“May you rather die in fight, my son, than be disgraced before the enemy.”
-Pashtun Proverb
Oh, Afghanistan. Still one of the most magical yet wounded parcels on the planet. It is a place where poppies grow wild and men in the mountains cradle guns like children. It’s a place where kites fly high, and everyone has a war story, even though most never chose to go to war.
Welcome to a little more of Afghanistan after the cataclysmic fall. The band-aid over the bullet wound has been ripped off, and I hope somehow that I am able to guide you into the maze of dust, debris and delicacy that is the country I love so dearly.
KABUL TO KANDAHAR: DRIVING ACROSS WHAT WAS WEEKS AGO ONE OF THE WORLD'S MOST DANGEROUS, TERROR-FILLED "HIGHWAYS"
Just weeks ago, embarking on the infamous land route from the political capital of Kabul to the Taliban's religious capital of Kandahar – passing through Logar, Ghazni, and Zabul provinces – would have been utterly implausible.
For years before the Taliban took full power, the 300-mile stretch was ripe with shootouts and bomb blasts between the then-insurgent outfit and its enemies – namely the Afghan and American forces and their partners. Terrorist and criminal groups also conducted frequent armed robberies, raids and kidnappings on courageous, beleaguered journeyers.
According to Google Maps, the expedition should take six hours. But, in reality, the flat passage typically takes almost double that given the state of much of the decimated "highway" despite the billions the U.S. government poured into "re-constructing" the critical juncture.
It was heralded as one of the first major hearts-and-minds missions after the U.S. invaded in 2001, intending to accelerate trade and ease of access for Afghans. Instead, however, much of the money was siphoned off into corruption – replete with construction companies subcontracting out and using cheap labor and materials, severely overloaded trucks causing deep gorges and heavy rains and flooding – thus, the strategic stretch was left to crumble into a highway of hell.
The irony is that now the Taliban – the same group that for decades attacked the prized artery – are in charge of repairing much of their own maleficence. Moreover, they have pledged publicly to do so, although the government has very little funding amid an international economic freeze and a fast-escalating financial crisis. In total, I observe just two cement trucks endeavoring to fill the fatal potholes and craters.
Nonetheless, the first major stop is Logar province – a breath of rural air away from the congestion of Kabul.
Logar is a staunchly religious place, with madrassas and mosques scattered frequently in and alongside the quiet terrain. I meet Taliban foot fighters camped out in bombed-out bases that not long ago boasted the best of the best Afghan Special Forces. Here, they still mostly wield their trusted AK-47s over the high-powered rifles that the U.S.-backed Afghan soldiers left behind. Hand-drawn white-and-black Islamic Emirate flags flap high – a tell-tale sign of staunch loyalty, created long before the group cinched the Presidential Palace.
We reach Ghazni – 100 miles from Kabul – after dark, when the markets are closed, and the only signs of life are gaudy flashes of colored lights illuminating the Emirate flags fluttering over buildings and critical infrastructure in the cool night breeze. There is little in the way of accommodation – and eventually, we settle for dirty $6 per night rooms – jammed with three beds and no water or washroom – atop a dim eating area.
It is evident by the many sets of bewildered eyes that the locals find it strange for a woman to be out during night hours. However, on their way from Kandahar to Kabul, Taliban authorities come in amid our late dinner – immediately, the Indian soap operas blaring through the television are switched off. A palpable fear washes over the ashen faces of the young servers – yet they make no eye contact with me and say not a word.
Only it is with the glimpse of the first-morning sunlight that the true treasure that is Ghazni – a Dari word that means "jewel" comes to life. The ancient city skirted by the undulating Hindu Kush and still famous for its handicrafts was once the esteemed hub of the Islamic world, brimming with culture and grandiose monuments and minarets dotting a hill above the empire.
Strolling through the cherished citadel and towering mud-baked fortresses – again a concept that five weeks ago was unthinkable – is yet another encapsulation of the rampant exploitation and crookedness of the previous administration that Washington failed to adequately address, and ultimately led to disaffected Afghans turning to the Taliban for a glimmer of hope.
I meet local men – young and old – who wander through the slice of times past every single day to reach the city markets. Locals say enterprising Afghans even collect the snow amassing on the old garrison walls in the winter to sell in stalls nearby.
READ MORE ABOUT THE ROAD TO KANDAHAR HERE
‘NO ONE HAS APOLOGIZED’: AFGHAN RELATIVES OF US AIRSTRIKE VICTIMS
It is the stuff of nightmares: a car burned into oblivion, others smashed and singed. Children’s toys and shoes, blackened and blown apart, windows smashed, and doors lurched from hinges on impact.
Some 19 days after the U.S. government claimed it thwarted an ISIS-K terror attack with a targeted drone strike on a terrorist bomber less than two miles from Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA), officials finally admitted late Friday it was all a “mistake.”
Instead, the drone strike hit a longtime aid worker for a U.S. group, Zmaray Ahmadi, 38, as he pulled into the driveway of that now decimated home. The 10 victims – three adults and seven children – all lived together in the home, with some 15 other extended family members, including Zemari’s three brothers.
Zmaray, whose name has been spelled in previous reports as “Zemari,” lost three children: Farzad, 11; Faisal, 16, and his eldest, Zamir, 20, a student. Zmaray’s brother, Aimal, lost a daughter, Malika, 3.
A great niece, Sumaya, just 2-years-old, was also killed, along with Zmaray’s nephew, Naser, 30 – who had worked closely with U.S. Special Forces in Kandahar and was less than a week away from getting married.
Zmaray’s youngest brother, Romal, who was sitting in the living room when the drone struck, lost all three of his children: daughter Ayat, 2; and sons Bin Yamin, 6, and Arwin, 7.
