Soldiers of God (15 page)

Someone unfurled a large carpet in the middle of the courtyard, sending up small clouds of dirt. It might have been a cheap machine-made rug bought in Peshawar or Landi Kotal, but in the gas-lit darkness, surrounded by all the dismal earthen shades of dust, dried mud, and dung, it seemed magnificent. Round loaves of flat bread were thrown down, and a boy came around with a brass pitcher and bowl so we could wash our hands before eating. I'll never forget the damp, mildewy reek of the towel he gave me. It must have been wiped by hundreds of pairs of hands since it was last washed. We turned up our palms toward the starscape, moved them down over our faces in unison, and said
“Allahu akbar,”
thanking God for the meal we were about to eat.

Except for a bowl of shriveled, overdone fried eggs swimming in thick oil, there was nothing on any of the plates that I could identify: no meat, chicken, or curd even. All the other bowls contained only oil and grease of differing shades of brown and green into which everyone dipped their bread. After green tea was poured from a blackened kettle, everyone said prayers again and the plates and carpet were quickly removed from the ground. One of our hosts filled a water pipe for the men to smoke while lying on the jute beds. There was a sweet, acrid odor to the tobacco; perhaps it had a trace of hashish in it. Wakhil, Jihan-zeb, and Lurang took only one or two puffs and then declined to smoke more. The Afridis then withdrew
naswar
from their shirt pockets — a potent Afghan
chewing tobacco laced with opium and other stimulants. Several months later I tried some. One pill-sized ball placed along my gums was enough to make me dizzy and nauseated five minutes later. I never used it again.

The moon rose over the mud walls of the fort and shone into the courtyard like a searchlight, disturbing my sleep. Finally, I drifted off to the sound of distant gunfire, wild barking dogs, and Afridis coughing up and spitting the tobacco a few inches away from my head.

“Afridis bad people, very dirty people,” Wakhil muttered while washing his feet, before saying his last prayers of the day.

The relationship between the mujahidin and their Pathan cousins the Afridis was full of so many layers of intrigue and games played within games that at times it seemed that every commander and
malik
(tribal headman) had his own foreign policy with regard to KhAD, the KGB, and the Pakistani intelligence service. Truces were so short-lived and based on such a degree of subtlety that each new fact or insight I gained seemed to contradict much of what I had heard before. After a while I gave up and realized that this whole tribal system I was studying was just what the dictionaries called anarchy.

To begin with, the Afridis are divided into eight separate clans, or
khels.
One clan, the Adam Khel Afridis, controls the weapons market at Darra. Another, the Kuki Khel Afridis living in the Valley of Tirah Bazaar, had made pacts with Na-jib's Communist regime in Kabul, hence the danger of transporting an American journalist through their area (though it was yet another, rival clan who had put us up for the night).

The pro-Communist Kuki Khel Afridis were led by Malik Wali Khan Kuki Khel, a man in his fifties with a dour expression stamped permanently on his face. I met him once briefly in Peshawar. When I asked him about accusations concerning the kidnapping of Khalis mujahidin by the Kuki Khel in the Bazaar Valley, Wali Khan Kuki Khel gave me a syrupy smile
and said that such acts were rare and those responsible had had their houses burned down as punishment. Abdul Haq and his brother Abdul Qadir claimed that this was nonsense and that the
malik
was a liar.

“Kuki Khel people — stupid people,” Abdul Qadir had said. “Wali Khan is a stupid man. He has the face of a rat coming out of mud. He is an agent of KhAD and KGB.”

Qadir himself had the delicate, distinguished features of a Dürer portrait, enhanced by white sideburns and a fine gray beard. His eyes glowed with an intelligence that reminded me of a Talmudic scholar. But when it came to Afridis or other Pathans who had sided with the Soviets, every trace of humanity left him.

“In 1986, Kuki Khel people in Maidan Valley get nine hundred guns from Najib in Kabul,” Qadir had told me. “They make trouble for mujahidin and mule caravans bringing supplies into Afghanistan. So I say to Wali Khan Kuki Khel, ‘If you want to make trouble, I have artillery on this mountain and that. Mujahidin there will blow up your houses and your mosques and your schools.’ So we bomb some houses of Kuki Khel and then there is no more trouble for our mujahidin passing through this valley. Kuki Khel become very easily afraid.” Qadir sneered and spat a gob
oinaswar
on the ground.

