where the taliban roam - dodging the jihad in pakistan's tribal lands

8/8/2019 Where the Taliban Roam - Dodging the Jihad in Pakistan's Tribal Lands

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Alyssa Banta-by twenty-two-year-

old Uzma, who had made Alyssa's ac-

quaintance while buying contraband

Oil of Olay in Peshawar's smuggler's

market. It was early October, and

Alyssa and I were among the glut of

journalists gathered in Peshawar toawait the u.s. attack on Afghanistan.The border itself was effectively off-

limits, since the Pakistani government

had recently added its own purdah bydeclaring non-residents' travel to the

tribal lands illegal. And on this day es-

pecially, the locals did not look too

kindly on visitors from America.

But Uzma didn't care. She was tired,

she said, of the foreign media making

claims about a world they'd never seen.

"Of course we can go to my village,"

she said. "Why not, it's my village. Ifmy father says yes, then no one can

stop us." Privilege, it must be said, had

much to do with Uzma's boldness, if

not her sentiments. Her dutiful father

is a deputy inspector general of Pak-

istan's police, her family the richest in

the village, one of the few that spends

most of the year in Peshawar. Uzma's

family, descended from khans, has

been wealthy for several generations.

Her great-grandfather, a tribal

malik (elder), was awarded a

salary as a liaison to the Britishgovernment. To his descen-

dants he imparted a belief in

both the necessity of education

and high-paying jobs such as

government posts and medicine

(Uzma's aunt is the firstwoman

doctor in Waziristan).

It is in part perhaps because

of the influence of Uzma's fam-

ily that on our first visit pash-tunwali won the day and her vil-lage had welcomed us, most

claiming to like Americans ingeneral, one neighbor citing our

citizens' "independence" for

special praise. Still, many in the

circle of women that quickly

formed around us cast a furious

eye at Uzrna, our only transla-

tor. But even criticisms were

couched in a jovial, teasing

tone, as if it were understood

that we had no personal responsibili-

ty for U.S. actions.

In any case, it was clear that our

disguises weren't working. Althoughour veils and salwar kameez had been

5 8 H A R P ER ' S M A G A Z I N E / S E PT E M B E R 20 03

provided and vetted by Uzma and her

mother, alone together here women

may reveal their faces and hair, and

both of mine are far too pale for com-

fort. Above us, invisible F-16scould be

heard strafing the clear sky from east to

west, crossing from Pakistan toAfghanistan, where many of the village

men had already gone to fight along-

side the T aliban. Those that remained

gathered in the rutted alleys and along

the main dirt track leading out of town,

shooting pirated Kalashnikovs at the

sky to protest the use of

r J " '" their airspace.

~ ensions naturally have in-

creased by the time of our return vis-

it, so our veils have been multiplied

and the car itself curtained. We havebeen driving for the past five hours,

accompanying Uzma and her family

on one of their semiannual trips

from their marble home in Peshawar

back to Janikhel. Before us, scree

fields stretch flat and colorless for a

hundred miles before rising into the

8,000-foot Wazir hills along the

Afghan border. In the front seat:

Uzrna's twelve-year-old brother,

Momin; Barkatullah, the guard; and

Inamullah, the driver. In the back,

Alyssa and I sit with Uzma and her

mother, Tehrnina.This trip is Uzma's last before she

marries her cousin Ilyas Wazir, and

her mother, with her fat man's laugh

and a box of marzipan at her feet, is

indulgent. She has always done

things for her five children that the

Wazirs frown upon, such as educating

her daughters despite death threatsfrom her husband's family. "When

she was a child, I fed Uzma oranges

in secret," she says, chuckling behind

the large black sunglasses she uses to

hold her veil in place. "Fruit was too

special for girls." Her wrists chime

with gold bangles, and on her lap she

holds a plastic pocketbook full of ru-

pees to hand out as zakat (alms) to

the village poor, which is pretty

much everyone besides Uzrna's im-

mediate family and that of her fiance

and her cousin Khalid.Under layers of synthetic veils,

even my eyelids are sweating. I have

never seen any other Pashtun woman

veiled to this extent, but Uzrna and

her mother assure me it is the safest

way. Even in late afternoon it's still

over a hundred degrees and we must

reach the village before dark. We

should have more guards but that

would require Uzma to call ahead,

which she doesn't want to do

in case the villagers say no to

our visit. "Insha'al lah, it's bet-ter to surprise them," she saysunconvincingly.

