners, including a top commander’s brother, what would the next foreign victim go for? And who would the ransom money be used to kill? No story was worth it. We talked to the Taliban over the phone, by e-mail, or, with one savvy spokesman, instant chat. For me, that was enough. I didn’t want to risk either of our lives for this war, which at this point seemed doomed.
Adding to my doubts about the present course was the fact that NATO seemed tone-deaf to criticism, especially to any complaints about civilian casualties. All the different countries seemed to have different myopic goals. For Canadians, the war was simply in Kandahar; for the British, the war was Helmand; for the Dutch, Uruzgan. People joked that the three provinces should be renamed Canadahar, Helmandshire, and Uruzdam. Rather than coordinating with central command, each country seemed to do what it pleased. This was obviously dangerous. A Canadian success, if not coordinated across provincial lines, could mean danger for either the Dutch or the Brits. The safety of the troops seemed to be paramount—not the mission. (Maybe because the mission was unclear.) In Helmand, the British troops even briefly broadcast a radio advertisement, telling Afghans that neither foreign troops nor the Afghan army were eradicating poppies. The cynical takeaway: If you want to attack anyone for cutting down your poppies, attack the Afghan police. Not us.
When I tried to talk to a NATO official about these issues, he dismissed me and told me that the radio ad wasn’t a story. Weeks later at L’Atmosphère, I told the same official about a civilian casualty allegation involving a young Hazara salt-factory worker shot in his side after NATO troops responded to a suicide attack in Kabul. Neighbors and Afghan police said overzealous NATO forces shot the Hazara man and others—something that had happened in the past after similar attacks. The Hazara man even had an X-ray showing the bullet, which he couldn’t afford to remove.
“My idea is this,” I told the NATO man, leaning on the bar. “You take the guy and give him the surgery. Then you compare the bullet with bullets used by NATO. You’d know either way. And you’d get all this goodwill, regardless of what you find out, because you took out the bullet.”
He just looked at me.
“You know, I used to think you were smart,” he said. “But you’re really just naïve.”
Clearly, for a while at least, I had to put Afghanistan on hold. As a journalist, I shouldn’t have been offering suggestions to NATO. I shouldn’t have been taking any of this so personally. I shouldn’t have been so angry at NATO, or at that Italian journalist, who pumped his arms in the air when he flew back to Rome, while his fixer, Ajmal, sat with the Taliban, waiting to die.
Pakistan beckoned. I knew one thing about the other side of the border: I would never, ever fall in love with that country. There, I could definitely be impartial.
PART II
WHACK-A-STAN
CHAPTER 13
UNDER PRESSURE
Thousands of people blocked the road, swallowing the SUV in front of us. They climbed on the roof, pelted rose petals at the windshield, and tried to shake or kiss the hand of the man in sunglasses sitting calmly in the passenger seat. Some touched the car reverently, like a shrine. I knew I couldn’t just watch this from behind a car window. I had to get out and feel the love.
Wearing a black headscarf and a long red Pakistani top over jeans, I waded through the crowd to the vehicle carrying the most popular man in Pakistan. Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry was an unlikely hero, with a tendency to mumble, a prickly ego, and a lazy eye. President Pervez Musharraf, the mustachioed military ruler known for his swashbuckling promises to round up the country’s miscreants, had recently suspended Chaudhry as the country’s chief justice, largely because Musharraf feared that Chaudhry could block his impending attempt to be reelected president while remaining army chief. But Chaudhry had refused to go away quietly, becoming the first top official in Pakistan to object when Musharraf demanded a resignation. Now Chaudhry was a celebrity, the focal point for the fact that most Pakistanis wanted to throttle Musharraf and permanently end military rule. Anywhere Chaudhry set foot in the spring of 2007 quickly turned into a cross between a political rally and a concert.