The Lion of Sabray Read online

  This was the dangerous part, where the mujahideen waited all along the road to the border and the Friendship Bridge connecting Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, over the Amu Dar’ya River. The first phase went reasonably well for both sides, but the second phase of the withdrawal, which took place along the eastern corridor in the dead of winter between January 2 and February 15, 1989, was difficult for everyone.

  The bulk of the Soviet Fortieth Army, thirty thousand men, traveled through ice, snow, and fog to reach the bridge. Their armored vehicles held up, with hundreds of them deployed into a steel corridor designed to keep the mujahideen at bay.

  In those final days, the men from the mountains killed the last forty enemy troops of this war, firing, as ever, from the high escarpments, while watching those lines and lines of armored Soviet BTR-80 armored personnel carriers rumbling north, bound for their old military headquarters in Termez.

  Gulab never saw them cross the bridge, but his commanders positioned unseen observers to record the historic victory: photographing from afar the men of the great northern superpower, who had fought and lost.

  The last commander of the mighty Soviet Fortieth Army, the long-serving Colonel General Boris Gromov, finally marched out of Afghanistan, north across the bridge, alone, behind his defeated men. The general was a holder of the Gold Star Medal, and a Hero of the Soviet Union.

  “I am told,” says Gulab, “the general bore his humiliation bravely.”

  Back in the villages, they realized slowly that there was a new regime governing the Soviet Union. Listening to their little radios, sometimes connecting to the BBC World Service, the tribesmen finally learned how traumatic the 1980s had been for the Soviets.

  Leonid Brezhnev, the veteran leader they blamed for the invasion of Afghanistan, died in 1982. His successor, Yuri Andropov, died two years later. Konstantin Chernenko lasted only thirteen months and died in 1985, and the doyen of foreign ministers, Andrei Gromyko, was leader of the Supreme Soviet for only three years. He retired in 1988, and died the following year, within weeks of his defeated army leaving Afghanistan.

  The new man was Mikhail Gorbachev, and he seemed far less unpredictable than the rest of them. The Pashtuns’ friend President Reagan seemed to like him, and the new American president, George H. W. Bush, was working with him when the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989.

  Russia seemed to be a less threatening place now, and the mujahideen came to believe they had a lot to do with that. Mr. Gorbachev taught his people to concentrate on trade and prosperity rather than on warfare. No one really knew how much they were affected by the damage the tribal army had inflicted on them.

  “We showed,” says Gulab, “that a skilled, determined army can bring down the armed forces of a superpower. If we’d been given even half of the modern equipment the Soviets possessed, we would have beaten them in a couple of years. They weren’t bad fighters, but they were nothing like as good as we were.

  “They lasted so long because they were ten times better equipped than us. When President Reagan and Charlie Wilson provided the Stinger missile and we could at last attack their air power—well, the game was over for the Soviets. Military superiority does not guarantee victory.

  “We, in turn, discovered once more that triumph over adversity is better than succumbing to it.”

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  A LAND OF DEFIANT MEN

  While Gulab can neither read nor write, he grew into a man while fighting the Russians. He still says, “People are sometimes surprised at my lack of formal education, but I always tell them the same thing: I never had time for education. I was too busy fighting.”

  However, he is adamant that his people are not uneducated tribal killers. And they have a long history of learning. So far as Gulab knows, every last warrior who fights jihad with the mujahideen obeys the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. And that includes the part that forbids the murder of innocent people and even prisoners of war. The tribesmen regard themselves as holy warriors, and claim to understand perfectly what is right and what is wrong.

  “I know very well there are rabid Muslim sects who obey no one’s teaching and act in defiance of the will of Allah,” he says. “But they do not represent the people of Afghanistan, nor do they represent Islamic teaching. They defile the word of the Prophet, and they do not fight jihad, whatever they claim. True holy warriors despise all terrorists as cheap murderers.”

  And alongside Gulab’s warrior training, there was also plenty of religious study and instruction. Sabray’s holy studies, which took place after regular lessons, were never compromised. Every day, he would sit cross-legged on the ground with other junior soldiers outside the village mosque learning the creeds of the Koran in more and more depth.

  They were taught six kalimas, which were compiled especially for children to memorize and thus understand the fundamentals of Muslim beliefs, based upon the narration of the Prophet (as Gulab always adds, “Peace be upon him”).

  Between fighting battles in the mountains, Gulab learned the first kalima, the tayyabah, or the words of purity: La ilaha ill Allah Muhammadur—Rasul Allah.

  In long hours of study, he learned the words of testimony, that no one but Allah is worthy of worship. He learned the word for glorification, tumjeed, glory and praise to Allah. And he learned the word for unity (tauhid).

  The fifth kalima taught him the word for penitence (astaghfar), and how for every sin, known and unknown, he must seek forgiveness from Allah, the Most High and Most Great.

  The sixth kalima taught every child to reject disbelief, since there is none worthy of worship, save for Allah.

