Read Online The Dogs Are Eating Them Now: Our War in Afghanistan by Graeme Smith - Free Book Online Page B

summer, something heavy in the terrible heat. The violence had continued rising through the hottest months of the year, and now all eyes looked nervously west, toward the Panjwai river valley, where hundreds of armed Taliban camped among the lush orchards and grape fields. The gunmen weren’t far from downtown, maybe ten kilometres beyond the bridge that marked the city limits, and fears were spreading about a military confrontation in the city streets. Most residents had memories of urban warfare in past decades, and nobody wanted to see that kind of fighting again. My translator kept his car filled with gasoline and his suitcases packed, ready to escape. Others had already fled. The smog of diesel and smoke from cooking fires had thinned; cresting a hill on my way into the city, I enjoyed an unusually clear view of the Eid Gah mosque on the opposite side of town, its dome like a blue egg among the mud buildings. Beyond that, I could see the jagged rock that rises almost vertically to the west and north of the city, small mountains that had made Kandahar a natural fortress for centuries. Now those mountains seemed to offer little defence against insurgents who slipped easily across the landscape. Along the highway, rows of vendors’ stalls had lost their bustle. We passed the wreckage of a taxi, with scattered shoes and human gristlein the dust, the remnants of an explosion. Drivers did not pause to gawk, slowing only to avoid holes carved by the blasts. Insurgents attacked so many times with so-called improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that the airport road was nicknamed “IED alley.” My driver somehow believed we could avoid the bombs if we drove quickly, making the trip from the airport a terrifying dash through traffic, past herds of goats and the occasional camel. Inside the city, many storefronts were shuttered with locked metal blinds; these were usually businesses marked by the taint of Western influence—medical clinics, computer stores, sellers of audio cassettes and compact discs—whose owners worried the Taliban might not tolerate them. In the years since President Hamid Karzai and his Popalzai tribe had assumed control of Kandahar, merchants had started advertising their connection to the ruling clan by adding the tribal name to their shop signs, and it sometimes seemed as if every bakery and auto mechanic was owned by somebody ostensibly named Popal. But during the sweltering final weeks of summer, the hand-painted “Popal” signs had disappeared. It was better to hide your loyalties in a city on the brink of invasion.
    As business slowed, the remaining shopkeepers found themselves with plenty of time to drink tea and complain. Some admitted they were taking out extra insurance against Taliban attack by sending gifts to the well-known insurgent commanders in the fields outside the city. Merchants assembled little packets of cash, or vouchers for cellphone credit, wrapped up in scarves and presented with compliments. I understood this as pragmatism. Who wouldn’t want to protect themselves against armed zealots? Almost every building in the city wore the scars of previous wars, and men with missing legs hobbled on wooden crutches or wheeled themselves along the rutted alleyways in hand-cranked contraptions. It made sense that city residents would have psychological scars as well. I did not want to believe that an average person in Kandahar would willingly sponsor the death of foreign soldiers, or that gifts for the Talibanrepresented votes in favour of the brutal movement. If ordinary citizens were helping the insurgents, I guessed, the climate of fear must be making people crazy.
    So I went to see a psychologist. Abdul Rahim Halimyar, forty-eight, ran the only mental health clinic in the city, although it looked more like a drug dealer’s lair than a medical establishment. That impression proved correct, in some ways, because Dr. Halimyar’s practice consisted mostly of prescribing mind-dulling