visitor arrived, checking bags, frisking, prodding them with questions, and so forth.
A lush flower garden in the main courtyard, just past the perimeter, perfumed the air with assorted roses and wild jasmine. A row of small stone stools and faucets lined the entrance for guests to perform ablutions before prayer. Staff and occupants warmly greeted new arrivals by simultaneously slapping one another on opposite shoulders. Such contrasts are ubiquitous in Afghanistan—a severe country, punctuated by harsh landscapes and perennial violence, yet home to welcoming and generous people.
One of the Guesthouse residents was the governor’s security attaché, a stocky Tajik Afghan whom Wahid and I nicknamed “Tank” on account of his build. Tank stood out because he didn’t wear a thick beard and local clothes. Instead, he sported a neatly trimmed mustache, black slacks, and a white short-sleeved shirt. He flashed a glamorous smile, walked forcefully with an open, holstered sidearm, and rapidly dispatched soldiers and security personnel. Tank had personally shielded Khost’s governor against four assassination attempts. The last one occurred at a hospital, when a man dressed like a doctor exploded his suicide bomb just four yards away. You need a keen eye to pick out suicide bombers, said Tank, who explained that he could quickly recognize suspects because they often sweat nervously and dress in bulky clothing or seem to be carrying suspiciously heavy gear. And how do you stop them? Tank said he tried to shoot them in the leg instead of the head (which is difficult to aim at) or the chest (where the bomb is typically strapped).
“It is very difficult, and if you miss you hit people behind him,” he said.
A large sign with “Civilian Military Operations Center” emblazoned in English in large black letters occupied the main wall upstairs. Khost’s Governor’s Guesthouse was once the location for US military offices, and our rooms were plastered with military maps: the “Afghanistan Town and Airfield Plans (AIR),” produced by the DGIA (the UK’s Defence Geographic and Imagery Intelligence Agency), and a massive gray “unclassified” map of Khost province “produced by the 25th Engineering Detachment, 25th Infantry Division (Light).” Our accommodations seemed to afford the best security in the city, and yet these relics of a foreign military presence hardly made it an ideal place to meet former detainees.
Many of the Afghans connected to the Dilawar case were wary about describing their experiences; some feared meeting with an American, perhaps suspecting I was connected to the US military. Wahid and I first met Shapoor, Dilawar’s older brother, who raised and sold livestock in Khost province. He was initially leery about helping us, but once he understood that we genuinely wanted to learn what had happened to his brother, he changed his mind and helped arrange interviews with the taxi driver who witnessed how the Afghan forces handled Dilawar during his initial arrest. Days later, Shapoor informed us that the taxi driver “had to go to a family funeral.”
“I think he will not come—I am sure he is too afraid.”
We asked if we could meet Dilawar’s closest friend, Bacha Khan.
“He will not meet you. He is too afraid.”
How about meeting the rest of the family? Maybe your parents?
“Every time they hear his name, it is as though he has just died,” explained Shapoor. “As soon as they hear ‘Dilawar,’ they begin crying and don’t stop for twenty days.”
“This upsets us so much because we support the government,” he said, referring to the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.
Shapoor combed his hair with his henna-painted fingernails and tugged his pakol hat around his head. He inhaled deep lungfuls of cigarette smoke and described how he tried to rescue his younger brother and allay his parents’ fears.
We met others who knew Dilawar and were with him at various times during his journey, including former detainees from Bagram. Parkhudin was one of Dilawar’s passengers. He had been with Dilawar from the start, when their journey first began on Khost’s dirt road to Salerno, and he eventually wound up in Guantanamo after being held by US forces in Afghanistan. After he was released from US captivity, he returned home and was soon jailed for robbery. The only way to interview Parkhudin was to meet with him in an Afghan jail.
One afternoon, Sadat drove us to Khost’s local prison, an old fortresslike facility that offered a panoramic view of the city. Parkhudin hobbled into a crumbling prison office wearing a blue-striped pajama-like uniform, his wrists bound by handcuffs. Friendly prison guards dressed in olive green uniforms served us tea and milk candies. They filed in and out of the office past washed-out photos of President Karzai.
Parkhudin had been with Dilawar from the start, when their journey first began on Khost’s dirt road to Salerno.
On December 1, 2002, a family of ten gathered near Yakubi, a small town in eastern Afghanistan. They were preparing to celebrate Eid, the Islamic holiday that marks the end of fasting for Ramadan. Eid is the Muslim version of Thanksgiving or Passover—a dinner to give thanks and celebrate the virtues of peace and forgiveness.
The mother of the family had summoned her son Dilawar, a twenty-two-year-old who, like many Afghans, went by one name—a name that means “brave” in Dari (the predominant language of Afghanistan). Dilawar’s mother asked him to collect his sisters so they could join the rest of the family for dinner. His sisters were married and lived in other villages, so Dilawar needed to fill up the tank of his white Corolla before setting out. One good taxi fare would be enough. He headed for the provincial capital, Khost, about fifteen miles past the American base, Forward Operating Base Salerno, nicknamed “Rocket City”—a favorite target of the Taliban.
It was a long, bumpy ride to Khost, a small bustling city set amidst gray-and-white-flecked mountain valleys. Fighting regularly plagued the region: in the 1980s, during the eight-year Russian siege of Afghanistan, Khost was a robust pocket of resistance; during the Taliban’s tenure, Osama bin Laden used a CIA-built facility to train al Qaeda recruits; in August 1998, President Bill Clinton bombed the Khost camp with cruise missiles. After September 11, 2001, the Taliban battled advancing US forces from these hills and often crossed the nearby Pakistan border to seek cover. The road that connects Yakubi to the provincial capital slices through Khost’s northeastern valleys, so local Afghans had to brave routine violence to travel on it. In Khost City, Dilawar found three customers who were headed to the Yakubi district. It was a perfect arrangement for Dilawar: his customers’ fare would provide plenty of money for fuel and also take him closer to where his sisters lived.
His customers crammed into the Corolla. Like Dilawar, they had recently returned to Khost province after many years of fighting had forced them out of the country. One of them, Parkhudin, had worked in Dubai when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. He scratched out a modest living cleaning fish, fixing nets, and working in factories. After the US invasion, Parkhudin joined the “campaign forces” that aided American troops in the fight against the Taliban.8
Parkhudin and his friend Zakim Khan, a local farmer, were looking for a ride to Yakubi, where Khan’s sister lived; she was preparing a meal for them to celebrate Eid. Abdul Rahim, a young baker, was the third passenger in Dilawar’s taxi.
The trip from Khost to Yakubi would take just under an hour. Dilawar and his passengers headed out of town, past the lush green swaths of farms and fields that encircled the city, beyond the edge of Salerno’s perimeter that pierced the horizon, and continued on the dusty road toward the stark valleys.
The road became bumpier as they drew closer to Yakubi, and their car vibrated on the poorly graveled surface. After driving fifteen minutes past Salerno, they dropped into a narrow canyon and went by a remote cemetery festooned with tattered green flags that marked the graves of Arab warriors who helped support the mujahideen or supported
