The New Republic
An elephant in heat. That's the only way to describe the scene Tuesday as the new governor of Kandahar, Gul Agha Shirzai, asserted his newly won authority. Inside the high-ceilinged halls of the governor's mansion, three workers on ladders were quietly wiping away the whitewash that had been applied by the Taliban in their frenzy to eradicate "living images." Two frescoes slowly emerged, revealing the heads of two of Afghanistan's founders: Mir Wais Hotaki, a Pashtun of the Ghilzai tribe who led a revolt against Persian domination in the eighteenth century and paved the way for the founding of modern Afghanistan; and Ahmad Shah, a Pashtun of the Durrani tribe and a commander of an Afghan contingent of the Persian army at Kandahar who was elected king of Afghanistan in 1747 by the Pashtun tribes and went on to conquer an empire from Eastern Persia through Northern India.
Beneath these two historic figures, dozens of black-and-green turbaned soldiers were milling amongst tribal leaders from all over the province who had converged at the mansion the night before to find out what new kind of rulership they had inherited. During the previous reign of Gul Agha, a local mujahedin commander who ruled Kandahar in the early 1990s, Kandahar province was a gangland hell. The citizens of Kandahar city lived under constant threat of rape, extortion, robbery, and death. Every bit of road in the province was divvied up among opposing factions who levied taxes from truck drivers and hapless passengers. In one notorious incident, dozens of people were killed in the bazaar when a tank battle broke out between two commanders dueling over a beautiful young boy whom one of the commanders had bought as his lover and then "married" in a secret ceremony officiated over by tribal elders. But at a press conference in front of the tribal leaders,
Gul Agha--who had assumed control of the city with the blessing of interim Afghan head Hamid Karzai, but only after he had already taken the city by force--declared that this time around he was 100 percent sure things would be different. "First, the commanders all had a terrible experience from that time. And second, we had no central, united government in Afghanistan. Everyone was against each other," he said. "Now, we have unity and they will all take orders from me." Promising that he would disarm any illegitimate groups in the city, he said, "There can be no law and order with so many guns and this town should be governed by law not guns."
Evidently, Gul Agha hadn't quite put his plans--for control of his own men, or even himself--into place by Tuesday morning, when an unexpected convoy of pickups and heavy trucks pulled up at the gates of the mansion, loaded with American Special Forces in desert camouflage, black sunglasses, and machine guns. No one knew why they were there, and apparently the guards were not quick enough to welcome them. At least that was the only evident explanation for what happened next. Suddenly Gul Agha--a huge man with thick features, missing teeth, dressed in a gray shalwar kameez and charcoal wool vest--barreled his way across the garden, slapping and beating soldiers, onlookers, anyone in his path, smashing his fists against the windows of taxis and pickups parked around the gardens. The American Special Forces circled the gardens as Gul Agha unleashed his unfocused anger left and right, bloodying a couple of his own men. Oddly no one seemed to take his rage, which lasted about 15 minutes, very seriously, least of all the Americans. After hanging around for a few minutes, one of them- -maybe in earnest, maybe not--muttered something about having come to the wrong place, and they reversed positions and rolled out through the gates back into the city streets. Out in the streets, Gul Agha's soldiers were brandishing sticks to beat back the crowd that had gathered to watch the spectacle of American Special Forces speeding through town.
For the average citizen, who has lived under American bombardment for the past two months, it was an unwanted spectacle. "Americans are not welcome here," I heard all day. Others went further, to say, "If the Americans don't leave soon, the civilians of Kandahar will rise up against them. " And while most Afghans will tell you how much they resented the presence and arrogance of the Arabs residing in the country, some villagers have gone out of their way to bury the bodies of Arabs killed in the recent fighting around the airport and by American bombs. "They're our brothers," said one man standing in front of freshly dug, empty graves at the cemetery in his village. He was still waiting for permission from Gul Agha to go back to the airport and retrieve the rest of the dead Arabs. "They built mosques and Islamic schools and have helped us so much." The dominant mood in this southeastern desert town, named for Alexander the Great after he rebuilt it (Iskander was the Eastern name for Alexander), is ambivalence.