Though the Kuki Khel dominated the Valley of Tirah Bazaar, a family of Zakha Khel Afridis had been providing us with hospitality in the fort. The Zakha Khel were the most populous of all the Afridi clans, and their leader, Malik Nadar Khan Zakha Khel, was a colorful character whom I visited in his Peshawar and Landi Kotal homes. Nadar Khan Zakha Khel maintained a tenuous, on-again-off-again truce with the mujahidin. And because I wasn't sure what Qadir's attitude would be to my interviewing the Afridi leader, I kept my meetings with Nadar Khan a secret from all the mujahidin. It turned out to be a wise idea, I thought while lying on the bed in the Afridi fort.

Though Nadar Khan had a veritable palace in Landi Kotal, when in Peshawar — where he held court several times a week — he deliberately projected a relatively humble image in order to keep the respect of his tribesmen in the city, all of whom were very poor. His house was down a narrow alley with an open sewer in Peshawar's old quarter. In the early morning, as many as a hundred Afridis would wait in a dim, dirty anteroom to pay their respects. Plainclothes Pakistani police loitered there too, casting an eye on every person who went into the
malik's
chambers; Nadar Khan's name was often mentioned in connection with all sorts of unsavory dealings on the Northwest Frontier. Outside his room stood four Afridi bodyguards with bandoleers and Kalashnikov rifles.

Nadar Khan was sitting on a soiled, unmade bed with a towel around his neck when I entered his air-conditioned room. On the table beside him was a half-eaten dinner, including a vat of sweets being devoured by flies. He didn't seem bothered by the intrusion, however.
“Salaam aleikum”
he called to me, raising his thick black eyebrows with a lively smile. He was wearing a white
shalwar kameez
and yellow vest, and playing with prayer beads. I was struck by his impressive turban and
kullah
resting on a shelf next to a plastic, heart-shaped sign with gold lettering that said in English, “God Bless Our Home.” A Western-style suit hung from a nail on the wall. On the floor in the corner was a cheap cardboard suitcase with a First Class sticker on it. In the eyes of his tribesmen in the anteroom, such objects implied a certain wealth and sophistication.

Nadar Khan had the dark skin and lilting, clicking accent of a Punjabi. He spoke passable English and was pleased to tell his life story to a foreign journalist. I was trying to cultivate Nadar Khan. This leader of eighty thousand Zakha Khel Afridis was a useful man to know: his word and written orders carried more weight in the Khyber Tribal Agency than those of the Pakistani authorities. When you traveled up the Khyber Pass in a vehicle owned by Nadar Khan, nobody questioned
your permit, and the police just waved you on at the checkpoints.

To hear Nadar Khan tell it, he was an Afghan patriot who supported the mujahidin without restraint but who nevertheless, on account of his great political skill, was able to maintain cordial relations with the Communist regime in Kabul at the same time. Nadar Khan had lived nearly half of his fifty-nine years in Afghanistan and the rest of them in Pakistan, and he saw himself as the ultimate go-between, loyal to all sides without betraying anyone's confidence. Among the many gifts in his palatial fortress in Landi Kotal was a 9 mm nickel-plated Makarov pistol given to him by Najib when the latter was head of KhAD and a Belgian 7.62 mm rifle with a gold-plated inscription from “General Zia ul-Haq, President of Pakistan.”

“All the mujahidin of the seven parties are my brothers,” Nadar Khan said, “and we allow all the refugees to go through our land in Tirah…. The Russians are godless people. Our mothers do not weep when their sons are killed by Russians. Instead they are proud.” He said that the kidnappings for ransom of mujahidin in the Bazaar Valley were the work of Soviet agents, perhaps of the Kuki Khel, which he had nothing to do with. “The KGB has its best agents in Washington, London, and Tirah,” he advised me with a knowing stare. “The Russians and Najib try to influence us through scholarships and the supply of guns. We took the guns, of course, but did not play the game of KGB.”

Still, Nadar Khan could not deny that he continued to own 150 acres of property in Kabul and Jalalabad that the regime had not confiscated. And he claimed to be in personal contact with Najib, and to be helping him arrange to leave office peacefully.

“Najib is little in mind, but he is not little in body,” he said, laughing. “You know what they call Najib in Farsi?
Gow,
the ox. My son, Miraiz, I call him Little Najib. Look at him.” Nadar Khan pointed out his teenage son, who, with his short, massive
build, did in fact resemble the Afghan ruler. “I know Najib well,” Nadar Khan went on. “His father used to work as a transport manager in the Kissakhani Bazaar here in Peshawar. His sister is the wife of Mamul Khan, a great friend of my father's. Najib will try to hold on in Kabul, but he will fail. Then he will come and live with me in my palace in Landi Kotal. This will provide a peaceful solution for Afghanistan.”