  Holy lessons began and ended with a prayer, and as the months and years wore on, and Gulab witnessed even more death in battle at close quarters, the presence of Allah in his life took on a stark but comforting meaning. He understood that he was required to live by the compassionate words of the Prophet, even though at that age he was not exactly sure what that meant; especially since he was also required to open fire on Russian enemies with a heavy machine gun.

  Education is very important in the villages of the Hindu Kush. Not Western education, but an awareness of their deep culture going back thousands of years. Gulab’s father, Azer Alam, was a learned man, and so was his grandfather. Gulab’s earliest memories are of his father, a respected village elder, teaching holy studies to all the children, Gulab included, and also to the adults.

  Azer Alam held a unique position in the community, being by far the most educated man and subsequently the most powerful. No one in Sabray would move very far without consulting him. His station was superior to the mullah, the local cleric, because of his advanced learning, and all of the teaching classes revolved around his knowledge.

  He conducted his classes outside, on a daily basis: one hour for mathematics, another hour for English, and then on to the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. Boys’ classes were, of course, separate from the girls’, and the religion of Islam was never very far away from the students. From the earliest ages, the young people saw the older men and women at prayer in the village mosque five times a day. They understood, above all else, there was no life beyond the Prophet.

  By the time the children reached the ages of six or seven, they were learning the first kalima, which is the irrefutable pillar of Islam: There is no God but Allah. They all understood that, and it’s the bedrock of all Islamic teaching, their faith, and their devotion to God.

  Every member of the mujahideen is devout in his belief in the laws of Islam. He is fighting jihad, the most powerful force in life. That is perhaps why they all understand and accept that Afghanistan can never be conquered.

  No one has ever subjugated that country, and very probably no one ever will. Because they do not accept defeat.

  “We will never surrender,” Gulab has said of his people, “and even if we did, for reasons of convenience, no one—repeat, no one—would ever mean it, nor believe it.

  “We all understand that every man, woman, an
d child must, if necessary, answer a call to arms. And we were brought up to accept that; to realize that one day we may all be required to face our enemy, to stand tall and fight to the death, until there is not one of us left standing.

  “In our homeland, our tribal enemies understand that, and to make war on a place like Sabray is likely to result in very tragic consequences. The Al Qaeda armies may come to my village, sometimes to request supplies, sometimes to ask for shelter or water, and sometimes they attempt to bully our people, or even recruit them.

  “But I can tell you one thing: those swaggering tribal combatants think very carefully before opening fire in Sabray, despite that noisy, boastful way they have about them.”

  A few decades ago, the Hindu Kush was far more lawless. Indeed, Gulab’s own father was murdered, shot down by a Taliban raiding party. Gulab was only five at the time, but he saw it and recalls it all vividly. His mother never really got over it.

  Everyone understood the killing was political; that the immense authority Gulab’s father wielded in the local communities made him too influential. Quarrels over land, buildings, crops, and business seethed throughout the villages.

  In Sabray, it was very nearly impossible to pass any law or make any tribal contract without Azer Alam’s permission. His words were that powerful. The murder was long ago now, but for Gulab and his brothers, it is always present. Hurt, anguished, and furious, they held a meeting and agreed about the precise identity of the killer who had cut down the head of the family.

  And right there, an ancient tribal rage rose up among them, with the curved blade of revenge settling in their midst. And years went by, during which time they never took their eyes off their father’s murderer. It was an unspoken plan that nothing would happen until Gulab reached warrior status, on his twelfth birthday.

  By then, he was in the chain of command among the battle ranks of the mujahideen. He was a blooded infantryman, sworn to defeat the Russians, who were blundering through his land in their tanks and armored vehicles.

  Gulab remembers well the night it was decided the deed must be done—that their father’s murder must now be avenged. And while tribal etiquette still forbids elaboration, the brothers decided that the murderer would be cut down with a two-handed tribal sword rather than a modern carbine bullet.

  The sword was removed from its sacred place and taken by Azer Alam’s warrior sons and their armed family supporters to the man’s home. And there, in a Pashtun tradition that goes back millenniums, it was swung in a swift and savage arc.

  No one will ever disclose who actually swung the blade and completed this ancient circle of revenge. But it was carried out under the merciless Pashtun laws that have held the tribes together for thousands of years. “We occasionally forgive,” says Gulab, “but we never forget.

  “Sometimes we all made the short journey to Asadabad, to the principal mosque, where Imams of high learning sometimes gathered. My own father had gone there occasionally, but we mostly stuck to our own mosque, built in the center of the village and readily identifiable as a place of serious worship.

  “It stood on two floors with glass windows. The top section was for summer; the lower part for winter. Its doors were always open during daylight, and inside was an enormous oriental rug on which we knelt to praise Allah and ask for guidance and mercy, and offer our thanks for the resounding victory over the Soviets. We do talk to Allah, but he does not reply to us directly.

  “A local Islamic mosque is a community center open and ever welcoming for every man to enter and listen to the sacred words of the Imam. And there, as often as necessary, we would renew and confirm our faith, always stating our unshakeable belief that there is no other God but Allah and that no other deserves our worship.

