The Taliban Shuffle_ Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan - Kim Barker [62]
But his first major target—a rival accused of the relatively benign crime of threatening a judge—easily evaded arrest, despite cops surrounding his house. Sabit then accused the Kabul airport police chief of corruption, although the chief was universally considered clean. When I worked on a story about corruption, about all the Afghan officials who had asked for shirini (Dari for sweets), a man told me a prosecutor under Sabit had asked for $2,000 to free his nephew. And even when Sabit had legitimate targets, he was often ignored. He arrested corrupt officials in the provinces of Herat, Balkh, and Khost. They were released almost as soon as he left town.
Then Sabit messed up publicly. In the spring of 2007, he picked a fight with Tolo TV, the most powerful TV station in Afghanistan. He charged that the station had misquoted him by saying he had said “system” when he really said “judicial system”—impossible considering that Sabit’s statement had been televised, and ridiculous because the distinction hardly mattered. In a typical jackbooted abuse of power, Sabit sent police to surround the TV station and arrest various employees. At least two Tolo workers were beaten up. For Sabit, that was not a smart move, considering that Tolo had some very influential Western friends, not to mention pushy journalists. Tolo reporters then dug into Sabit’s life, finding out that despite his avowed hatred of corruption, he had somehow secured a nice plot of land behind a hospital in Wazir Akbar Khan, one of Kabul’s most exclusive neighborhoods, through connections to the Kabul city government. Other journalists interviewed brothel and restaurant owners claiming they were asked for kickbacks. Some said the most significant change under Sabit was an increase in bribe amounts.
Sabit was his own worst enemy. He had earlier given a TV interview where he had called one of the top religious men in the country a “donkey pussy,” a common epithet in Afghanistan. Tolo started playing the clip of Sabit saying “donkey pussy” incessantly—inserting it into the satirical TV show Danger Bell. Weeks later, Sabit picked a fight with a Northern Alliance warlord, one described by an Afghan in a 2003 Human Rights Watch report as a “maniac” and “dangerous.” On the way to a spot where Afghans picnicked on Friday afternoons, Sabit jumped out of his car during a traffic jam. He was typically angry and blustery, yelling at people, telling them where to go. The warlord drove up with his family, and the two men somehow got into a fight. Sabit was beaten with rifle butts. Although he wasn’t seriously injured, the attack showed his power, or lack of it. Police were sent out to the Panjshir Valley to arrest the warlord, but his militia quickly sent them home. Everyone said they were sorry and moved on.
Despite our falling out, I didn’t relish Sabit’s humiliation. It implied that Afghanistan was dangerously fragile—not because the Taliban was so strong but because the government was so weak. Karzai just kept bending. When anyone challenged him, he folded. And his handling of various crises indicated that he cared more about the foreigners than the Afghans, which made him even more unpopular.
One such crisis involved Ajmal Naqshbandi, the poet of a translator who had helped me when Farouq got married. He was the Afghan everyone talked about, the example of the lack of justice, of the compromises Karzai made. Since I had worked with him three years earlier, he had grown as a journalist, dangerously so. Ajmal had repeatedly traveled to risky parts of the east, developing sources with insurgents there, and he was crazy enough to meet them face-to-face. I saw Ajmal occasionally when he worked with friends or waved from a passing car. Sometimes we