That’s how it rolls on ‘Taliban Street’
So there we were, slithering all over the road in our 4×4 which will only do about 1×1 and it’s a blizzard. Real stuff, Kabuli style, not the genteel British “light dusting”. And the thing is, we’re in the “Taliban Street” district of town, as the locals nonchalantly call it.
This really isn’t the place to crash the jeep. We don’t. But then again, we don’t really know where we are. We ask our translator if we can get out and film, since this is the Taliban district and, well, nobody’s got a better idea.
Nader says quietly: “No man. I think it’s better we don’t film. Not outside here man. You do it through the window.” Nader learned his brilliant English in the US (man) and when he says you don’t film, you don’t film.
You see, we are in fact in the middle of a kind of political nature reserve. An area set aside, at government expense, to house various very senior Taliban who’ve mostly been released here from some of the world’s nastier prisons. They can’t be fully released into the wild. Most have to stay in Kabul.
Read more: Nato report – an indictment of western policy in Afghanistan?
And why? Because they’re currently far more useful to the Afghan Intelligence Service and President Hamid Karzai, talking to their mates and mullahs down south and in Pakistan, than inside.
Particularly right now when President Karzai is keen (desperate?) to talk to “my Taliban brothers”, as he calls them.
If you come down to “Taliban Street” then, you might just get lucky. They’re hard to spot, though you could try catching them on Fridays coming or going to prayers.
We are sort of heading to Abdul Salam Zaeef’s gaff. He may or not give an interview. Now he’s out of Guantanamo he’s got a riveting autobiography to flog so he’s kind of out and about. But the ‘peace talks’ have gone a little sensitive and, last he told us, he was not for interview. But we’ve come to try that old “Salaam Abdul, we were just passing by and wondered if…I’m loving the book by the way” routine…
Then that whole plan is suddenly off.
‘I make to shake hands with the wrong bloke’
Nader suddenly hisses to hide the camera. He’s spotted a Taliban Big Beast, rarely seen, much less heard from. But there he is in the driving snow, white turban and long cloak over shalwar-kameez and mobile glued to one ear, padding along the white road, clearly close to home.
Waiting for the call to end we rush out. I make to shake hands with the wrong bloke – he’s the next-door neighbour. Stuart films some other guy who turns out to be the road-cleaner or something. And Nader, (mercifully) approaches former senior Taliban commander of the Jaish al-Muslimeen militia no less, Mohammad Akbar Agha.
Being an Afghan, he is not capable of being fazed as we slither around accosting all the wrong people in appalling Dari. He doesn’t break stride.
I think he feels sorry for us.
Anyhow, we shake hands. He motions us towards his front door. Well it’s not his front door, it’s the Afghan government’s front door as they fork out the rent at 1,000 dollars a month.
Then we shake hands again because we didn’t get it on camera first time around.
Mr Agha was, until recently, looking at 16 years for kidnapping three UN officials from the streets of this very city. But that was then and this is now. President Karzai has pardoned him. Needs him to help bring in the Taliban to talk. So that’s why he’s here in ‘Taliban Street’ and that’s why we are here to hear his story.
Brilliantly planned, thought-out and executed, obviously.
Out comes the chai and those little white raspberry-shaped sweets you get all over the country and he’s off into his story. Is this an interview? Nobody really knows. Stuart starts filming. No problem. Doesn’t pause for a comma.
He rolls on – talks (not really)…recognising the current government here (no)…getting the rest of his lads out of Guantanamo (yes)…getting US and UK out of his country (oh yes). By now the lapel mic’s on and we can even hear him properly.
And so will you. Because that’s how it rolls these days, if you hang around long enough in “Taliban Street”.
You can follow Alex Thomson on Twitter @alextomo
Related posts:
- Expect more posturing over Afghanistan
- Afghanistan 2012: the scramble to end an unwinnable war
- Nato report – an indictment of western policy in Afghanistan?
- The extremes of an Afghan winter
There are 2 comments on this post
We made a big mistake in Afghanistan, and it was the same one we made in Iraq. We stayed.
Punitive expeditions are fine. The Taliban, hand in hand with Al Qaeda perpetrated a murderous attack on the USA. There was bound to be a price to pay, and it was bound to expensive.
But removing the Taliban from power and killing a lot of Talibs should have been enough. The USA in it’s rather naive way, decided to stay and build a new nation. In one of the most primitive countries in the World.
It was obviously going to fail – and it has.
The motive for invading Iraq were far more opaque, but whatever the motives the error – and the failure, was almost identical.
In the West we have the power to remove regimes we do not like. It an be done relatively easily and relatively cheaply in lives and treasure.
What we cannot do is create a civilised liberal democracy in a backward country. We should stick to what we are good at. Remove regimes that annoy us, and leave.
Chaos might ensue. But would chaos be worse than the constant war staying creates?
The old villains might return. But it would cheaper by far to pay another visit and remove them again, than to fight a never ending war of attrition. And if every new tyrant regime was removed and liquidated,well, even primitive people learn.
If the US doesn’t want an Empire, it needs to find a new model for world leadership, and Afghanistan and Iraq are not it.
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Afghans will have to see that their way is coming to an end. Talibs cannot continue to lock up their women from education, and Polygmy. Heaven is on Earth its our goal and duty to make them see the light, it is not on some distant star/meteor as in the Hadj Rock with Mohammeds’ hashish, or assasins. As for what they think their bullying suppose on earth is, its definately not gentility!
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