Letter from Kandahar: Kite Flying and Bomb Ducking

Shortly after lunch on a bright, cool day last week, I paid a local cabbie to take me to a Taliban military station and ammunition dump on the outskirts of Kandahar, the spiritual capital of the Taliban movement and, until the U.S. bombings began, the headquarters of Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. Midway there, we heard a series of small explosions followed by three or four loud blasts. A few thousand meters to our left, on the edges of the cantonment, the ground was spitting up dust and smoke, clouding the air.

I asked the driver to stop and I got out. These were U.S. air strikes at the heart of the Taliban domain, yet there was no chaos or commotion. Shopkeepers across the road looked up as the smoke climbed toward the sky, then returned to their customers. Vehicles passed, the drivers carrying on as if this were an everyday occurrence. In a nearby neighborhood, young boys flew kites and played in the street. There was no anger, fear or confusion. Just another day in Kandahar.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]I had crossed the border that morning from Pakistan. At the first Taliban checkpoint inside Afghanistan, in the town of Wesh, I thought I would be searched. But there was no sign of soldiers. A cab took me the 100 km to Kandahar, and the driver pointed out the empty spots where Taliban roadblocks had been before the bombing. Some traffic along the road flowed toward Kandahar—trucks laden with flour, rice and other food, and a single Russian-made Taliban tank—but for the most part, people were headed the other way. There were a few vehicles carrying tires and timber, and a forlorn wedding party in four cars, the still, silent bride draped in green, bound for Pakistan. And then there were the refugees: cabs, wagons and trucks loaded with whatever possessions could be carried: cooking utensils, water buckets, cots, cradles, blankets, chickens, cattle, goats.

Inside Kandahar, the Taliban presence was far more visible. Some drove Toyota pickup trucks with tinted windows, others were on motorcycles, rifles slung cross their backs. Markets and shops were open and well-stocked and the roadside kiosks were teeming with fresh pomegranates, for which Kandahar is famous. But there were few people. Bombing has been heavy here, forcing residents to either hole up or flee. The large middle-class neighborhood where Omar had his residence and headquarters looked and felt like a ghost town. The streets were empty. All the houses were locked, some with metal chains. "Anybody who can afford to is leaving," said an attendant at a roadside food kiosk. "The people you find here are have-nots or those who still feel it necessary to look after their business in Kandahar." Why was he still here? "I have no place to go," he said. Omar's home is abandoned and cordoned off. From the outside, I could only see that the boundary wall remained intact, as did the faCade. Local residents insist the house has been destroyed and claim that an unknown number of Omar's relatives have been killed.

The Taliban has deserted its homes and offices—the group's ever-busy Department of Vice and Virtue was damaged in the last two weeks—and has relocated to mosques or occupied the houses of ordinary people in congested neighborhoods. "They know the U.S. won't hit a mosque," says Abdul Ghafoor, 45, a truck driver. Locals claim that Arab allies of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban have lodged themselves in buildings left empty by various NGOs and U.N.-affiliated organizations, which were vacated when the U.S. attacks seemed inevitable.

My Afghan driver took me west of Kandahar, where U.S. jets had destroyed a Taliban training facility. The underground bunkers had been unearthed, and the compound's interior was pocked with craters. An old Russian truck was parked along one of the boundary walls; it seemed most military hardware had been removed before the attack.

In Kandahar itself, there is still evidence of normal life. Children play and fill water buckets from hand pumps—the city has no electricity or running water—and adults engage in the latest pastime: tracking high-flying jets through binoculars. Market prices are unchanged, largely because so many people have fled. But residents are frightened and angry, and much of their scorn is reserved for the Taliban and for its Arab allies in Afghanistan, former mujahedin who have come to fight a jihad. "We have become hostages of the Arabs," says Nek Mohammad, a driver. Several of the Kandaharis I spoke to claim there are thousands of Arabs in the country. I was told that a number of Arabs traveled to Kabul this past week to implore Afghans to join the fight. "We are Arabs," they said. "We have no place to go from here. We will either win or die. If we die, you adopt our children, you adopt our daughters as your sisters. You can also marry our women. Don't hand them over to the U.S. or other countries."

Returning to the Pakistan border, I passed the Russian-made tank I had seen that morning: it was stranded on the road, a bearded man with grease on his hands trying to fix it. Refugees swarmed the border, but there was also traffic in the opposite direction: zealots hoping for action or martyrdom. Each day, guards confirmed, 100 to 300 "religious students" make the trek, mainly Afghans and Pakistanis, but also Arabs and Muslims from Malaysia and Indonesia, hurrying to fight—and possibly die.