In Bannu, the last town we

pass through before the tribal

territory begins, we sit stalled

by donkey carts while men peer

into the curtained car. John

Walker Lindh attended the

Madrassah-l-Arabia here. His

teacher, Mufti Iltimas, saysthat

Lindh left because he couldn't

stand the summer heat. Dur-

ing the Soviet invasion of

Afghanistan in the 1980s,

Waziristan became home to at

least ninety madrasas (Islamicschools), many preaching the

radical Deobandi strain of Is-

lam for which the Taliban are

known. Now, according to in-

formers paid by the United

States, at least 800 Al Qaeda

and ex-T aliban soldiers are hiding in

the tribal land, reportedly traveling in

pickup trucks with local guides. "They

pretend to be Islamic preachers or

Afghan refugees," a Wazir official told

lllustration b y Mike Reagan


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the Guardian, "but of course we know

they are Arabs and Chechens; they

are Al Qaeda." Although the visitors

are generally seen as nothing but trou-

ble, under pashtunwali the Wazirs are

honor-bound to provide all of them

with refuge.

Since Waziristan has become thefocus of the effort to root out the re-

gion's Al Qaeda operatives, Uzma's

father, a tribal malik, has struggled in

his role as a loyal Wazir. He speaks

to the tribesmen daily from Pesh-

awar on one of the three village

phones located in the houses of

three powerful elders. When he can,

he gives police jobs to the village

men, which they sometimes don't

accept because they don't like to

wear the required Western-style

pants. The villagers belong to the

clan of Ediakhel [EE-dee-ah-hell],

one of 300 Wazir subtribes. They

used to be seminomadic farmers (and

still subsist on nuts, apples, toma-

toes, corn, dates, wild honey, and

sugarcane when the arid land al-

lows). Now heroin supports most of

the tribal economy, though the trade

has suffered because of increased

border control after September 11.

Not all tribesmen are involved in

the drug trade, but those who are-

the most notorious being the neigh-

boring tribe of Afridis-are formida-

ble smugglers, trafficking hashish,

opium, and heroin around the

world. Uzma's father is convinced

that education is the answer,

though he smiles while explaining

local defiance in the face of such

suggestions. "Ask a Wazir politely to

go to hell, he'll go," he says. "Butpush him to go to heaven, and he'll

fight you to the death."

The Wazirs are among the fiercest

of the sixty tribes that make up the

world's 25 million Pashtuns, who are

split almost evenly between Af-

ghanistan and Pakistan. With their

green eyes, brown skin, and aquiline

features, Pashtuns share the blood of

every invader since the Persians-

including the Greeks, Turks, and

Mongols. Legend has it they can

trace their Semitic ancestry to King

Saul. Saul's descendant Qais (later

known as Pashtun), who traveled to

Medina, was blessed by the Prophet

before returning to the Peshawar

Valley. Qais's fourth son, Karlanri,

is said to be the father of

Sthe Wazirs.

oon the lawn-mower whine of a

Suzuki motorcycle whizzes past us.

Astride it: a bearded man in sun-

glasses, a bandolier slung over his

chest. 'That's Atlas, the hero of the

village," Uzma says. "He's the com-

pounder. He mixes medicines and acts

as the doctor, and he takes good care

of our people." We follow him up the

road. This glimpse of his back is the

closest we'll get to him, because lat-

er, in the village, he refuses to

meet us, because, he says, weare women (the village women

whisper that it is really because

he feels stupid that he cannot

speak our language). Waziristan

is rife with tribal fighting, and

this stretch of road issupposed to

be closed because of banditry,

but Atlas refuses to relinquish

the shortcut from Bannu to

J anikhel. Yesterday, we are told,

he single-handedlv opened the

road, saying, "I don't care if I

die," before shouldering his gunand mounting his motorcycle.

