The Taliban Shuffle_ Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan - Kim Barker [108]
“Farouq?” I said loudly, still smiling. “Is this safe?”
“You’re fine,” he answered from the hallway.
We smiled and nodded some more. Farouq and the commander walked back into the office. A prison guard then poured green tea—first for the commander, then the Taliban, then Farouq, then me. I knew my place so I didn’t complain. The guard slapped down trays of chewy candies and bitter almonds for us to eat, before slumping in a chair in the corner. A fourth alleged Taliban member walked into the room.
“If somebody gives me a suicide vest, I will be the first one to blow up these guards,” proclaimed the man, sentenced to eighteen years for allegedly killing four Chinese construction workers. He gestured toward the guard in the corner, who appeared to be falling asleep. “If I get out, I will fight them. If some Islamic country could pay me, I am ready.”
The commander laughed.
The men I talked to that day were not much help with the overall goals of the Taliban or negotiations. Some said they were never Taliban. Others said they joined the Taliban after being unjustly imprisoned. But I learned how pervasive corruption was alleged to be in the justice system. All said they had been asked for bribes of tens of thousands of dollars to get their sentences reduced. All said they could not afford that much, but that other accused Taliban members had paid the bribes and were now free. One Taliban inmate insisted that Afghanistan didn’t have actual defense lawyers. Instead, inmates had brokers, middlemen between them and the judge or prosecutor.
Two senior police officials had earlier told me that many prisoners had paid off police officers to escape. The year before, fifteen prisoners had been taken to be executed, the first mass execution since Karzai’s election. Although this was supposed to send a message to Afghans that the country’s justice system was now functioning, it sent quite a different message. The executions were sloppy, mass shootings against a wall. And three guards had allowed the escape of Afghanistan’s most famous criminal, who had been sentenced to die for kidnapping, rape, and murder. In this environment, with such a topsy-turvy and often corrupt justice system, it was difficult to dismiss the claims of these alleged Taliban members.
One man sounded particularly credible. He said he was a low-level Taliban member when the regime was in power, but after Karzai came, he reconciled with the government. When three Afghan army soldiers were kidnapped by the Taliban in his district, near Kabul, he helped mediate their release. He said he was arrested because of false information given by a man who owed him money. The former Taliban member was then sentenced to seven years in prison. He told me he would rejoin the Taliban when he got out.
“I am from a tribe of three hundred and fifty young men,” he said. “They are all against what’s been done to me. Of course, they are also now against the government.”
His story—of leaving the Taliban, only to be arrested later because of a personal rivalry—was familiar. So was his story of entire clans turning against the government for a perceived slight against one member. The Afghan government seemed to be losing the Afghans. In the south, clerics who had backed