Deep in Taleban Country

The image I cannot erase is a burqa in the ashes of a bombed-out house. When I close my eyes I can still see it, that bit of blue cloth specked with blood amid the blackened soot that used to be someone’s home.



I had come to Hassan Khan Kalay with the Taleban. It was the only way of getting there, as this village near Hyderabad in the Greshk district is under their control, and journalists cannot go there without their permission.



The negotiations took about a week. First we called Qari Yusuf, the Taleban spokesman, and he passed us on to others, who referred us in turn to the local commanders.



Finally we got the go-ahead. But our Taleban contact told us on the phone to be very careful about what we filmed and who we talked to in Hyderabad.



“If they don’t like what you are doing, you won’t live,” he said simply.



Greshk is about 40 kilometres north of Lashkar Gah. According to the Afghan government, the district has been captured and recaptured many times over. At the moment, it seems that not a single day passes without some sort of incident there.



Hyderabad is completely ruled by the Taleban. Our first problem was getting out there. When I went to the bus station in Lashkar Gah, I could not find a driver willing to take us. They all looked at us suspiciously, maybe because we did not have turbans or the right kind of clothes. I was just wearing a Kandahari hat, and I had a big bag with my camera and recording equipment.



Finally, a driver in a yellow Toyota Corolla asked whether we had permission from the Taleban to go to Hyderabad. When I said yes, he told us to get in.



Once we crossed into Greshk and entered a desert area, our driver, who was wearing a white turban, began looking around anxiously, smoking one cigarette after another.



At about 11 in the morning, we rounded a bend and saw our first Taleban. There were two of them standing in the road in full Taleban gear - black turbans, black shawls and Kalashnikovs, with bandoliers slung across their bodies. They were holding bundles of money – afghani and Pakistani rupees.



I was shocked and afraid, but they said, “Oh, we’re Taleban, and you should help us.” They were smiling – and then they looked into the car and saw our filming equipment. They stared hard at it for a while.



We gave them two ten-afghani notes - worth about 40 cents - and they said, “Okay, you can go.”’



But as we were driving off, one of them pulled out his mobile phone, which had a home-made red pom-pom on it, and made a call. That made me nervous, so I called our contact just in case.



According to our driver, we were in a place called Gaamash. We could see large numbers of American military vehicles on the desert floor – tanks, armoured personnel carriers and jeeps – all of them destroyed, burnt out. There were also oil tanker trucks marooned in the desert.



It seemed that every few steps there was another shattered vehicle.



As we came into the village of Hassan Khan Kalay, I saw a burnt-out tractor by the road. In the distance, I could see houses that had been flattened by bombs. It looked like it had once been a busy little village, but no one lived there now. It was deathly still.



We were supposed to wait here for our contact, Mawlawi Ahmad. I could not even film – I was too scared to do so.



There was a small shop nearby, and we decided to interview the shopkeeper.



His name was Gulzaman, he told us, and he had lost his sister and her three sons in the bombings. His family had fled to this village from Sangin because of the fighting and NATO bombing raids in that town.



“But we got bombed here anyway,” he said bitterly. “I had to bury my three nephews in this place, because I could not get them to our local cemetery. For three days, I was not able to bury them because of the fighting. I just put some bushes on them and waited.”



His mother and the rest of his family were now in the mountains seeking refuge from the fighting, he said.



“In war, it’s every man for himself,” he added.



Suddenly we heard the roar of a motorcycle, and a strong young man swept into view. This was Mullah Khaled, sent by the local Taleban field commander to escort us through Hassan Khan Kalay. He came towards us and we shook hands.



He examined our equipment, studying the English-language markings. Finally, without further talk, he led us into the village.



Everywhere there were ruins – collapsed walls and ashes. There were a lot of impressions at once: a woman’s green scarf, a single sandal, a tea kettle with so many holes in it that it looked like a strainer.



We were approached by an old man, all hunched over. His turban was hanging in rings around his neck, and he seemed to have lost his senses.



He told us his name was Sher Gul, and that he had just lost six members of his family, including his sweet young wife, two daughters aged 18 and 12, and two sons, one aged seven and the other a baby of 11 months.



His teeth flashed under his beard as he spoke, and I could not tell whether he was smiling or grimacing in pain.



Sher Gul took me by the hand and led me to the ruins of his house, pointing to the place where his wife and children drew their last breaths.



“It was about 8:30 in the evening,” he said, “and we were having dinner outside in the courtyard. Then there was thunder, a roar, and the women and children ran into the house. My brother and I stayed where we were, and then the bombs began to fall. We threw ourselves on the ground and then just lay there, nailed in place by the bombs. I could hear screaming, and my wife calling to me, ‘For God’s sake get me out of here, my legs are broken.’



“But we couldn’t move, because the sky was raining red fire. My brother’s wife ran out of the house – she had been injured and was holding her baby in her arms. She fell on top of me and then died. Finally, the screaming stopped. And then the bombs stopped.”



When the smoke cleared, Sher Gul saw what had happened to his family.



“My wife was lying under the walls, and her legs had been cut off. I started to pull her out, but she was gone. Later I found my little son.”



Sher Gul cursed the Afghan president, Hamed Karzai, and laughed, but his laughter was unhinged.



“This is a good thing he has done for us,” he said. “We don’t even need to bring our dead to the graveyard. Look – everywhere is a graveyard now.”



The locals say that 135 people died that night in June when the NATO bombs came.



About 40 people tried to get away by loading themselves and their few possessions onto a tractor – the burned-out husk we had seen on our way into the village.



“Then the planes came and bombed them, too,” said Mohammad Faroq, an elder from the village. “They all died.”



Faroq said he and his neighbours had heard that Sher Gul’s house had been hit and that the tractor had been bombed. They ran to help as soon as they were able to move about. But it was near morning when they saw the scale destruction.



“I came to one house and everything was burnt,” he said. “I saw a woman’s body - she was still on fire. I ran home for some water to put out the flames.”



Faroq said he had seen many victims of the raid. “I saw people who had been shot while trying to run away,” he said. “There were bodies everywhere. The place was full of the dead.”



Now there were just a few people around, scattered among the ruins. They did not look twice at us or the Taleban commander with us. They seemed used to having the insurgents around, no longer shocked by their presence.



“When night starts to fall,” said Mohammad Nabi, an old man in the village, “everyone heads for the mountains. The women sleep out in the fields among the crops, up in the hills. No one stays here.”



Our contact Mawlawi Ahmad joined us for a few moments. We shook hands, he offered his assistance, and then left.



Meanwhile, our escort, Mullah Khaled, was eager to tell of his exploits.



“When a convoy of British troops was passing this way, I set off a remote-controlled mine,” he said. “Three NATO soldiers were killed. The others removed the dead bodies, then put a mine in the vehicle and blew it up.”



Khaled said that at one point he had been captured by the British and later released.



“I told them I was just a traveller,” he laughed. “Thank God I threw my walkie-talkie away before they got me.”



Aziz Ahmad Tassal is a freelance reporter in Helmand.