North and South Waziristan,

along with five other tribal ar-

eas-Bajaur, Mohmand, Khy-

ber, Orakzai, and Kurram-

make up the 10,000 square

miles of tribal lands along the

border between Afghanistan

and Pakistan. North Waziristan

was the last of the tribal areas to

allow both Pakistani and U.S. au-

thorities to search for Al Qaeda. Al-

though the other tribal areas are alsoknown for their drug smuggling and

weapons trafficking, Waziristan's

brand of brigandage is the most infa-

mous. When there is no outside en-

emy the Wazirs of South Waziristan

and the Mahsuds of North Waziristan

fight each other and their neighbor-

ing Pashtuns over the proverbial zar,

zan, and zanim {land, women, and

gold)-and, lately, electricity.

Between our visits, the Pakistani

army had entered the territory for the

firsttime in the nation's history and be-

gan working with reportedly more than

1,000 American and British troops to

root out Al Qaeda and Taliban fight-

ers. The Wazirs are not only hostile

to the presence of "foreign invaders";

locals who help them have been killed

as traitors to the Pashtuns. Last year,af-

ter more than ten U.S.-led operations,

anti-American sentiment was rising

sharply. The number of cross-border

raidsagainst U.S. forceshas never been

higher, and at least nine U.S. soldiers

have been killed along the Wazir

border. According to the U.S. Defense

L E IT E R FR O M W A Z IR I ST A N 5 9


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Department, the official death toll

remains classified.

Five months before our return to

]anikhel, U.S. forces targeted two

Waziristan m a d ra s a s , prompting thou-

sands of students across Pakistan's

North- West Frontier Province(NWFP) to demonstrate repeatedly

against U.S. operations there. After

the first raid-a joint U.S. and Pak-

istani attempt to capture high-profile

Taliban commander ]alaluddin

Haqqani-the school where U.S.

troops were billeted in North Waziri-

stan came under missile attack for the

first of five times. The presence of

Americans on their soil enrages the

Wazirs.A group called the Mujahedeen

of North Waziristan has circulated a

pamphlet: "Wake up, because the hyp-ocrite ruler [Musharrat] has challenged

faith and honor by bringing American

commandos to Miran Shah [North

Waziristan's capital]." Reportedly, sev-

eral tribesmen have been killed for giv-

ing information to the FBI, and tribal

leaders have announced fines of

50,000,000 rupees ($90,000) and the

demolition of homes for

Jthose who help Americans.

ust before dark we turn off the

makeshift road and jounce toward[anikhel, which looks like a child's

dripped sand castle surrounded by

scrubby acacia trees and twenty-foot

crenellated mud walls. We drivepast the first of two tiny mosques

and pull into the narrow track of

open sewer that serves as a path be-tween the village's hundred homes.

Next to the main mosque is a large

whitewashed building with green

doors and shutters: the chawk, where

men spend their days lying on

charpais (wooden beds) in the cool

of a shaded room. Tribal men's

clothes are predominantly white,

and remain relatively pristine be-

cause the men don't work. Most

days they gather at the chawk to dis-

cuss the price of rifle cartridges, guns

at their feet.

Our Jeep can just squeeze through

the narrow track. There are no other

vehicles here. In each house lives a

family of eight or so. In some, one

son has gone to Dubai to work and

send money home. Money is rela-

tively new to most tribesmen. "The

6 0 H A R PE R 'S M A G AZ I NE / S E P TE M B ER 2 0 0 3

world seems different here now,"

Barkatullah, rhe guard, says as we

snake past the dark houses. "We kill

people for very small things. When

there was no money here, there used

to be a lot of love between people."

The headlights catch the eyes of thepack of village dogs, already released

for the night patrol. Finally we pull

up to the corrugated tin gates of Uz-

rna's compound, where a hollow-

eyed heroin addict is waiting for us.

A servant, he arrived last year with

his family from nearby Bannu, seek-

ing refuge from a blood feud, and Uz-

rna's father put him to work.

