Read Online A Rope and a Prayer by David Rohde, Kristen Mulvihill - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: David Rohde, Kristen Mulvihill
Tags: General, Biography & Autobiography, Editors; Journalists; Publishers, Political Science, International Relations
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Pashtun code of honor prevents each man from showing fear or losing face. Asad and I step in front of Tahir. Qari will have to shoot us first before hitting Tahir.
We beg him to put down his gun.
“ Lutfan, lutfan ,” I say, using an expression Tahir has told me means “please.”
Slowly, Qari lowers his weapon. Then he motions for Tahir to step into an outer room.
I stare at Asad’s face to try to gauge what is happening. My limited knowledge of Pashto prevents me from understanding what is being said.
Through the wall, I hear Tahir praying in Arabic. Then I hear a thump and Tahir cry out, “Allah!” A second thump and “Allah!” More thumps follow. Several minutes later, Tahir walks back into the room, crawls under a blanket, and begins moaning. Qari has beaten him with the butt of his rifle. Blow after blow was delivered to his lower back.
Qari unnerves me. In brief and depressing conversations over the last several days, he has earnestly recited hugely inaccurate propaganda about the West’s trying to enslave all Muslims. It matches the conspiracy theories I have seen on jihadi Web sites. Qari seems utterly detached from reality. Our other guard, Akbar, jokes that Qari has mental problems.
In my mind, Qari and Atiqullah personify polar ends of the Taliban. Qari represents a paranoid, intractable force. Atiqullah embodies the more reasonable faction: people who could compromise on our release and, perhaps, even on peace in Afghanistan.
I do not know which one represents the majority. I want to believe that Atiqullah does. Yet each day I grow more fearful that Qari is the true Taliban.
Like many other American journalists, I rushed to Afghanistan after the September 2001 attacks with a limited understanding of the Taliban and a cursory knowledge of the country’s history. I knew Afghanistan as the “graveyard of empires,” a reference to its reputation as a land of indomitable mountain warriors who vanquish invading armies.
Over the next seven years, I gradually developed a more nuanced understanding. Afghanistan was not unconquerable. Foreign armies had taken control of Kabul and other large cities in the strategically located swathe of Central Asia dozens of times. First the Persians, then Alexander the Great, then the Safavids, and finally the Muslim Arabs; Ghengis Khan’s Moguls, British, and Soviets did the same.
As a means of self-defense, Afghans deftly cultivated an image of their country as “Yaghestan”—a term used by Persians to describe the lawless areas to their east, a place both chaotic and criminal. In truth, Afghanistan was an impoverished band of high mountains and barren deserts with few natural resources, wholly dependent on outsiders for trade, arms, and wealth. Fractious Afghans also fought among themselves, created divisions outsiders exploited.
Centuries of conquest created a clear pattern. Afghans initially put up little resistance to invading armies and then extracted what lucre they could from their new rulers. Quickly shifting their loyalties, Afghans rebelled when they sensed an end to subsidy, the approach of a wealthier suitor, or flagrant disrespect. Foreigners found that the country was extraordinarily difficult to govern over the long term. The pattern led to a clichéd adage about the country: you can rent an Afghan, but you cannot own one.
Afghanistan did not become an independent nation until 1747, when a tribal council, or “jirga,” chose a young Pashtun tribesman from Kandahar, Ahmad Shah Durrani, to serve as its king. For the next 225 years, Durrani’s descendants ruled the country.
The new nation was a dizzying ethnic, tribal, and religious mix, “a purely accidental geographic unit,” in the words of Lord George N. Curzon, the nineteenth-century British colonialist.
Ethnic Pashtuns spoke Pashto, dominated the south and east, and made up the vast majority of the population. Ethnic Tajiks of Persian descent dominated the north and west,
We beg him to put down his gun.
“ Lutfan, lutfan ,” I say, using an expression Tahir has told me means “please.”
Slowly, Qari lowers his weapon. Then he motions for Tahir to step into an outer room.
I stare at Asad’s face to try to gauge what is happening. My limited knowledge of Pashto prevents me from understanding what is being said.
Through the wall, I hear Tahir praying in Arabic. Then I hear a thump and Tahir cry out, “Allah!” A second thump and “Allah!” More thumps follow. Several minutes later, Tahir walks back into the room, crawls under a blanket, and begins moaning. Qari has beaten him with the butt of his rifle. Blow after blow was delivered to his lower back.
Qari unnerves me. In brief and depressing conversations over the last several days, he has earnestly recited hugely inaccurate propaganda about the West’s trying to enslave all Muslims. It matches the conspiracy theories I have seen on jihadi Web sites. Qari seems utterly detached from reality. Our other guard, Akbar, jokes that Qari has mental problems.
In my mind, Qari and Atiqullah personify polar ends of the Taliban. Qari represents a paranoid, intractable force. Atiqullah embodies the more reasonable faction: people who could compromise on our release and, perhaps, even on peace in Afghanistan.
I do not know which one represents the majority. I want to believe that Atiqullah does. Yet each day I grow more fearful that Qari is the true Taliban.
Like many other American journalists, I rushed to Afghanistan after the September 2001 attacks with a limited understanding of the Taliban and a cursory knowledge of the country’s history. I knew Afghanistan as the “graveyard of empires,” a reference to its reputation as a land of indomitable mountain warriors who vanquish invading armies.
Over the next seven years, I gradually developed a more nuanced understanding. Afghanistan was not unconquerable. Foreign armies had taken control of Kabul and other large cities in the strategically located swathe of Central Asia dozens of times. First the Persians, then Alexander the Great, then the Safavids, and finally the Muslim Arabs; Ghengis Khan’s Moguls, British, and Soviets did the same.
As a means of self-defense, Afghans deftly cultivated an image of their country as “Yaghestan”—a term used by Persians to describe the lawless areas to their east, a place both chaotic and criminal. In truth, Afghanistan was an impoverished band of high mountains and barren deserts with few natural resources, wholly dependent on outsiders for trade, arms, and wealth. Fractious Afghans also fought among themselves, created divisions outsiders exploited.
Centuries of conquest created a clear pattern. Afghans initially put up little resistance to invading armies and then extracted what lucre they could from their new rulers. Quickly shifting their loyalties, Afghans rebelled when they sensed an end to subsidy, the approach of a wealthier suitor, or flagrant disrespect. Foreigners found that the country was extraordinarily difficult to govern over the long term. The pattern led to a clichéd adage about the country: you can rent an Afghan, but you cannot own one.
Afghanistan did not become an independent nation until 1747, when a tribal council, or “jirga,” chose a young Pashtun tribesman from Kandahar, Ahmad Shah Durrani, to serve as its king. For the next 225 years, Durrani’s descendants ruled the country.
The new nation was a dizzying ethnic, tribal, and religious mix, “a purely accidental geographic unit,” in the words of Lord George N. Curzon, the nineteenth-century British colonialist.
Ethnic Pashtuns spoke Pashto, dominated the south and east, and made up the vast majority of the population. Ethnic Tajiks of Persian descent dominated the north and west,
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