LET T E R FRO
'VHERE THE T~L\LIBAN
ROANI
Dodging the jihad in Pakistan's tribal lands
As long as there is pUTdah .. , the Mul-
lahs and other evil-disposed factions will
hatch all manner of intrigues and vil-
lainies behind it, and we can never real-
ly know what goes on or prevent it. ...
-British Commissioner
Richard Bruce, on his ill-fated 1894
mission in Waziristan
JOlting through a dry
riverbed road in a curtained
Jeep last year, I squinted
through three layers of veils,
looking for signs of Ibrahim
the Snatcher, the local bad-
mash. It is said that Ibrahim
and his gang sometimes kid-
nap an entire earful of people
for ransom. Although my
companions and I had just
successfully, and illegally,
passed through the six armed
checkpoints maintained by
the Pakistani government
along its tribal borderlands,
the real danger seemed ahead of us. A
year earlier, on my first visit here, the
locals had claimed to like Americans
and treated us as honored guests. I
wondered how they would receive us
now after a year of U.S. bombings just
across the border. Had our relatively
worldly Wazir hostesses misjudged the
extent of their neighbors' tolerance
Eliza Griswold lives in New Yark City,
Photographs by Alyssa Banta
M W A Z R S
By Eliza Griswold
this time, not to mention that of the
rapidly retrenching local Taliban?
Among the fierce tribal territories
that stretch for a thousand miles along
the border between Afghanistan and
Pakistan, Waziristan is the most re-
bellious and remote. On paper, the
4,473-square-mile region-almost the
sizeof Connecticut, with about a quar-
ter of the population-has been part of
Pakistan since 1947. But the Wazirs
are first and foremost ethnic Pashtuns,
and for the most part practice purdah-
a systemic cultural isolationism that
shuns outsiders. Geography favors their
isolation. To the west, high crags inlaid
with caves (Tora Bora is just across
the border) give way to the hard-
packed desiccated plains of eastern
Waziristan, similar to the flatlands of
TAN
northern Iraq in summer. Although
outsiders are not welcome, tradition
also stipulates that once there, ifpeace-
able, they be treated well; along with
purdah, Wazirs also follow pashtun-
wali-an ancient tribal code under
which the requirement of hospitality is
second only to that of revenge. Since
the United States went to war in
Afghanistan in 2001, Waziri-
stan has become a destination
for Al Qaeda and Taliban
fighters not only because they
are fellow Pashtuns and Sun-
ni Muslims but also because
these men are engaged in a
fight against feranghis (for-
eigners), whose presence
threatens the purdah by which
Wazirs have kept their realm
"pure and veiled" since 600
B.C. In the interim, Wazirs
have successfully resisted the
authority of Alexander the
Great and the British Empire,
among others. Between 1936
and 1947 alone, the British lost at least
800 soldiers at the hands of the Wazirs,
finally abandoning the re-
gion altogether.
I n 2001 the day U.S. air strikes be-
gan, I had found myself in [anikhel
UOHN-ee-hell], one of Waziristan's
thousands of uncharted villages, in-
vited, then carefully smuggled there-
along with American photographer
LEDER FROM WAZIRISTAN 57
Alyssa Banta-by twenty-two-year-
old Uzma, who had made Alyssa's ac-
quaintance while buying contraband
Oil of Olay in Peshawar's smuggler's
market. It was early October, and
Alyssa and I were among the glut of
journalists gathered in Peshawar to
await the u.s. attack on Afghanistan.
The border itself was effectively off-
limits, since the Pakistani government
had recently added its own purdah by
declaring non-residents' travel to the
tribal lands illegal. And on this day es-
pecially, the locals did not look too
kindly on visitors from America.
But Uzma didn't care. She was tired,
she said, of the foreign media making
claims about a world they'd never seen.
"Of course we can go to my village,"
she said. "Why not, it's my village. If
my father says yes, then no one can
stop us." Privilege, it must be said, had
much to do with Uzma's boldness, if
not her sentiments. Her dutiful father
is a deputy inspector general of Pak-
istan's police, her family the richest in
the village, one of the few that spends
most of the year in Peshawar. Uzma's
family, descended from khans, has
been wealthy for several generations.