As soon as we are inside the gate,

a succession of stout and wrinkled

women enter slowly behind us, eas-

ing themselves onto wooden charpais

on the veranda. With most of their

work done for the day, the village

wives, all cousins, are permitted to

visit Tehmina. At their ankles are

barefoot children with the reddish

hair caused by malnutrition, which

has existed here for centuries. The

children's limbs are covered with

pustules the size of quarters-sum-

mer pox, an ancient plague, I'm told,

which no one knows how to cure.

While the women talk, the children

pick lice from their mothers' hair.Little boys do nothing all day but

play cricket. Girls make mud fig-

urines. Most schools are ghost

schools, which means that a tribalmalik offers the Pakistani govern-

ment land for a school and the gov-

ernment pays, say, his son, ateacher's salary, but the school never

opens. Taliban madrasas have be-

come the only form of education.

Tehmina drags bags of clothes

onto the veranda, and the women

swarm around the piles and argue.

Her cast-off city clothes stand out

among the smocked tribal dresses.

Last year's gifts of high-heeled flip-

flops are still popular under the

women's patchwork frocks. Among

the faces I recognize from the year

before is that of Ghuta, which

means the fat one, and of Ghunga,

a deaf-mute. Ghu ta's hair has

turned white. I guess that she's sev-

enty but learn later that she's in her

fifties. She clasps a withered hand

to my shoulder and smiles gruffly.

Ghunga pulls at my hair, raises her

eyebrows, and smiles. Yes, I nod, my

hair has grown. She pokes at Uz-

rna's nose and grimaces. No, Uzma's

nose isn't pierced yet, though her fi-

ance has given her a diamond she

should be wearing there. The rest of

the women, who surely recognize usfrom last year, make no effort to

greet us.

In Waziristan, even at night, the

plain's heat makes it difficult to

move. We lounge with the women

on the low-lying charpais, the

house's only furniture. In the midst

of gossip about who is using too

much of the scant electricity-a pi-

rated line runs from Bannu-they

ask about us. Uzma begins to spin

our story. This year, because of the

war, we need to be more fully ex-plained. I am from Dubai, married

and converting to Islam, but do not

yet pray five times a day. (Alyssa,

supposedly, has her period, so she

doesn't need to pray either.) It's not

really clear how much of this they

believe. Anyone with white skin is

Angrez-English. But Angrez, Amer-

ican, and CIA are interchangeable.

There is only one thing worse:

NGO. The tribespeople believe that

nongovernmental organizations are

the most insidious aliens becausethey're out to change the Pashtun

way of life. Wazirs essentially suspect

every foreigner of being a Christian

missionary. To date, there have beentwo NGO visitors. One, it is said,

made a disparaging remark about

men dancing with men.

In the semi-darkness, a turbaned

man dressed entirely in white arrives

at the gate. The women stop their

chatter and cover their heads. Since

they're all related to him, they don't

need to cover their faces. The man is

Nakurn, the village busybody. He ad-

monishes Tehmina, insisting that

she needs more guards to protect us.

"Aren't my guests safe here?" she

asks, hands on hips.

"They're our guests, but you've

brought them here and it's your re-

sponsibility to protect them," he

warns before stooping back through

the small door in the gate. T ehmina

looks worried. Pashtunwali mandates

that the entire village must protect

its guests, especially since we are

women. Nakum's warning means


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In Uzrna's watchtower, empty sy-

ringes lie piled by the gun sights.

The hollow-eyed guard sleeps up

bits of information from what the

women say to one another and what

they don't say. When I ask about

here. He's supposed to be kicking

his drug habit (one of the condi-

tions Uzma's father has put on his

gift of refuge). When I point them

out, Uzma just stares into the dis-

tance. "They could be for medi-

cine," she says. Uzma had completed

her second year of medical schoolbefore dropping out. "We're caught

in between two worlds," she ex-

plains. "We're not perfect Muslims

and we're not totally modern." She

says she wants to bring more schools

to Waziristan ("which I will, in-

sha' a l lah, when I'm married"). Still,

she cannot stand the idea of govern-

ment soldiers infiltrating her land.

"We all hate terrorism," she says.

