The Taliban Shuffle_ Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan - Kim Barker [0]
The names and identifying characteristics of some of the people mentioned in this book have been changed to protect the privacy and preserve the confidences of those individuals and their families.
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Jacket design by Emily Mahon
Jacket photograph by Jared Moosy/Redux
Photo retouching by Benjamin Weisman
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Barker, Kim, 1970–
The Taliban shuffle : strange days in Afghanistan and Pakistan /
Kim Barker.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Afghan War, 2001—Press coverage. 2. Barker, Kim,
1970– 3. War correspondents—Afghanistan—Biography.
4. War correspondents—Pakistan—Biography. 5. War
correspondents—United States—Biography. 6. Afghanistan—
History—2001– 7. Pakistan—History—21st century. I. Title.
DS371.4135B37 2011
958.104′7—dc22 2010024348
eISBN: 978-0-385-53332-4
v3.1
To the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan,
who are still waiting for the punch line
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map
PART I KABUL HIGH
CHAPTER 1 Welcome to the Terrordome
CHAPTER 2 Montana
CHAPTER 3 American Idiot
CHAPTER 4 There Goes My Gun
CHAPTER 5 One Way or Another
CHAPTER 6 March of the Pigs
CHAPTER 7 Monkey Gone to Heaven
CHAPTER 8 Message in a Bottle
CHAPTER 9 Let’s Get Radical
CHAPTER 10 Hell Yes
CHAPTER 11 My New House
CHAPTER 12 Barely Legal
PART II WHACK-A-STAN
CHAPTER 13 Under Pressure
CHAPTER 14 Highway to Hell
CHAPTER 15 God Save the Queen
CHAPTER 16 Stray Cat Strut
CHAPTER 17 Lucky Star
CHAPTER 18 Suspicious Minds
CHAPTER 19 Rebel, Rebel
CHAPTER 20 Why Can’t We Be Friends?
CHAPTER 21 London Calling
CHAPTER 22 Deadbeat Club
CHAPTER 23 Eye of the Tiger
CHAPTER 24 Bad Liver and a Broken Heart
CHAPTER 25 Young Americans
CHAPTER 26 When the Man Comes Around
CHAPTER 27 Hotel California
Epilogue: Take It or Leave It
Acknowledgments
About the Author
PART I KABUL
HIGH
CHAPTER 1
WELCOME TO THE TERRORDOME
I had always wanted to meet a warlord. So we parked our van on the side of the beige road and walked up to the beige house, past dozens of skinny young soldiers brandishing Kalashnikov assault rifles and wearing mismatched khaki outfits and rope belts hiked high on their waists. Several flaunted kohl eyeliner and tucked yellow flowers behind their ears. Others decorated their rifle butts with stickers of flowers and Indian movie starlets. Male ethnic Pashtuns loved flowers and black eyeliner and anything fluorescent or sparkly, maybe to make up for the beige terrain that stretched forever in Afghanistan, maybe to look pretty.
Outside the front door, my translator Farouq and I took off our shoes before walking inside and sitting cross-legged on the red cushions that lined the walls. The decorations spanned that narrow range between unicorn-loving prepubescent girl and utilitarian disco. Bright, glittery plastic flowers poked out of holes in the white walls. The curtains were riots of color.
We waited. I was slightly nervous about our reception. Once, warlord Pacha Khan Zadran had been a U.S. ally, one of the many Afghan warlords the Americans used to help drive out the Taliban regime for sheltering Osama bin Laden and his minions after the attacks of September 11, 2001. But like a spoiled child, Pacha Khan had rebelled against his benefactors, apparently because no one was paying enough attention to him. First he turned against the fledgling Afghan government, then against his American allies. In an epic battle over a mountain pass, the Americans had just killed the warlord’s son. The Pashtun code required revenge, among other things, and now, six days after the battle, here I was, a fairly convenient American, waiting like a present on a pillow in Pacha Khan’s house, hoping to find a story edgy enough to make