Her great-grandfather, a tribal
malik (elder), was awarded a
salary as a liaison to the British
government. To his descen-
dants he imparted a belief in
both the necessity of education
and high-paying jobs such as
government posts and medicine
(Uzma's aunt is the first woman
doctor in Waziristan).
It is in part perhaps because
of the influence of Uzma's fam-
ily that on our first visit pash-
tunwali won the day and her vil-
lage had welcomed us, most
claiming to like Americans in
general, one neighbor citing our
citizens' "independence" for
special praise. Still, many in the
circle of women that quickly
formed around us cast a furious
eye at Uzrna, our only transla-
tor. But even criticisms were
couched in a jovial, teasing
tone, as if it were understood
that we had no personal responsibili-
ty for U.S. actions.
In any case, it was clear that our
disguises weren't working. Although
our veils and salwar kameez had been
58 HARPER'S MAGAZINE / SEPTEMBER 2003
provided and vetted by Uzma and her
mother, alone together here women
may reveal their faces and hair, and
both of mine are far too pale for com-
fort. Above us, invisible F-16s could be
heard strafing the clear sky from east to
west, crossing from Pakistan to
Afghanistan, where many of the village
men had already gone to fight along-
side the T aliban. Those that remained
gathered in the rutted alleys and along
the main dirt track leading out of town,
shooting pirated Kalashnikovs at the
sky to protest the use of
rJ"'" their airspace.
~ ensions naturally have in-
creased by the time of our return vis-
it, so our veils have been multiplied
and the car itself curtained. We have
been driving for the past five hours,
accompanying Uzma and her family
on one of their semiannual trips
from their marble home in Peshawar
back to Janikhel. Before us, scree
fields stretch flat and colorless for a
hundred miles before rising into the
8,000-foot Wazir hills along the
Afghan border. In the front seat:
Uzrna's twelve-year-old brother,
Momin; Barkatullah, the guard; and
Inamullah, the driver. In the back,
Alyssa and I sit with Uzma and her
mother, Tehrnina.
This trip is Uzma's last before she
marries her cousin Ilyas Wazir, and
her mother, with her fat man's laugh
and a box of marzipan at her feet, is
indulgent. She has always done
things for her five children that the
Wazirs frown upon, such as educating
her daughters despite death threats
from her husband's family. "When
she was a child, I fed Uzma oranges
in secret," she says, chuckling behind
the large black sunglasses she uses to
hold her veil in place. "Fruit was too
special for girls." Her wrists chime
with gold bangles, and on her lap she
holds a plastic pocketbook full of ru-
pees to hand out as zakat (alms) to
the village poor, which is pretty
much everyone besides Uzrna's im-
mediate family and that of her fiance
and her cousin Khalid.
Under layers of synthetic veils,
even my eyelids are sweating. I have
never seen any other Pashtun woman
veiled to this extent, but Uzrna and
her mother assure me it is the safest
way. Even in late afternoon it's still
over a hundred degrees and we must
reach the village before dark. We
should have more guards but that
would require Uzma to call ahead,
which she doesn't want to do
in case the villagers say no to
our visit. "Insha'allah, it's bet-
ter to surprise them," she says
unconvincingly.
In Bannu, the last town we
pass through before the tribal
territory begins, we sit stalled
by donkey carts while men peer
into the curtained car. John
Walker Lindh attended the
Madrassah-l-Arabia here. His
teacher, Mufti Iltimas, saysthat
Lindh left because he couldn't
stand the summer heat. Dur-
ing the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan in the 1980s,
Waziristan became home to at
least ninety madrasas (Islamic
schools), many preaching the
radical Deobandi strain of Is-
lam for which the Taliban are
known. Now, according to in-
formers paid by the United
States, at least 800 Al Qaeda
and ex-T aliban soldiers are hiding in
the tribal land, reportedly traveling in
pickup trucks with local guides. "They
pretend to be Islamic preachers or
Afghan refugees," a Wazir official told
lllustration by Mike Reagan
the Guardian, "but of course we know
they are Arabs and Chechens; they
are Al Qaeda." Although the visitors
are generally seen as nothing but trou-
ble, under pashtunwali the Wazirs are
honor-bound to provide all of them
with refuge.