In Kabul and elsewhere, the flag that waves is the green, black, and white mujahedin flag. But Kandahar was the capital of Afghanistan under Ahmed Shah Durrani, the country's first king, and here--even as Gul Agha is cooperating with the Karzai's new regime in Kabul--the flag flapping on pickup trucks, taxis, military outposts, and homes is the old red, black, and green Afghan national flag that flew under King Zahir Shah. It's a sign of how far Kandahar is from Kabul, and also how much the people here pine for a symbol of stability and control.
On the outskirts of the city at a beaten-up mud house that serves as a military base, a veteran mujahedin fighter said he had no doubt the Taliban would recapture Kandahar in two hours if the Americans left their desert base because, he said, "we have no unity among ourselves." He had just reinhabited his old base from the pre-Taliban era and belonged to the forces of Karzai, the English-speaking Pashtun leader who was selected in Bonn to head up the interim Afghan government. "Our soldiers don't even want to go to the bazaar because they're afraid of Gul Agha's soldiers." Nor is it clear that the Taliban are gone. Some soldiers say they believe there are Arabs hiding out with sympathetic civilians in houses near the airport. Until two days ago, menacing posters left by the retreating Taliban could be seen inside the governor's compounds, in the bazaars, and on the streets. The posters warned that anyone aiding Karzai's forces or the Americans would be killed--not today, not tomorrow, but in a month or two. Taliban forces are still holed up some 30 kilometers south of the city. And while everyone seems to be enjoying their freedom from Taliban strictures--posters of women in bikinis are already up in the newly opened music shops, women are riding in trucks and walking the streets without burqas, canaries are singing in their cages in the crowded bazaars--people speak openly of their nostalgia for the security the Taliban brought.
The city's ambivalence, however, is not only a reflection of insecurity and the crudeness of Gul Agha's mujahedin, but of an illusion well orchestrated by the man whose whereabouts are still unknown and whose name still shadows Kandahar: Mullah Omar. As we drove out to the Mullah's compound, Zmery, our taxi driver, reminisced about Omar's beneficence and how his home was so simple, so poor, just like everyone else's. Which was true--his old house in the middle of town was simple and poor. Zmery was in shock, however, when we pulled into the Mullah's compound, open to the public for the first time since it was designed a few years ago. It's a model of Mullah kitsch. Set behind a newly planted pine grove, in the shadows of Filkuh (Elephant) Mountain, were multicolored domed pillars surrounding the residence where his four wives lived; a blue and green mosque; blue fountains; and garden walls painted with garish pastoral landscapes also in blue and green. Inside, chandeliers from Japan still hung. Mohammad Sharif, who had headed up the construction team, was still in awe of the roof he was ordered to erect to withstand a cruise missile attack--one layer of timber, a double layer of truck tires, 40 centimeters of cement topped by a meter of mud, and then another 40 centimeters of cement.
What Mohammad Sharif remembered most about Mullah Omar were his cows. He spent hours watering the grass for his cows. He fed his cows and even enjoyed shoveling the cow shit. "He dressed like a nomad and ate like a nomad and he acted like a wild lion. He had such a cruel face. And he sat on his heels popping naswar"--a commonly chewed mixture of tobacco, ash, and lime--"into his mouth and spitting into a pot." This was the simple life that endeared Mullah Omar to many of his followers. But when Zmery waded through the bombed-out remains of Mullah's lavishly adorned palace, years of illusion were dispelled. "An hour ago I liked that man so much," he said. In fact, until that moment he'd been ruing the Taliban and the Mullah's disappearance, mostly out of fear of Gul Agha's forces. "I thought he was such a poor person. We were never even allowed to drive on this road so we had no idea he lived here," Zmery said. "Now I will tell my family, my relatives, my neighbors how he was living." Samiullah, a former Taliban intelligence officer who was also taking the opportunity to visit the Mullah's abode, was even more aghast by what he saw: "Everyone in Kandahar is so poor all these years and that motherfucker Omar destroyed our country and brought all these American bombs so he could live like this." For people in Kandahar, one promise of stability after another has evaporated, leaving only, again, chaos. On the way back to town both Zmery and Samiullah agreed that the only hope for Kandahar and Afghanistan--however symbolic and ethereal--was the return of King Zahir Shah.