Rock and Hard Places by Andrew Mueller Read Free Book Online Page A

they’re
doing. The chap who runs the shop, a one-eyed thirty-something called Mullah Mohammad Omar, stays down in Kandahar and doesn’t do much press. There are, in theory, Ministers, but none of the ministries I visit know where the bloke in charge is—“Away at the front line” is, I suspect, a convenient shorthand for “Shagged if I know, and what’s it to you, anyway?”
    “There’s no power structure, no accountability,” one aid worker tells me, back at the UN club. “They’re just young guys with guns who think they know everything.”
     
    ON SATURDAY MORNING, outside the offices of the Taliban’s intelligence service, the Estekhbarat, I wait to see some young guys with guns who think they know everything. While Akbar is inside making representations on my behalf, I sit at the gate with the guard. Like a depressing proportion of young Afghans, he has the soaring cheekbones and blazing eyes of a 50s matinee idol—if the women are as pretty as the men are handsome, the burqa is as great an affront to aesthetics as it is to human rights. The guard is keen to test an English vocabulary apparently acquired from satellite transmissions of Play School .
    “My nose,” he says, pointing at his mountainous Afghan beak.
    “My eyes,” he continues, gesturing at two iridescent irises of a limpid aquamarine that suggests someone in his gene pool didn’t object too strongly to either the British or the Russians.
    “My ears,” he announces, resting his rifle on his lap so he can hold them out for emphasis.
    “And,” he says, “my . . . bread?”
    He has his fingers in the thatch trailing off his chin.
    It’s your beard, mate. Beard.
    “Beard,” he confirms. “Very good. Thank you.”
    Inside the Estekhbarat building, I am ushered into an office that smells of feet and resembles a student bedsit, except that the groovy oriental rugs on the walls were made locally. Inside, cross-legged on two camp beds, are two terse young Talibs in white robes and white turbans. One gives his name as Abdul Haque Waseeque, and claims to be Acting Director of Intelligence. The other declines to give a name or a title, but mentions that he’s just been away at the front. Ah, so it does exist.

    As the inevitable tea and biscuits arrive, I start with the easy stuff. Like most Talibs, they’re of Pakhtun descent, and from outside Kabul—they both grew up in Ghazni, to the south, and were raised to regard Kabul as a sink of depravity. They’re in their mid-twenties, and won’t go into detail about their work, but say they’re the Afghan version of the CIA.
    “Laws made by humans have flaws,” begins Abdul. “The rule of Allah has none.”
    The tone is set for the next couple of hours: God said it, they believe it, and that settles it. But why does divine rule have to be this . . . miserable?
    “For the time being,” says Abdul, “it is delicate. How can cinema be right in war conditions? The Taliban pledged Islamic law and peace, and we have created that.”
    Granted, Kabul is no longer at war, though the airport was rocketed by Massoud just before I arrived (I’d originally hoped to fly to Kabul on the the Red Cross shuttle from Peshawar, but flights were suspended when Massoud started acting the goat). There are fewer guns visible in Kabul than on the streets of Belfast or Beirut. Crime, which was rampant, is now so rare that for the last few weeks there haven’t been any amputations or executions before the Friday football match at Kabul Stadium. Akbar and I had gone to the game the day before, a dismal 0-0 draw between two teams wearing shorts like you’ve only seen in footage of 1920s Cup Finals (the Taliban decided that football was un-Islamic for a while, but changed their minds). A few thousand people turned up, and mostly talked amongst themselves, though the wild, two-footed tackles that punctuated the match were greeted with appreciative laughter. Akbar, who I increasingly suspect of being a closet