Since Waziristan has become the
focus of the effort to root out the re-
gion's Al Qaeda operatives, Uzma's
father, a tribal malik, has struggled in
his role as a loyal Wazir. He speaks
to the tribesmen daily from Pesh-
awar on one of the three village
phones located in the houses of
three powerful elders. When he can,
he gives police jobs to the village
men, which they sometimes don't
accept because they don't like to
wear the required Western-style
pants. The villagers belong to the
clan of Ediakhel [EE-dee-ah-hell],
one of 300 Wazir subtribes. They
used to be seminomadic farmers (and
still subsist on nuts, apples, toma-
toes, corn, dates, wild honey, and
sugarcane when the arid land al-
lows). Now heroin supports most of
the tribal economy, though the trade
has suffered because of increased
border control after September 11.
Not all tribesmen are involved in
the drug trade, but those who are-
the most notorious being the neigh-
boring tribe of Afridis-are form ida-
ble smugglers, trafficking hashish,
opium, and heroin around the
world. Uzma's father is convinced
that education is the answer,
though he smiles while explaining
local defiance in the face of such
suggestions. "Ask a Wazir politely to
go to hell, he'll go," he says. "But
push him to go to heaven, and he'll
fight you to the death."
The Wazirs are among the fiercest
of the sixty tribes that make up the
world's 25 million Pashtuns, who are
split almost evenly between Af-
ghanistan and Pakistan. With their
green eyes, brown skin, and aquiline
features, Pashtuns share the blood of
every invader since the Persians-
including the Greeks, Turks, and
Mongols. Legend has it they can
trace their Semitic ancestry to King
Saul. Saul's descendant Qais (later
known as Pashtun), who traveled to
Medina, was blessed by the Prophet
before returning to the Peshawar
Valley. Qais's fourth son, Karlanri,
is said to be the father of
the Wazirs.
S oon the lawn-mower whine of a
Suzuki motorcycle whizzes past us.
Astride it: a bearded man in sun-
glasses, a bandolier slung over his
chest. 'That's Atlas, the hero of the
village," Uzma says. "He's the com-
pounder. He mixes medicines and acts
as the doctor, and he takes good care
of our people." We follow him up the
road. This glimpse of his back is the
closest we'll get to him, because lat-
er, in the village, he refuses to
meet us, because, he says, we
are women (the village women
whisper that it is really because
he feels stupid that he cannot
speak our language). Waziristan
is rife with tribal fighting, and
this stretch of road is supposed to
be closed because of banditry,
but Atlas refuses to relinquish
the shortcut from Bannu to
J anikhel. Yesterday, we are told,
he single-handedlv opened the
road, saying, "I don't care if I
die," before shouldering his gun
and mounting his motorcycle.
North and South Waziristan,
along with five other tribal ar-
eas-Bajaur, Mohmand, Khy-
ber, Orakzai, and Kurram-
make up the 10,000 square
miles of tribal lands along the
border between Afghanistan
and Pakistan. North Waziristan
was the last of the tribal areas to
allow both Pakistani and U.S. au-
thorities to search for Al Qaeda. Al-
though the other tribal areas are also
known for their drug smuggling and
weapons trafficking, Waziristan's
brand of brigandage is the most infa-
mous. When there is no outside en-
emy the Wazirs of South Waziristan
and the Mahsuds of North Waziristan
fight each other and their neighbor-
ing Pashtuns over the proverbial zar,
zan, and zanim {land, women, and
gold)-and, lately, electricity.
Between our visits, the Pakistani
army had entered the territory for the
firsttime in the nation's history and be-
gan working with reportedly more than
1,000 American and British troops to
root out Al Qaeda and T aliban fight-
ers. The Wazirs are not only hostile
to the presence of "foreign invaders";
locals who help them have been killed
as traitors to the Pashtuns. Last year, af-
ter more than ten U.S.-led operations,
anti-American sentiment was rising
sharply. The number of cross-border
raids against U.S. forceshas never been
higher, and at least nine U.S. soldiers
have been killed along the Wazir
border. According to the U.S. Defense
LEITER FROM WAZIRISTAN 59
Department, the official death toll
remains classified.
