A scholar whod spent much of the past two decades shuttling between Helmand and Pakistan said, There were many mistakes we made in the nineties. Back then, we didnt know about human rights, education, politicswe just took everything by power. But now we understand. In the scholars rosy scenario, the Taliban will share ministries with former enemies, girls will attend school, and women will work shoulder to shoulder with men. Yet in Helmand it was hard to find this kind of Talib. More typical was Hamdullah, a narrow-faced commander who lost a dozen family members in the American War, and has measured his life by weddings, funerals, and battles. He said that his community had suffered too grievously to ever share power, and that the maelstrom of the previous twenty years offered only one solution: the status quo ante. He told me, with pride, that he planned to join the Talibans march to Kabul, a city hed never seen. He guessed that hed arrive there in mid-August. On the most sensitive question in village lifewomens rightsmen like him have not budged. In many parts of rural Helmand, women are barred from visiting the market. When a Sangin woman recently bought cookies for her children at the bazaar, the Taliban beat her, her husband, and the shopkeeper. Taliban members told me that they planned to allow girls to attend madrassas, but only until puberty. As before, women would be prohibited from employment, except for midwifery. Pazaro said, ruefully, They havent changed at all.
Travelling through Helmand, I could hardly see any signs of the Taliban as a state. Unlike other rebel movements, the Taliban had provided practically no reconstruction, no social services beyond its harsh tribunals. It brooks no opposition: in Pan Killay, the Taliban executed a villager named Shaista Gul after learning that hed offered bread to members of the Afghan Army. Nevertheless, many Helmandis seemed to prefer Taliban ruleincluding the women I interviewed. It was as if the movement had won only by default, through the abject failures of its opponents. To locals, life under the coalition forces and their Afghan allies was pure hazard; even drinking tea in a sunlit field, or driving to your sisters wedding, was a potentially deadly gamble. What the Taliban offered over their rivals was a simple bargain: Obey us, and we will not kill you.
Abdul Rahman, a farmer, was rooting through the refuse with his young son when an Afghan Army gunship appeared on the horizon. It was flying so low, he recalled, that even Kalashnikovs could fire on it. But there were no Taliban around, only civilians. The gunship fired, and villagers began falling right and left. It then looped back, continuing to attack. There were many bodies on the ground, bleeding and moaning, another witness said. Many small children. According to villagers, at least fifty civilians were killed.
As we spoke, Afghan Army helicopters were firing upon the crowded central market in Gereshk, killing scores of civilians. An official with an international organization based in Helmand said, When the government forces lose an area, they are taking revenge on the civilians. The helicopter pilot acknowledged this, adding, We are doing it on the order of Sami Sadat. General Sami Sadat headed one of the seven corps of the Afghan Army. Unlike the Amir Dado generation of strongmen, who were provincial and illiterate, Sadat obtained a masters degree in strategic management and leadership from a school in the U.K. and studied at the nato Military Academy, in Munich. He held his military position while also being the C.E.O. of Blue Sea Logistics, a Kabul-based corporation that supplied anti-Taliban forces with everything from helicopter parts to armored tactical vehicles. During my visit to Helmand, Blackhawks under his command were committing massacres almost daily: twelve Afghans were killed while scavenging scrap metal at a former base outside Sangin; forty were killed in an almost identical incident at the Armys abandoned Camp Walid; twenty people, most of them women and children, were killed by air strikes on the Gereshk bazaar; Afghan soldiers who were being held prisoner by the Taliban at a power station were targeted and killed by their own comrades in an air strike. (Sadat declined repeated requests for comment.)
The day before the massacre at the Yakh Chal outpost, CNN aired an interview with General Sadat. Helmand is beautifulif its peaceful, tourism can come, he said. His soldiers had high morale, he explained, and were confident of defeating the Taliban. The anchor appeared relieved. You seem very optimistic, she said. Thats reassuring to hear. I showed the interview to Mohammed Wali, a pushcart vender in a village near Lashkar Gah. A few days after the Yakh Chal massacre, government militias in his area surrendered to the Taliban. General Sadats Blackhawks began attacking houses, seemingly at random. They fired on Walis house, and his daughter was struck in the head by shrapnel and died. His brother rushed into the yard, holding the girls limp body up at the helicopters, shouting, Were civilians! The choppers killed him and Walis son. His wife lost her leg, and another daughter is in a coma. As Wali watched the CNN clip, he sobbed. Why are they doing this? he asked. Are they mocking us?
As a result, like the Soviets, the Americans effectively created two Afghanistans: one mired in endless conflict, the other prosperous and hopeful.It is the hopeful Afghanistan thats now under threat, after Taliban fighters marched into Kabul in mid-Augustjust as Hamdullah predicted. Thousands of Afghans have spent the past few weeks desperately trying to reach the Kabul airport, sensing that the Americans frenzied evacuation may be their last chance at a better life.
This reversal of fates brings to light the unspoken premise of the past two decades: if U.S. troops kept battling the Taliban in the countryside, then life in the cities could blossom. This may have been a sustainable projectthe Taliban were unable to capture cities in the face of U.S. airpower. But was it just? Can the rights of one community depend, in perpetuity, on the deprivation of rights in another? In Sangin, whenever I brought up the question of gender, village women reacted with derision. They are giving rights to Kabul women, and they are killing women here, Pazaro said. Is this justice? Marzia, from Pan Killay, told me, This is not womens rights when you are killing us, killing our brothers, killing our fathers. Khalida, from a nearby village, said, The Americans did not bring us any rights. They just came, fought, killed, and left.
All the women I met in Sangin, though, seemed to agree that their rights, whatever they might entail, cannot flow from the barrel of a gunand that Afghan communities themselves must improve the conditions of women. Some villagers believe that they possess a powerful cultural resource to wage that struggle: Islam itself. The Taliban are saying women cannot go outside, but there is actually no Islamic rule like this, Pazaro told me. As long as we are covered, we should be allowed.