"But they're targeting the wrong

people. I swear, if I had a gun, I'd

fight the government soldiers my-self." She looks down at the village's

mud walls and wonders aloud what

it will be like to live in California

with Ilyas. Ilyas comes from one of

the wealthiest families in all of Pe-

shawar. In California, as an engi-

neering graduate student, he is de-

livering pizzas. "That's not a good

job, is it?" asks Uzrna. She knows

that in America she, too, will have

to work, "but not that hard," she

says hopefully.

Life in the village is built on acomplex pattern of visits. I gather

6 2 H A R PE R 'S M A G A ZI N E / S E PT E M BE R 2 0 J3

their children or husbands, the wom-

en listen carefully to the answers

others give, as if the speaker should

beware of revealing too many secrets

to outsiders. If they knew how much

Uzma was actually telling us, she

could be exiled, as her female cousin

was for watching television alonewith a male cousin at night. (He was

killed; she reportedly escaped after

being gang-raped.)

We leave ]anikhel to be lunch

guests at Machikhel, Uzrna's grand-

mother's village, a ten-minute drive

down a dirt road. We pile into the

one-room house, which smells of

dung and Kiwi shoe polish. Twenty

children crush in to sit on the floor

while Tehmina distributes a dollar's

worth of rupees to every woman.

"We're so glad to see you," each tellsher, to which Tehmina replies, "Pray

for me and my family." In English,

she says to us, "They come for the

money." She may be indulgent, but

she is no pushover. When one

woman laments that she can't afford

gold earrings like Tehrnina's, Tehmi-

na retorts that she should be think-

ing about feeding her children, not

gold. After Tehmina has handed out

the whole stack of rupees, her cousin

Useeno apologizes. She can't offer us

lunch after all. The village elders

forbid it unless Tehmina pays fifty

rupees for the chicken. If we pay for

food, then Useeno will not be con-

sidered to be giving us respect.

T ehmina is stunned.

"We're bound to say no, or we'll

have to pay 25,000 rupees," Useeno

explains, claiming that the villageelders are angry at Atlas-that's why

we are outcasts. I doubt this is the

sale reason.

"We won't die without having

lunch, but you've proven how selfish

you are," Barkatullah says as he picks

up his gun and storms out of the

room to the c h a w k . Tehmina reaches

into her purse and pays for lunch.

While the chicken boils, we wander

around the village under the relent-

less sun. A teenage girl follows us,

saying that recently "Arab" men ar-rived in the village and offered to

build a mosque. The village accept-

ed. No one knows who the men are.

A hawk-faced woman comes out of a

musky room and takes our hands.

"I'm sorry I'm late to meet you," she

says. "I gave birth last night." She

pulls us inside to see the baby, his

eyes already lined with kohl to ward

off evil spirits. How many children

does she have now? "Two," she says.

"Three if you count the girl."

During lunch Useeno tells Tehmi-na of the misfortunes that have be-

fallen the village in the past year.

During the war with America, hun-

dreds of men from the surrounding

villages went to Afghanistan after

the local madrasa broadcast the call

to jihad via its loudspeakers. Al-

though jihads are nothing new here,

the tribal move to join them is.

Useeno stands in the doorway with

her arms crossed to make it clear

that she is not eating with us.

"The only man who went fromour village came back after only two

months," she says. "He said, 'It's use-

less to fight against other Muslims."

This is a major point of concern:

whether or not the war was legiti-

mate jihad. It seems that the local

mullahs said little about the Muslims

of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance.

Instead, they focused on the fight

against infidels. Fighting against oth-

er Muslims negates the principle of

jihad, so when many of the tribes-

men discovered the true nature of

the fight, it is said they felt betrayed.


7/9

"My grandson wanted to go, but I

wouldn't let him," saysUseeno. "I told

him it's not real jihad. You won't be a

martyr because you're killing other

Muslims. So he didn't go."

In the nearby village of Khwa-

jadarkhel, she tells us, three T aliban

widows received their husbands

home "in clothes full of blood"-a

martyr's death. Then, as if guessing

our thoughts, she warns us how fool-

ish visiting such a Taliban strong-

hold would be.