Five months before our return to
]anikhel, U.S. forces targeted two
Waziristan madras as , prompting thou-
sands of students across Pakistan's
North- West Frontier Province
(NWFP) to demonstrate repeatedly
against U.S. operations there. After
the first raid-a joint U.S. and Pak-
istani attempt to capture high-profile
Taliban commander ]alaluddin
Haqqani-the school where U.S.
troops were billeted in North Waziri-
stan came under missile attack for the
first of five times. The presence of
Americans on their soil enrages the
Wazirs.A group called the Mujahedeen
of North Waziristan has circulated a
pamphlet: "Wake up, because the hyp-
ocrite ruler [Musharrat] has challenged
faith and honor by bringing American
commandos to Miran Shah [North
Waziristan's capital]." Reportedly, sev-
eral tribesmen have been killed for giv-
ing information to the FBI, and tribal
leaders have announced fines of
50,000,000 rupees ($90,000) and the
demolition of homes for
those who help Americans.
J ust before dark we turn off the
makeshift road and jounce toward
[anikhel, which looks like a child's
dripped sand castle surrounded by
scrubby acacia trees and twenty-foot
crenellated mud walls. We drive
past the first of two tiny mosques
and pull into the narrow track of
open sewer that serves as a path be-
tween the village's hundred homes.
Next to the main mosque is a large
whitewashed building with green
doors and shutters: the chawk, where
men spend their days lying on
charpais (wooden beds) in the cool
of a shaded room. Tribal men's
clothes are predominantly white,
and remain relatively pristine be-
cause the men don't work. Most
days they gather at the chawk to dis-
cuss the price of rifle cartridges, guns
at their feet.
Our Jeep can just squeeze through
the narrow track. There are no other
vehicles here. In each house lives a
family of eight or so. In some, one
son has gone to Dubai to work and
send money home. Money is rela-
tively new to most tribesmen. "The
60 HARPER'S MAGAZINE / SEPTEMBER 2003
world seems different here now,"
Barkatullah, rhe guard, says as we
snake past the dark houses. "We kill
people for very small things. When
there was no money here, there used
to be a lot of love between people."
The headlights catch the eyes of the
pack of village dogs, already released
for the night patrol. Finally we pull
up to the corrugated tin gates of Uz-
rna's compound, where a hollow-
eyed heroin addict is waiting for us.
A servant, he arrived last year with
his family from nearby Bannu, seek-
ing refuge from a blood feud, and Uz-
rna's father put him to work.
As soon as we are inside the gate,
a succession of stout and wrinkled
women enter slowly behind us, eas-
ing themselves onto wooden charpais
on the veranda. With most of their
work done for the day, the village
wives, all cousins, are permitted to
visit Tehmina. At their ankles are
barefoot children with the reddish
hair caused by malnutrition, which
has existed here for centuries. The
children's limbs are covered with
pustules the size of quarters-sum-
mer pox, an ancient plague, I'm told,
which no one knows how to cure.
While the women talk, the children
pick lice from their mothers' hair.
Little boys do nothing all day but
play cricket. Girls make mud fig-
urines. Most schools are ghost
schools, which means that a tribal
malik offers the Pakistani govern-
ment land for a school and the gov-
ernment pays, say, his son, a
teacher's salary, but the school never
opens. Taliban madrasas have be-
come the only form of education.
Tehmina drags bags of clothes
onto the veranda, and the women
swarm around the piles and argue.
Her cast-off city clothes stand out
among the smocked tribal dresses.
Last year's gifts of high-heeled flip-
flops are still popular under the
women's patchwork frocks. Among
the faces I recognize from the year
before is that of Ghuta, which
means the fat one, and of Ghunga,
a deaf-mute. Ghu ta's hair has
turned white. I guess that she's sev-
enty but learn later that she's in her
fifties. She clasps a withered hand
to my shoulder and smiles gruffly.
Ghunga pulls at my hair, raises her
eyebrows, and smiles. Yes, I nod, my
hair has grown. She pokes at Uz-
rna's nose and grimaces. No, Uzma's
nose isn't pierced yet, though her fi-
ance has given her a diamond she
should be wearing there. The rest of
the women, who surely recognize us
from last year, make no effort to
greet us.
In Waziristan, even at night, the
plain's heat makes it difficult to
move. We lounge with the women
on the low-lying charpais, the
house's only furniture. In the midst
of gossip about who is using too
much of the scant electricity-a pi-
rated line runs from Bannu-they
ask about us. Uzma begins to spin
our story. This year, because of the
war, we need to be more fully ex-
plained. I am from Dubai, married
and converting to Islam, but do not
yet pray five times a day. (Alyssa,
supposedly, has her period, so she
doesn't need to pray either.) It's not
really clear how much of this they
believe. Anyone with white skin is
Angrez-English. But Angrez, Amer-
ican, and CIA are interchangeable.