Nadar Khan's fort in Landi Kotal, with its tomato patch, rose bushes, private mosque, and icebox stocked with Coca-Cola and Fanta, was certainly nicer than the place I was staying in the Valley of Tirah Bazaar. But the idea of the Afghan ruler's spending the rest of his days there struck me as comic. Inside its long walls, the fort had several locked gates, past which I was not permitted to go. Some of Khalis's mujahidin and Pakistanis said Nadar Khan kept smuggled Russian vodka and other contraband there. Once, Nadar Khan's tribesmen had kidnapped a Khalis commander in a reprisal for the destruction of a vodka consignment by the mujahidin, and delicate negotiations had been necessary to secure his release.

After I had interviewed the Zakha Khel leader, Abdul Qadir told me, “Nadar Khan is talking out of all sides of his mouth and he is only thinking of money.” Qadir grimaced, as if he had just tasted something rotten. Though Qadir had a truce with the Zakha Khel Afridis and they were providing his mujahidin with food and lodging in Tirah, his feelings toward them were only slightly less hostile than those he harbored toward the Kuki Khel. “Now we must bargain with Nadar Khan. But after the war is finished, when mujahidin have power in Kabul, then we will deal with Nadar Khan and all of his people. The Afridis will be sorry that they ever made friends with Russia. Mujahidin suffer much and we forget nothing.” Qadir added that he hoped the Soviets would bomb Landi Kotal, since that “would teach Nadar Khan and his people a lesson.”

Lying in the jute bed atop my nylon sleeping bag that night in the Afridi fort, I knew that the hospitality extended to us was the result of chilling bargains over vodka and hostages and double-dealing with the Soviets, and that at some point in the not too distant future, Lurang and Jihan-zeb — or some other of Khalis's men — might come here to shoot and butcher the very people who had fed and sheltered us.

We were up at 4:30
A.M.
and, thankfully, our Afridi hosts offered us only bread and green tea. It was still dark when we left the fort and began walking. After several hours we passed between two low mountains and entered a rock-strewn wadi shaded with mulberry trees. In a moment the Bazaar Valley was just a hazy memory, like a half-dream between sleep and waking.

The wadi led ever upward in a grueling, twisting incline, steep enough to make me out of breath, but not quite so steep as to provide any visible goal or summit. The trees gave me hope that a stream ran nearby, but there was none. After a while, Lurang and Jihan-zeb were practically pulling and dragging me along.

“A little more and we will be in Afghanistan,” Wakhil said, trying to encourage me. He pointed to a vague area where the terrain leveled out.

Now Wakhil, Jihan-zeb, and Lurang quickened their pace, leaving me far behind. I struggled alone for half an hour until I saw the three of them sitting on a flat table of land in the distance. When I reached them I collapsed at their feet. They all laughed.

“Afghanistan!” Wakhil exclaimed to me, pointing a finger at the ground, which he stamped with his foot.

Behind me, the wadi we had just ascended fell away in a swirl of trees and gravel to reveal a panorama of mountains. For all their gray and dull green barrenness, they had a temperate, recognizable flavor. But ahead was something out of a sci-fi film: jagged ranks of sawtooth peaks that, despite the
nearby web of lush riverbeds, seemed even more rain-starved than the land we were leaving. This was the so-called Durand Line, negotiated between the amir of Afghanistan, Abdur Rahman, and a special British envoy, Sir Mortimer Durand, in 1893 as the border that would separate Afghanistan from the Northwest Frontier of British India. The Durand Line is usually described in books as an arbitrarily drawn division that was not based on particular geographical features, so it was difficult to know when you had crossed it. But every time I went over the Afghan border, it seemed fairly logical and straightforward: the border ran along a watershed where the landscapes were noticeably different on each side. I saw no water here at the moment, but the autumn rains would bring plenty of streams, and the small plateau on which we were sitting would be where the waters split into two opposite, downward directions. We were now roughly twenty-five miles southwest of the border station at Torcham, beyond Landi Kotal. We had walked a total of twelve hours since the day before, zigzagging in a direction parallel to the border so that we might cross where there were no regime troops.