Lunch over, we drive for twenty

minutes, scanning the horizon for

the widows' village. Barkatullah

knows its whereabouts vaguely be-

cause he attended the men's funer-

als. He says he never used to support

the local Taliban. "Because we're

Muslim brothers, we do what they

say. We know they're using Islam."

After some scrutiny, we can just

make out crenellations on the crest

of a hill. Tehmina clutches at her

bosom. This trip is a little more than

she anticipated. Barkatullah ex-

plains, "The Talibs hate America

and believe that America is against

our religion and trying to change

us." He explains that the mullahs

came to power here because there

was no law to stop them. 'This war

will never end," he says, squinting

toward the village. "Hundreds of

Qaeda fighters passed through this

way. Most stayed in this village."

The high wooden doors of the vil-

lage are locked. An armed sentry

speaks to Barkatullah and looks to-

ward the car. The gates creak open,

and we are led to a building that

looks like a lighthouse made of mud.

Inside sit three women. "We've nev-

er seen a war like this before," says

Itwar Bibi, the widow of Mohammad

Salan, one of the Taliban fighters

from the village killed in December

2001 at Khost, they say by an Amer-

ican bomb." ow none of us can

leave the Islamic brotherhood," she

adds, rocking a crate hanging from

the ceiling that serves as a crib. An-

other of her children chases a chick-

en around the tiny room, where a

crowd of women has now gathered.

Each sold her wedding jewelry to

raise money for the Taliban.

"This war will go on forever," It-

war Bibi continues, smiling politely.

"The next generation is already

preparing to fight. But what is the

result? Muslims are killing one an-

other." She says she learned that

this isn't real jihad via a radio

broadcast by the Pakistani govern-

ment after her husband had left the

village, but, she claims, her husband

didn't know that he would be fight-

ing other Muslims. "Still, my hus-

band is a shaheed [martyr] because he

thought he was fighting against non-Muslims," she concludes. We leave

the village and later learn that dur-

ing our visit all the men were armed

and hiding in the guardhouse.

They'd thought we were Pakistani

government officials come to take

the children to school in Bannu.

Halfway down the hill, on our

way to the martyrs' graves, the Jeep

blows a tire. Neither the driver nor

Barkatullah knows how to use a

jack. Alyssa and I climb down and

begin to rock the car chassis, veils

aflutter. We are underneath the

jeep when the driver shouts. In the

distance, over the flat scree plain, a

column of what looks like smoke is

rising: dust kicked up by an ap-

proaching car. We veil ourselves.

fair amount of clanking we're on

our way. The martyrs' graves stand

apart from the others: three cairns of

white stones with striped green flags

snapping in the wind, denoting

membership in Maulana Fazlur

Rehman's [amiat Ulerna-l-Islam

fighters, the most pro- Taliban

group. By the grave, boxes of salt

show that the martyrs were also

Hafiz-e-Quran, which means they'd

learned the Koran by heart twice,

the first time for the Arabic, the

second for the meaning.

As we make the hour-long journey

back to [anikhel, we drop offthe young

Talib and pick up a five-year-old boy

who has been walking for two hours to

a little house where he buys his fa-

ther's heroin. He clutches a handful

of rupees. Barkatullah holds the boy

on his lap, shaking his head

rJ"' over him.~hat evening, as Uzma and her

mother offer evening prayers on the

veranda, her little brother, Momin,

comes skulking through the green

gate, very pale. He's been playing

cricket, and the cuffs of his white sa l-

w a r k a m ee z are gray with dust. He

Barkarullah chuckles. A black Dat-

sun pulls up and stops before us, five

dark-turbaned men inside: Taliban.

One climbs down to help us, and

the truck rattles away. He is young

and doesn't seem to know what to

do with the tire either, but after a

perches on the edge of my charpaiand says in English, "The Taliban

know you're here and they're coming

to get you tonight."

"How do they know we're Ameri-

cans, or even here at all?"