There is only one thing worse:
NGO. The tribespeople believe that
nongovernmental organizations are
the most insidious aliens because
they're out to change the Pashtun
way of life. Wazirs essentially suspect
every foreigner of being a Christian
missionary. To date, there have been
two NGO visitors. One, it is said,
made a disparaging remark about
men dancing with men.
In the semi-darkness, a turbaned
man dressed entirely in white arrives
at the gate. The women stop their
chatter and cover their heads. Since
they're all related to him, they don't
need to cover their faces. The man is
Nakurn, the village busybody. He ad-
monishes Tehmina, insisting that
she needs more guards to protect us.
"Aren't my guests safe here?" she
asks, hands on hips.
"They're our guests, but you've
brought them here and it's your re-
sponsibility to protect them," he
warns before stooping back through
the small door in the gate. T ehmina
looks worried. Pashtunwali mandates
that the entire village must protect
its guests, especially since we are
women. Nakum's warning means
that something else is afoot, some-
thing unusual. I ask Uzma once the
visitors have left, but she says, "It's
nothing, insha'allah."
Before bed, we climb into the
watchtower to look at the village be-
low. The moon is almost full and the
minarets of the two small mosques
shine in its light, as does a murky
cistern where the children bathe and
fetch water. Fluorescent green light
spills into the courtyards of the few
houses with electricity. It's about
10:00 P.M. People will rise
for prayers before dawn.
S ince the Pashtuns didn't write
until A.D. 1500, all early records
were made by those who attempted
to conquer them. Herodotus first
writes of the fearsome people of the
Peshawar Valley during Darius' ex-
peditions around 600 B.C. Three
hundred years later, Alexander the
Great crossed the frontier through
the Khyber Pass. After his death,
Alexander's empire fell to ruin
among rival Greek kings, whose
coins still litter the valley. From 264
to 227 B.C. a king named Asoka
spread Buddhism throughout the
Peshawar Valley, but his empire was
obliterated by petty wars that raged
for the next 800 years. It is likely
that no region in the world has
known so much war.
In A.D. 998, Mahmud of Ghazni,
an Afghan king known as the "Idol-
breaker," began the first Islamic cru-
sade to make inroads among the
tribesmen. Over the next several
hundred years, the tribesmen in-
creasingly warded off invaders in the
name of Islam. Both the Mongols
and the Sikhs were unable to van-
quish the area's guerrilla fighters.
In 1849 the British attempted to
pacify the frontier. Bribery, road-
building, battles-the British tried
everything, but to no avail. In 1893,
when British envoy Sir Mortimer
Durand divided Afghanistan from
what is now Pakistan, the emir of
Afghanistan, Abd-ur-Rahrnan,
warned the British about dividing
the Pashtuns. "You will always be
engaged in fighting or other trouble
with them, and they will always go
on plundering .... [I]f at any time a
foreign enemy appears on the bor-
ders ... these frontier tribes will be
your worst enemies."
But the British paid no heed. The
line was drawn, and they continued
to be plagued by not only tribal war-
fare but also the larger insurrections
led by a series of Muslim holy men,
one of the first being Mullah Powin-
dah in the 1890s in South Waziris-
tan. In North Waziristan the Faqir
of lpi led highly successful raids
against the British during the 1930s,
eventually commanding a lashkar
(fighting force) of more than 2,000
men. A charismatic and militant
leader, the Faqir kept nimbly to the
caves along the Afghan border and
was never caught. Today people
travel from all over Waziristan to
pray at his grave.
When Pakistan was created in
1947, the Pashtuns of the frontier
made a bid for an indepen-
dent "Pashtunistan." Despite
support for this plan by
Gandhi and Indian prime
minister Nehru, Pashtun
lands were designated a semi-
autonomous region of Pak-
istan, after which its officers
did little there but maintain
the British policy of giving
money to pacify the people
via local maliks (in North
Waziristan today, those pay-
ments amount to about
$80,000 a year, which ac-
counts for a substantial por-
tion of the tribal economy).
