The Taliban Shuffle_ Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan - Kim Barker [27]
By the time Farouq came back to work, the election campaign was in full swing. Covering the election was a little like writing about the zoo—lots of scars, lots of confusion, lots of mysterious pigs. This election was the final step in the transition to full sovereignty outlined in the 2001 Bonn Agreement, the road map for creating an Afghan government that had been hashed out by prominent Afghans—including most major warlords—in Germany during the fall of the Taliban. Many of the country’s top warlords were running for parliament, including some who always made the “best of” lists drawn up by various human-rights groups that no one ever listened to, warlords accused of pounding nails into people’s heads, of pouring boiling oil over a body after cutting off a head, which Afghans swore would make a headless body dance.
For years, the international community and the Afghans had been toying with what to do about the warlords and past war crimes, pushing the issue around like a large piece of gristle. The UN, the Afghan government, and its backers had theoretically disarmed the illegal militias and defanged the warlords, but no one had been held accountable for anything. This election, in effect, would erase the board of all previous atrocities and eliminate any possibility of holding any of the warlords responsible for their crimes. Then again, maybe it was already too late. The capricious warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, known for switching sides like a celebrity changing hair color, was the chief of staff to the commander in chief of the armed forces, a lengthy title that was largely ceremonial but that permitted Dostum to do pretty much what he wanted; Ismail Khan was now minister of power and water; several former warlords were also governors. The wing of Islamist party Hezb-i-Islami that claimed to have broken from founder Gulbuddin Hekmatyar backed many candidates for parliament. Meanwhile, Hekmatyar and the rest of Hezb-i-Islami were busy attacking U.S. troops in eastern Afghanistan.
This election was, perhaps, the most confusing ever held anywhere. Somehow, a voter in Kabul was supposed to pick one candidate out of 390. The ballot folded out into seven large pages, and each candidate had a photograph and a symbol, because many Afghans were illiterate. But creativity ran out, and symbols had to be reused. Candidates were identified as different objects, including a pair of scissors, one camel, two camels, three camels, two sets of barbells, mushrooms, two ice-cream cones, three corncobs, two tomatoes, stairs, a turkey, two turkeys, one eye, a pair of eyes, a tire, two tires, three tires—to name a few. The symbols were randomly drawn out of a box.
The journalists struggled to make sense of the election, of the candidates, of the lack of interest back home. For me, the election was complicated by my inability to sleep. The Gandamack had welcomed me back and all was forgiven, especially after I repeatedly apologized for the Laundry Incident. I had loaned one of the Afghan women who ran the place a Pilates exercise DVD; the Afghan front-door guard, who lost one leg when he stepped on a land mine during the civil war, pumped my arm like it would deliver oil when I first returned. The Washington Post was there; the Guardian was there; the award-winning British TV journalist doing a documentary on female drivers was there; a photographer friend was there; a group of genial security contractors was there. But my personal life intruded. I had not yet ended my relationship with Chris—I wasn’t sure why, maybe because I was never home, maybe because I felt guilty,