  “I was always watching for one of our children to display an extra depth in his learning, both academic and religious, perhaps following in the footsteps of his grandfather, and with a destiny to become a learned man. But the older boys were more interested in the warrior class of Sabray, in the footsteps of their father, not grandfather. And I was proud of their youthful bravery and their certainty of our ways.

  “This was one of the few times in my life when I was not absolutely preoccupied with the demands of war. But we all listened in to the radio and to the endless buzz of the tribesmen with their stories and knowledge from across the mountains.”

  Gulab’s family business was timber, cleaving down trees that were often a thousand years old. It was a hard but very profitable way to make a living, and when he returned from the fighting, he set about making as much money as possible.

  For mujahideen warriors, the months leading up to the dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 26, 1991, were the harbingers of a peaceful decade in the mountains of the Hindu Kush. They were the rightful spoils of a bloody struggle. Gulab spent his time working among the trees, many of which were harder than granite.

  “They were a colossal weight,” he says, “but valuable. And with my young family growing fast, I seemed to need money more than ever before. I insured that everyone went to school and that the older children prayed with the elders in the village mosque.”

  Of course, there was no machinery. Those massive trees had to be taken down and then cut sufficiently small to be loaded onto mule carts, or in some cases horse-drawn wagons. They also had to find a way to drag the timber down to the road for loading. Wood is heavy stuff, and the work was very hard, especially hauling it down the steep slopes and through the forested lower areas.

  But Gulab’s family had done this for many generations, and once a big tree is down, there is a ready market waiting in Pakistan for hardwood from the mountain forests. It is a well-organized industry, with timber merchants from across the border patrolling the main road below the Sabray escarpments, watching for the tree trunks to be hauled down.

  Gulab was determined to excel and become a village leader. And he understood that the more work he did, the better his prospects. So he worked all hours and built up his savings. But there were those who resented his growing fortune, as he cut the timber from the family lands and prospered in a private and legal way. No one said anything, though, because Gulab’s reputation as a fighting mujahideen commander was already established. The truth is, no one would have dared to either attack or criticize his family—not with Haji Nazer Gul and the young Lion standing as leaders. Also, they remembered what had befallen the man who murdered their father.

  “They are all we know,” says Gulab of his village’s tribal laws. “And it seems strange to us that everything in the West has to be written down, even a man’s birth date.

  “We have a different way of looking at things and conducting our lives, because we obey a set of Pashtun laws that have been handed down from generation to generation over thousands of years. There are, however, only ten of them. And they have, down the centuries, kept us on a straight and narrow path; guidance approved by both Allah and the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.”

  The window of relative peace in the mountains came to end with news of a new threat from within that did not necessarily follow the same Pashtun laws that Gulab’s village did.

  “We heard of the resignation of Mr. Gorbachev, of the possible illness of President Reagan, but above all this, we heard the rumors and the reports of the rise of a new force in our part of the world: the Taliban, the fundamentalists of Islam. Most of the news was coming from across the border in Pakistan, where this strict interpretation of the Koran was being welded into a political party by the fanatical ‘spiritual leader,’ Mohammed Omar, a Pashtun by birth.”

  Mullah Omar, a former Islamic religious teacher from Kandahar, was a tall, one-eyed cleric who had been wounded while fighting in the front line against the Russians in 1987. Gulab had not met him personally, but he was, from all accounts, an excellent marksman, a formidable character, and, apparently, already the closest friend of an obscure Sunni cleric named Osama bin Laden, whose rise to power was not yet well known.
r />   Omar and bin Laden both lived in the borderlands between Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, not far from Gulab’s village. Mullah Omar named himself, very early on, “commander of the faithful.” Gulab says wryly that he has no information on whether Allah approved this or not. “I had my doubts then. Still do.”

  In those years, the very early 1990s, Mullah Omar’s Taliban were not really instilled with the history and tradition as later reported. It claimed to enforce strict Sharia law, but there were, immediately, indications of harsh and brutal treatment of women, actions that the mountain Pashtuns very definitely did not approve of.

  The mullah might have been commander of the faithful, but Gulab himself was faithful, and he was not sure whose edict suddenly placed him under the command of this new mullah.

  “Did this mean I was somehow less faithful?” he wondered. “None of us in the high villages were sure about all this. And anyway, at first it was all rumor. No facts. Nothing official.”

  Indeed, the new Taliban started from very small beginnings, consisting mostly of students from Islamic schools in Pakistan. These had been built for Afghani refugees from strife-torn areas where citizens had been caught in the endless battles between government forces and a succession of warlords.

  Kabul was often under siege, but it was peaceful in the Sabray area as well as in most of the North. Many people had fled the country during the Russian war, and now it seemed that there were a few hundred students on the Pakistan border who had rushed to the banner of the new Taliban.

  The most frequently repeated story of the rising Taliban emerged in the spring of 1994, when neighbors near Mullah Omar’s now permanent home in Kandahar told him that the local governor had abducted two teenage girls, shaved their heads, and taken them to a camp, where they were raped.