The madrasas of the Afghan
T aliban flourished during the
Soviet invasion, and their rad-
ical influence on the already
conservative tribal areas has
been growing since the late
1990s. In the first days of Sep-
tember 2001, just before the eleventh,
when the U.N. tried to send fifteen
experts to the Afghan border
to monitor pre-existing antiterrorism
sanctions, two pro-T aliban parties es-
tablished a 4,000-member
lashkar to stop them.
A mile from Janikhel, the
lime-green roof of the local madras a
rises in the midst of a hundred vil-
lages. Because of their grip on the
little education there is here, the
Talibs are respected and feared by
the local people. When their ver-
sion of Islamic law is broken-a
woman dances at a wedding or
someone uses a VCR-the Talibs
arrive and demand payment of a
fine. "It's cheaper to pay them than
to let them sit around," Ilyas's
brother, Shaweb, says. He is study-
ing to be a doctor in Peshawar. "If
you don't pay, they come back every
day and you have to feed them
lunch because they're guests."
LEITER FROM W<\zIRlSTAN 61
 In Uzrna's watchtower, empty sy-
ringes lie piled by the gun sights.
The hollow-eyed guard sleeps up
here. He's supposed to be kicking
his drug habit (one of the condi-
tions Uzma's father has put on his
gift of refuge). When I point them
out, Uzma just stares into the dis-
tance. "They could be for medi-
cine," she says. Uzma had completed
her second year of medical school
before dropping out. "We're caught
in between two worlds," she ex-
plains. "We're not perfect Muslims
and we're not totally modern." She
says she wants to bring more schools
to Waziristan ("which I will, in-
sha' allah, when I'm married"). Still,
she cannot stand the idea of govern-
ment soldiers infiltrating her land.
"We all hate terrorism," she says.
"But they're targeting the wrong
people. I swear, if I had a gun, I'd
fight the government soldiers my-
self." She looks down at the village's
mud walls and wonders aloud what
it will be like to live in California
with Ilyas. Ilyas comes from one of
the wealthiest families in all of Pe-
shawar. In California, as an engi-
neering graduate student, he is de-
livering pizzas. "That's not a good
job, is it?" asks Uzrna. She knows
that in America she, too, will have
to work, "but not that hard," she
says hopefully.
Life in the village is built on a
complex pattern of visits. I gather
62 HARPER'S MAGAZINE / SEPTEMBER 20J3
bits of information from what the
women say to one another and what
they don't say. When I ask about
their children or husbands, the wom-
en listen carefully to the answers
others give, as if the speaker should
beware of revealing too many secrets
to outsiders. If they knew how much
Uzma was actually telling us, she
could be exiled, as her female cousin
was for watching television alone
with a male cousin at night. (He was
killed; she reportedly escaped after
being gang-raped.)
We leave ]anikhel to be lunch
guests at Machikhel, Uzrna's grand-
mother's village, a ten-minute drive
down a dirt road. We pile into the
one-room house, which smells of
dung and Kiwi shoe polish. Twenty
children crush in to sit on the floor
while Tehmina distributes a dollar's
worth of rupees to every woman.
"We're so glad to see you," each tells
her, to which Tehmina replies, "Pray
for me and my family." In English,
she says to us, "They come for the
money." She may be indulgent, but
she is no pushover. When one
woman laments that she can't afford
gold earrings like Tehrnina's, Tehmi-
na retorts that she should be think-
ing about feeding her children, not
gold. After Tehmina has handed out
the whole stack of rupees, her cousin
Usee no apologizes. She can't offer us
lunch after all. The village elders
forbid it unless Tehmina pays fifty
rupees for the chicken. If we pay for
food, then Useeno will not be con-
sidered to be giving us respect.
T ehmina is stunned.
"We're bound to say no, or we'll
have to pay 25,000 rupees," Useeno
explains, claiming that the village
elders are angry at Atlas-that's why
we are outcasts. I doubt this is the
sale reason.
"We won't die without having
lunch, but you've proven how selfish
you are," Barkatullah says as he picks
up his gun and storms out of the
room to the chawk. Tehmina reaches
into her purse and pays for lunch.
While the chicken boils, we wander
around the village under the relent-
less sun. A teenage girl follows us,
saying that recently "Arab" men ar-
rived in the village and offered to
build a mosque. The village accept-
ed. No one knows who the men are.
A hawk-faced woman comes out of a
musky room and takes our hands.