"I dunno." He frowns and shuffles

L E TT ER F R OM W A ZI RI ST A N 6 3


8/9

his deck of cards, the Statue of Lib-

erty cards I'd bought him at the

Duane Reade on West Forty-second

Street in New York City. Apparent-

ly his playmates told him that the

Talibs plan to crawl over the com-

pound wall and kidnap me-the"Christian"-in the night. There is

nothing to be done. We cannot

leave the village at night or travel

through the miles of wasteland back

to Bannu. Ghuta arrives without a

word, a Kalashnikov strapped over

her ample bosom. She has asked

permission to spend the night with

us, since we have only two guards-

Barkatullah and the heroin addict,

perched in the watchtower with his

empty syringes. Outside the com-

pound walls, the pack of village dogshas been released for the night. As

we pull the charpais into the center

of the courtyard to attempt sleep, I

listen for their growls.

I try to tuck my white limbs under

the veil I'm using as a sheet. The fleas

are merciless. There is so much moon-

light I can almost see them jump. I

scan the compound's twenty-foot mud

walls.~1himpering, Momin has tucked

himself under his mother's veil. Ghuta

does not lie down. She murmurs, al-

most chants, to Uzma and her mother,and warns Uzrna not to translate what

she issaying, out of loyaltyto her Wazir

people. Uzma translates anyway.

According to Ghuta, since the

war with the United States ended,

the surrounding villages and the lo-

cal madrasa have served as pipelines

to send ex-fighters to Saudi Arabia.

Ghuta says the Taliban are regroup-

ing there, as Saudis come to Waziri-

stan with money and passports for

those loyal to their cause. It used to

be that Wazirs would dream of going

to America, because it was the land

of opportunity. Now that land is

Saudi Arabia. "If America tries to

come here," Ghuta says, "hundreds

of villages will band together with

the T aliban, though we're not with

them now." She cradles the weapon

in her lap. "We will not give the

Americans a single piece of land."

"I'm so sick of the Taliban using Is-

lam," Uzrna says to me in English,

propping herself on her elbows. When

Taliban casualties first came over the

border to Peshawar's five hospitals,

6 4 H A RP E R' S M A GA Z IN E / S E PT E M BE R 2 0 03

Uzma and her mother took food and

money to the wounded. (From my own

visits I remember the smell of rot in the

hallways.) But the Talibs refused her.

One T alib said, "Thank you, sister,

no. You didn't help us before, when

we were fighting America over theborder. We won't die now without

your 500 rupees. If you really want to

help us, give us your sons." Angered,

she lectured him on the true nature of

Islam, but he told her to shut up, leav-

ing her with a shame she can't shake.

She knows she followsan Islamshe be-

lieves in, but the Talibs' rabid zeal

makes her doubt her own devotion.

Now she wonders if the mullahs are

right about the U.S. crusade.

The night passes without incident.

But the next morning, Mornin's ru-mor proves to be true. Ghunga, the

deaf-mute, comes wheeling through

the compound's gate, gesticulating

madly. She makes her brown eyes

wide, presses her thumb to her chin

in imitation of a man's beard, then

fires an air machine gun. "The T al-

iban have arrived," explains Uzma.

"She's seen them. They've got guns,

and they're going to k ill you and take

me." She looks more excited than

worried, which is both heartening

and disturbing.It seems that three Datsuns full of

black-turbaned Talibs have just ar-

rived at the chawk next to the mosque

in the village center. They've de-

manded that the village hand us over,

"just for a week or so." Tehmina had

sent the Jeep and driver out on er-

rands, but apparently both are being

held hostage. "We need that Jeep,"

she says,"but they can keep the driver."

We laugh nervously. It occurs to me

that this could just be a village ruse to

send us on our way. Then Momin

sneaks to the chawk to see them, re-

porting back their words: "Give us the

Christian." I turn to Alyssa, terrified.

She isdark-haired and golden-skinned,

with a face that could pass for Mexican

or Arab or any number of other eth-

nicities. I am not so fortunate.

We rifle through our bags to see

what might give us away. I tuck my

notes in my underwear. The T alibs

aren't known to be rapists, and, in

any case, the Afghan refugee boys

who fled to Pakistan say that they

prefer boys. In the sink, we burn the

photocopies of our passports. Uzma

watches as we light match after

match. I can almost hear her won-

dering if we really are CIA after all.

