Crossing the Taleban Line

Hyderabad is only 80 kilometers north of Helmand’s capital, Lashkar Gah, but it takes you four days to get there.



Those 80 kilometres are neatly divided between followers of President Hamed Karzai and supporters of Mullah Omar. In other words, the first 40 kilometers are controlled by the government, and the last 40 belong to the Taleban.



I was born in Kajaki, a district just to the northeast of Hyderabad, so I should have felt at home there.



But no man entering a country illegally could have been more afraid than I was when I approached the Taleban “border”.



I had tried to plan ahead, and had made contact with local Taleban commanders. I followed their instructions, but I was still nervous and had no idea how I would be treated.



I also hedged my bets – after setting out for Hyderabad, I called the Helmand police chief and told him of my travel plans.



He was very angry, and began shouting at me.



“What can I do for you now? You didn’t call me until after you went into the area. All I can do now is pray that God will bring you back alive.”



That did not make me feel much better.



Shortly after we arrived in Hyderabad, our car was surrounded by a group of Taleban. They pointed their guns at us and shouted, “Give us as much money as you can.”



I turned out my pockets - you see, I have a real love for life. After taking some money, they turned their guns away and let us go.



When we got to our destination, Hyderabad bazaar, we were again surrounded by armed Taleban. I gave them my press card, thinking that since it was written in English, they would not understand. But it seems that the Taleban are also linguists, and they understood very well.



Afterwards, I relaxed a little, and began talking to local people.



They were not happy to see us. Among them were people whose family members had been killed in a recent air strike, and the way they were looking at us, you would think that it was we who killed them.



“What are you doing here?” said one of them. “First you kill us, then you come to take our pictures.”



I tried to tell him that no, I was here to listen to them; to make sure that their voices were heard.



Finally, some residents agreed to talk to me.



One man, Mohammad Gul told me how five members of his family had been killed in the bombing.



“The troops must have been able to see us. It’s in the desert, and there isn’t a single tree. We entered a house and tried to hide, but the jets came and began bombing us,” he said. “How is it that the foreigners say they can aim at one specific person, but here they can’t tell whether they are killing a woman or a child?”



Like many in the area, Mohammad Gul was angry and bitter at the international forces deployed in Helmand province.



“The foreign troops don’t kill the Taleban, they only kill us,” he said. “They don’t build roads or do anything useful. They just ruin us. Some people here have lost their entire families. They say they will go off and become suicide bombers. They are tired of living .”



Mohammad Gul was not comforted by the prospect of receiving compensation for his loss - the idea made him furious.



“The government gives us 100,000 Afghani [2,000 US dollars] for each person killed in the bombings,” he said. “I want to say to the president, ‘What am I supposed to do with this money?’ My family is dead, buried in the ground. I will give the government two million afghani [40,000 dollars] if it gives me the head of one of its officials. For Karzai’s head, I would pay 100 million afghani.”



He challenged the Afghan president, “Karzai can invite all of us to go to see him and he can butcher us with a knife, rather than kill us with bombs.”



“We sent tribal elders to the foreign troops, asking for permission to bury our dead,” he said. “They told us to wait until after they’d gone. I myself buried 14 people in one grave. I couldn’t do it the proper way – we were all on the run, trying to find a place of safety.”



After Mohammad Gul had finished, I took a walk around the area – after first obtaining permission from the Taleban. It looked to like a place that had been abandoned hundreds of years ago; the houses were all destroyed.



I did see one house that looked intact. It was not until I got closer that I saw the hole in the wall. When I stepped inside, I saw that everything had been destroyed. There were clothes, dishes and children’s books all mixed up in the rubble.



The owner, Fatih Mohammad, told me how four members of his family were killed in an air strike.



“We were having dinner when the jets came,” he said. “I stood next to a wall, and God kept me alive. But when I saw my children and wife dead, I was sorry I hadn’t been killed, too. I asked God, “If You did not want me to die, why did You make me see this?”



Fatih Mohammad asked, “Who will help me bury my dead?”



Many people in the area seemed lost, and were shaking as if their dead were still lying in front of them.



I saw a tractor sitting just one kilometer outside the village, pitted with holes and with blood mixed with fuel staining the ground around it.



Villagers say the tractor was hit while it was taking 35 civilians away from the bombing.



“There were old men, women and children who wanted to seek refuge with the foreign troops,” said local resident Habibullah. “The men were trying to collect the dead from houses that had been bombed, but someone called to us, ‘Rahmatullah’s children are on fire in the tractor’. I rushed over there, and saw that everyone was burning. We could do nothing except pour water on them.



“When the flames were extinguished, we saw that they were all dead. Some were headless, others had lost arms or legs. I saw one child, the bones of his hand were still burning. That was the most shocking thing for me. There were children aged from three months old to ten years old.”



“We collected the dead, their flesh and body parts, and wrapped it all in patus,” said Habibullah, referring to the long scarves worn by Pashtuns. “We buried them all in one grave, because we could not identify individuals.”



He paused, his face creased with sorrow and rage.



“This is the work of Hamed Karzai,”he said. “If he cannot put an end to the killing, he must resign. These jets do not recognise women and children. When there is a bombing like the one here, the foreign troops announce that 60 Taleban have been killed. But I want to tell them that there was not even one Taleb among the dead.”



Locals said the tractor was hit as a deliberate reprisal for a Taleban attack which destroyed foreign armoured vehicles some two kilometers away.



The Taleban took me to the scene of a battle with foreign troops. There were some armoured vehicles, which they said they blew up with improvised explosive devices.



They also showed me about 15 fuel tankers that had been used to supply the international forces. The Taleban say they siphoned off the fuel and sold it before torching the tanker trucks.



I could not visit many other places, as the whole area was mined. So I took my leave of the Taleban and left for home. I did not feel safe until I reached the government-controlled stretch of road.



When I finally reached home, I felt that I had been given a new lease of life.



Aziz Ahmad Shafe is a journalist based in Helmand.