Holy War, Inc. by Peter L. Bergen

Author:Peter L. Bergen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2001-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

We also talked of the Taliban, to which Rahimullah had unrivaled access, not only because he was one of the best journalists in Pakistan but also because he is from the Pathan tribal group, as is the Taliban leadership. In fact, Rahimullah was and is one of the few journalists to have interviewed its reclusive leader, Mullah Omar. Rahimullah described a man who avoided foreigners like the plague and who operated the Taliban treasury in a manner reminiscent of a twelfth-century English monarch. “Mullah Omar has a box in his room; he takes a key out of his pocket, opens the box, and takes out wads of money,” which he then distributed to whoever needed it.

Rahimullah confirmed my sense that the Taliban were not necessarily the ardent fans of bin Laden that their public statements suggested, “I have privately heard some criticism,” he said. “They say sarcastically. ‘Even after the war [against the communists] we are required to look after bin Laden.’ ” Other observers of the Taliban pointed out that there have been splits between the hardliners and the moderates, who want more contacts with the West and for whom bin Laden is a headache. 35

Rahimullah wished me well on my trip, and, with mounting excitement, I set off for Afghanistan. I traveled the same route I had taken two years before to meet bin Laden, and once again stayed at the Spinghar Hotel in Jalalabad, where I was the only guest. I remembered the desk clerk from my previous trip. He had grown an impressive beard in the interim, no doubt to ingratiate himself with the local Taliban leadership. For the privilege of staying at his zero-star hotel, the clerk charged me the outrageous fee of eighty dollars a night—a sum that approximates the yearly income of the average Afghan. He later visited my room wondering whether I had any “spare” dollars or pounds, as he “collected” foreign currency. Chutzpah, Taliban-style.

The next morning I started off for Kabul. Happy families, Tolstoy wrote, are all alike, and each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way; the same might be said of the family of nations. And by just about any indicator, Afghanistan is not a happy nation. According to a guidebook from the seventies, the trip from Jalalabad to Kabul should take two and a half hours. 36 Today it takes closer to seven; two decades of war have pounded the road into little more than a stony track broken up by enormous craters. This has generated a small-time industry for boys and old men, who shovel heaps of gravel into the potholes in the expectation of small tips thrown out the windows of passing cars.

As we entered Kabul we passed streets that looked like Dresden after the firestorms of World War II, or Grozny after the Russians had destroyed it for the second time. It’s not surprising that when children in Kabul play war games, they don’t make the “bang, bang” sounds that most American kids make. Instead, they say “tac, tac”—the sound of the incoming fire with which they have grown up.

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