As a gesture of respect, we are told,

the Talibs had gone to the chawk in-

stead of appearing armed at a houseof women. But now they are coming

to the house. Apparently the teen

T alib who helped us change our tire

told them that we were CIA agents,

using an X-ray camera to see the

martyrs' corpses. But it turns out that

Atlas refuses to hand us over, and

the Tal ibs won't come to the

house-if indeed we are CIA, they

think that we may be able to seize

them, Uzma says. She laughs at the

idea that the Talibs are afraid of us

but looks a bit stunned: could it bethat we are not who we say we are?

Finally, our Jeep is returned, and

word comes from the chawk: we mustleave by sundown. The Taliban claim

they've aimed missiles at Uzma's

house. A warning shot alone, Ghuta

explains, would put the entire village

at risk: "If the Taliban should fire at

you, just as a tease, without hitting

you, it's called a bayizatee, an insult,

for which our men must fight." We

veil ourselves and climb into the car.

"At least I learned how to change atire," says Tehmina, with her deep-

bellied laugh, picking a piece

of marzipan from a box in

Aher lap.

week after we left Waziristan,

the frontier police stopped a pickup

truck full of armed men at a check-

point outside of Janikhel. After a skir-

mish with local tribesmen, the police

were forced to free the men, whom

they believed to be Chechen Al Qae-

da. As punishment the Pakistani army

rolled nine-pound guns into Janikhel

the next day. Against their will, vil-

lagers marked the houses of local Tal-

iban collaborators with red paint, so

that they could be destroyed. Ghuta's

house was among them. That house

is gone now.

Two months later, for the first time

in thirty years, NWFP elections

brought into power the Muttahida-

Majlis-e-Arnal, a pro-Bin Laden,

anti-United States religious coalition,

which vehemently opposes the inva-

sion of Iraq. There also have been in-


9/9

telligence reports of a "huge quantity

of weapons" being smuggled into

North and South Waziristan, slated, it

is assumed, for waging a war against

American forces across the Afghan

border. In January, after an American

soldier was shot by a tribal borderscout, the United States retaliated by

dropping a SOO-pound bomb on a

Waziristan madrasa, killing two Wazir

scouts, members of the paramilitary

tribal force supposedly working with

the 82nd Airborne. Their brother

scouts fasted in protest. Now U.S.

troops on the Waziristan border have

reportedly hired eighty Wazirs as

guards. Taliban and Al Qaeda resis-

tance in the area continually plagues

the 9,000 U.S. soldiersstationed there.

North Waziristan's capital is only thir-ty miles from Khost, one of the worst

pockets of fighting still left in south-

eastern Afghanistan. In the past year

at least twenty U.S. soldiershave been

killed along that border, and at least

eleven tribesmen have been killed in

errant bombings.

When the United States invaded

Iraq in March, the tribesmen threat-

ened to raise a force of more than 1,000

fighters to launch cross-border attacks,

and apparently they did just that, giv-

en the increase of such attacks lastspring. In response, a joint U.S. and

Italian force has launched Operation

Dragon Fury to prevent, according to

the U.S. Defense Department, "the

reemergence of terrorism" along the

Afghan border, where the Pashtuns

wage jihad not only for their own

people but for the Iraqis now as well.

Last year, Uzrna had claimed that if

the United States went to war in Iraq,

she would know that the mullahs were

right: America had indeed launched a

jihad against all Muslims. This yearshe is living in California with Ilyas,

pregnant. When their son is born this

fall, he will be an American. _

Answers to the August Quiz, "La-

bor Pains"

1 Cobblers; 2 Females; 3 World War

I; 4 All three; 5 Zero; 6 The strike; 7

Grover Cleveland; 8 Ronald Reagan;

9 Joe Hill; 10 U.S. president; 11 New

York Tribune; 12 half .. . half; 13W.E.B. DuBois; 14 Convicts.

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where the taliban roam - dodging the jihad in pakistan's tribal lands

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