"I'm sorry I'm late to meet you," she
says. "I gave birth last night." She
pulls us inside to see the baby, his
eyes already lined with kohl to ward
off evil spirits. How many children
does she have now? "Two," she says.
"Three if you count the girl."
During lunch Useeno tells Tehmi-
na of the misfortunes that have be-
fallen the village in the past year.
During the war with America, hun-
dreds of men from the surrounding
villages went to Afghanistan after
the local madrasa broadcast the call
to jihad via its loudspeakers. Al-
though jihads are nothing new here,
the tribal move to join them is.
Useeno stands in the doorway with
her arms crossed to make it clear
that she is not eating with us.
"The only man who went from
our village came back after only two
months," she says. "He said, 'It's use-
less to fight against other Muslims."
This is a major point of concern:
whether or not the war was legiti-
mate jihad. It seems that the local
mullahs said little about the Muslims
of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance.
Instead, they focused on the fight
against infidels. Fighting against oth-
er Muslims negates the principle of
jihad, so when many of the tribes-
men discovered the true nature of
the fight, it is said they felt betrayed.
 "My grandson wanted to go, but I
wouldn't let him," saysUseeno. "I told
him it's not real jihad. You won't be a
martyr because you're killing other
Muslims. So he didn't go."
In the nearby village of Khwa-
jadarkhel, she tells us, three T aliban
widows received their husbands
home "in clothes full of blood"-a
martyr's death. Then, as if guessing
our thoughts, she warns us how fool-
ish visiting such a Taliban strong-
hold would be.
Lunch over, we drive for twenty
minutes, scanning the horizon for
the widows' village. Barkatullah
knows its whereabouts vaguely be-
cause he attended the men's funer-
als. He says he never used to support
the local Taliban. "Because we're
Muslim brothers, we do what they
say. We know they're using Islam."
After some scrutiny, we can just
make out crenellations on the crest
of a hill. Tehmina clutches at her
bosom. This trip is a little more than
she anticipated. Barkatullah ex-
plains, "The Talibs hate America
and believe that America is against
our religion and trying to change
us." He explains that the mullahs
came to power here because there
was no law to stop them. 'This war
will never end," he says, squinting
toward the village. "Hundreds of
Qaeda fighters passed through this
way. Most stayed in this village."
The high wooden doors of the vil-
lage are locked. An armed sentry
speaks to Barkatullah and looks to-
ward the car. The gates creak open,
and we are led to a building that
looks like a lighthouse made of mud.
Inside sit three women. "We've nev-
er seen a war like this before," says
Itwar Bibi, the widow of Mohammad
Salan, one of the Taliban fighters
from the village killed in December
2001 at Khost, they say by an Amer-
ican bomb." ow none of us can
leave the Islamic brotherhood," she
adds, rocking a crate hanging from
the ceiling that serves as a crib. An-
other of her children chases a chick-
en around the tiny room, where a
crowd of women has now gathered.
Each sold her wedding jewelry to
raise money for the T aliban.
"This war will go on forever," It-
war Bibi continues, smiling politely.
"The next generation is already
preparing to fight. But what is the
result? Muslims are killing one an-
other." She says she learned that
this isn't real jihad via a radio
broadcast by the Pakistani govern-
ment after her husband had left the
village, but, she claims, her husband
didn't know that he would be fight-
ing other Muslims. "Still, my hus-
band is a shaheed [martyr] because he
thought he was fighting against non-
Muslims," she concludes. We leave
the village and later learn that dur-
ing our visit all the men were armed
and hiding in the guardhouse.
They'd thought we were Pakistani
government officials come to take
the children to school in Bannu.
Halfway down the hill, on our
way to the martyrs' graves, the Jeep
blows a tire. Neither the driver nor
Barkatullah knows how to use a
jack. Alyssa and I climb down and
begin to rock the car chassis, veils
aflutter. We are underneath the
jeep when the driver shouts. In the
distance, over the flat scree plain, a
column of what looks like smoke is
rising: dust kicked up by an ap-
proaching car. We veil ourselves.
Barkarullah chuckles. A black Dat-
sun pulls up and stops before us, five
dark-turbaned men inside: Taliban.
