A young Taliban fighter with a pair of handcuffs dangling from his finger was watching the stream of cars approaching him, standing in front of a series of steel barricades.
Friday prayers would begin soon at the shrine and mosque of Sakhi Shah-e Mardan, a Shia holy site in central Kabul that he was protecting.
There have been two bombings of Shiite mosques in Afghanistan by the Islamic State (IS) group in recent months, killing dozens of people, and this 18-year-old Taliban fighter, Mohammad Khalid Omer, was taking no chances.
He and his five-man police unit, known informally as the Sakhi unit after the shrine he defends, represent the Taliban vanguard in their latest struggle after the group’s surprise takeover of the country in August: they won the war, but can they guarantee peace in a multi-ethnic country ravaged by more than 40 years of violence?
Journalists from The New York Times spent 12 days with the small Taliban unit this fall, accompanying them on several patrols through their zone, Police District 3, and traveling to their homes in nearby mountainous Wardak Province.
Until now, the new government’s approach to policing has been largely improvised: local Taliban units have taken over the role at the country’s checkpoints, while in big cities like Kabul, fighters have been brought in from neighboring provinces.
Even with only half a dozen members, the Sakhi unit offers a revealing portrait of the Taliban, in terms of who its main fighters are and what their biggest challenge is as Afghanistan’s new rulers: Once a primarily rural insurgency, the movement is being forced to to govern and secure the urban centers from which they have been kept away for decades.
Fighters like Omer no longer sleep under the stars, dodging air strikes and planning ambushes for foreign troops or the Western-backed Afghan government.
Instead, they are grappling with the same economic hardships that plague their fellow countrymen, the same threat of Islamic State attacks, and the winding, confusing streets of Kabul, the city of approximately 4.5 million for which they are practically strangers.
The Sakhi unit lives alongside the shrine at all times, in a small, pale green-painted concrete room with a single electric heater. Steel bunks line the walls. The only decoration is a poster of the holy Kaaba in Mecca (Saudi Arabia).
In Afghanistan, many Shias belong to the Hazara ethnic minority. The Taliban, a Pashtun Sunni movement, severely persecuted the Hazaras the last time they ruled the country. But the apparent incongruity of a Taliban unit protecting such an iconic Shi’ite site is resolved by the seriousness the men take in their mission.
“We don’t care what ethnic group we serve, our goal is to serve and provide security for Afghans,” said Habib Rahman Inqayad, 25, the unit’s leader and the most experienced of them. “We never thought about whether these people are Pashtuns or Hazaras.”
But Inqayad’s sentiments contrast with the Taliban interim government, composed almost entirely of radical Pashtuns who are emblematic of the movement’s harsh regime in the 1990s, and which are seen as anti-Hazaras.
As he spoke in the unit’s crowded barracks, a small loudspeaker played “taranas,” unaccompanied prayer songs popular among the Taliban.
One of the group’s favorites was a song about losing friends and the tragedy of lost youth. In a very high-pitched voice, the singer chants “Oh, death, you break and kill our hearts.”
On an autumn day last year, as the Sakhi unit kept watch, families gathered on the tiled terraces around the temple, drinking tea and sharing food.
Some cautiously spied the Taliban patrolling the site, and a group of youths ran to put out their cigarettes as they approached. The Taliban generally reject cigarettes, and the unit has physically punished smokers a few times.
The other day, two teenagers came to the sanctuary, walking boldly with their girlfriends. They were confronted by the Sakhi unit, who asked what they were doing. Dissatisfied with the answers, the Taliban dragged the boys inside their room to answer for the transgression. In conservative Afghanistan, living together in public is taboo, especially in a sacred place under Taliban guard.
Inside the room, there was an argument between the unit about how to deal with the boys: good cop against bad cop. Hekmatullah Sahel, one of the most experienced members of the unit, disagreed with his comrades. He wanted verbal, not physical, punishment, but most won.
When the teenagers were finally allowed to leave, shaken by the beating they had received, Sahel called the boys and told them to come back, but without their girlfriends.
The episode was a reminder to temple visitors that Taliban fighters, while generally friendly, could revert to the tactics that defined their hardline religious regime in the 1990s.
For the group of six fighters, facing teenagers was just another sign that their guerrilla days were over. Now they spend their time more preoccupied with everyday policing, like tracking down potential booze smugglers (alcohol is banned in Afghanistan), finding fuel for the unit’s truck, and wondering if their commander will give them the weekend off.
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Source: Folha