“No one has apologized, no one has helped us,” Romal Ahmadi told me Saturday morning, just hours after the Pentagon confessed to the blunder. “[They] Americans can’t bring back our brother, children, our nephews. If they apologize that would be sufficient.”
Romal speaks softly and calmly, a portrait of his composure. Yet his eyes constantly dart to the floor as if trying to still wrap his head around the tragedy that took so much of his family.
READ MORE ABOUT THE FAMILY ACCIDENTALLY SLAIN HERE
AFGHAN WOMEN FROM PANJSHIR SHARE STORIES IN RESISTANCE FIGHT AGAINST TALIBAN
When the Taliban stormed to power last month, one prized province refused to cower: the Panjshir Valley, a hub of hundreds of local fighters and former Afghan Special Forces soldiers who coalesced under the umbrella known as the National Resistance Front (NRF).
But it was not only the men who seemingly hit back.
“My whole family was there fighting – my husband, brothers, cousins, father-in-law, mother-in-law and myself,” Lailuma, 24, tells me defiantly from the tattered Kabul displacement camp on Saturday, having fled Panjshir a week earlier. “I fought them with stones.”
Other young women congregate around, concurring that they too joined the fight, wielding stones instead of firearms.
Lailuma comes from Panjshir’s Anaba district and led a quiet life as a tailor before conflict broke out last month. She says the men in the village led them to the mountains as they were being attacked from the air in their homes, where she and her extended family subsisted. Yet after 10 days, she and 20 others from various villages trundled down in surrender.
Only when they returned to their homes, Lailuma continues, they were not permitted by their new rulers to turn on their lights or sit next to each other. And when they tried to run away, she tells me, the Taliban would open fire and warn them to stay put.
“They (the Taliban) would point their guns toward us and tell us not to go,” Lailuma recalls, stressing that they had to sneak on-foot for two hours between the array of mud huts and homes to finally reach their cars and abscond to Kabul.
Lailuma now lives in a squalid makeshift camp alongside thousands of other Afghans in a dusty park inside Kabul’s Police 17 district. It is nothing short of a humanitarian catastrophe. Desperate mothers press their ill babies into your arms; dozens swarm to give out their phone numbers in the hopes some aid will come. Pink eye is evidently spreading like wildfire among the children who hack and wheeze, and countless numbers have lost limbs, parts of their face and no doubt their livelihoods at some point throughout Afghanistan’s decades of bloodshed.
READ MORE ABOUT THE RESISTENCE AND PANJSHIR HERE
AFGHANISTAN HAS ITS OWN FAKE NEWS PROBLEM
A month into the Taliban takeover of Kabul, and the misinformation and disinformation continues to soar into dizzying territory – driven not only by both clumsy, opportunistic social media sharing, but also seemingly structured propaganda initiatives both inside and outside Afghanistan.
But like the boy who cried wolf, much of it is likely to hurt those suffering more than help. The more the fake news is shared, the more it gains creditability, only to be proven false and plunge the beleaguered country further into fear, chaos and confusion as to what is really going on.
Rumors highlighting severe injury or the death of Taliban co-founder Mullah Baradar – who seemed poised to become the leader but was instead announced last week as acting first deputy prime minister – date back as far as September 4. The rumblings appear to have been part of meddling effort, and were sparked after widespread Taliban celebratory shooting in Kabul linked to the group first entering the prized Panjshir. This was then morphed to appear as an internal Taliban conflict, according to a digital forensic analysis.
Yet ever since the Taliban’s waltz into Kabul and conquering of the capital on August 15, the distortion cycle has mushroomed in the form of countless – and widely circulated – images that are either doctored, fake, or entirely out of context or without context. These are often shared by otherwise credible news figures and government officials usually outside of Afghanistan, without explanation as to when they were shot or the story behind them.
Indeed, much of the fake news focus has also centered on the murky and concerning issue of women’s rights under the new Taliban regime.
READ MORE ABOUT THE FAKE NEWS CAMPAIGN HERE
POLITICIANS IN NAME ONLY: AMID A CRUMBLING ECONOMY, NEW TALIBAN MINISTERS DON’T SHOW FOR WORK—RUNNING GOVERNMENT BUSINESS FROM THE MOSQUE
Slightly more than a month since the Taliban swept to power in taking the Presidential Palace, and many of the critical services remain dormant as regular Afghans struggle to make ends meet. The Taliban – officially termed the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan – has proven that they can overthrow a country of 38 million. But inevitably, running it will prove to be a steep challenge.
Last week, spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid announced a partially formed interim cabinet under the guise that all government affairs could be continued. However, visits to several since then have brought to light not only the lack of experience of those appointed to take charge but the sheer lack of a government presence altogether.
“They prefer to (do business) at the mosque,” one young guard explains as justification as to why so many ministry heads and deputies simply were never in their offices.
Others say they only come for work between 8 and 2. But as the week progressed, that window shortened from 10 to 1. And then simply, in many cases, not at all.
After an initial flurry of official movement following the first weeks of the rise to power, replete with press conferences and curious faces coming in and out of parliament areas, activity appears to have sharply waned. Calls to designated Taliban media contacts remain primarily unanswered, with referrals from one person to another, in the end, falling on deaf ears.
Aside from a spattering of Taliban guards outside government buildings – who sometimes ask for food and appear famished and far from home – many official areas remain largely barren, especially after 1 pm, which is when we are told is typically the “end of the day.” (At the beginning of the week we were told it was 2 pm but it quickly dwindled).
READ MORE ABOUT THE TALIBAN GOVERNING STYLE HERE
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Dispatches from Afghanistan: Driving down the most dangerous Afghan Road, U.S. kills kids in targeted strike, fake news, Panjshir women fighters and running government business from a mosque