One climbs down to help us, and
the truck rattles away. He is young
and doesn't seem to know what to
do with the tire either, but after a
fair amount of clanking we're on
our way. The martyrs' graves stand
apart from the others: three cairns of
white stones with striped green flags
snapping in the wind, denoting
membership in Maulana Fazlur
Rehman's [amiat Ulerna-l-Islam
fighters, the most pro- Taliban
group. By the grave, boxes of salt
show that the martyrs were also
Hafiz-e-Quran, which means they'd
learned the Koran by heart twice,
the first time for the Arabic, the
second for the meaning.
As we make the hour-long journey
back to [anikhel, we drop off the young
Talib and pick up a five-year-old boy
who has been walking for two hours to
a little house where he buys his fa-
ther's heroin. He clutches a handful
of rupees. Barkatullah holds the boy
on his lap, shaking his head
rJ"' over him.
~hat evening, as Uzma and her
mother offer evening prayers on the
veranda, her little brother, Momin,
comes skulking through the green
gate, very pale. He's been playing
cricket, and the cuffs of his white sal-
war kameez are gray with dust. He
perches on the edge of my charpai
and says in English, "The Taliban
know you're here and they're coming
to get you tonight."
"How do they know we're Ameri-
cans, or even here at all?"
"I dunno." He frowns and shuffles
LETTER FROM WAZIRISTAN 63
his deck of cards, the Statue of Lib-
erty cards I'd bought him at the
Duane Reade on West Forty-second
Street in New York City. Apparent-
ly his playmates told him that the
Talibs plan to crawl over the com-
pound wall and kidnap me-the
"Christian"-in the night. There is
nothing to be done. We cannot
leave the village at night or travel
through the miles of wasteland back
to Bannu. Ghuta arrives without a
word, a Kalashnikov strapped over
her ample bosom. She has asked
permission to spend the night with
us, since we have only two guards-
Barkatullah and the heroin addict,
perched in the watchtower with his
empty syringes. Outside the com-
pound walls, the pack of village dogs
has been released for the night. As
we pull the charpais into the center
of the courtyard to attempt sleep, I
listen for their growls.
I try to tuck my white limbs under
the veil I'm using as a sheet. The fleas
are merciless. There is so much moon-
light I can almost see them jump. I
scan the compound's twenty-foot mud
walls.~1himpering, Momin has tucked
himself under his mother's veil. Ghuta
does not lie down. She murmurs, al-
most chants, to Uzma and her mother,
and warns Uzrna not to translate what
she issaying, out of loyalty to her Wazir
people. Uzma translates anyway.
According to Ghuta, since the
war with the United States ended,
the surrounding villages and the lo-
cal madrasa have served as pipelines
to send ex-fighters to Saudi Arabia.
Ghuta says the Taliban are regroup-
ing there, as Saudis come to Waziri-
stan with money and passports for
those loyal to their cause. It used to
be that Wazirs would dream of going
to America, because it was the land
of opportunity. Now that land is
Saudi Arabia. "If America tries to
come here," Ghuta says, "hundreds
of villages will band together with
the T aliban, though we're not with
them now." She cradles the weapon
in her lap. "We will not give the
Americans a single piece of land."
"I'm so sick of the T aliban using Is-
lam," Uzrna says to me in English,
propping herself on her elbows. When
Taliban casualties first came over the
border to Peshawar's five hospitals,
64 HARPER'S MAGAZINE / SEPTEMBER 2003
Uzma and her mother took food and
money to the wounded. (From my own
visits I remember the smell of rot in the
hallways.) But the Talibs refused her.
One T alib said, "Thank you, sister,
no. You didn't help us before, when
we were fighting America over the
border. We won't die now without
your 500 rupees. If you really want to
help us, give us your sons." Angered,
she lectured him on the true nature of
Islam, but he told her to shut up, leav-
ing her with a shame she can't shake.
She knows she followsan Islam she be-
lieves in, but the Talibs' rabid zeal
makes her doubt her own devotion.
Now she wonders if the mullahs are
right about the U.S. crusade.
The night passes without incident.
But the next morning, Mornin's ru-
mor proves to be true. Ghunga, the
deaf-mute, comes wheeling through
the compound's gate, gesticulating
madly. She makes her brown eyes
wide, presses her thumb to her chin
in imitation of a man's beard, then
fires an air machine gun. "The T al-
iban have arrived," explains Uzma.
"She's seen them. They've got guns,
and they're going to kill you and take
me." She looks more excited than
worried, which is both heartening
and disturbing.
It seems that three Datsuns full of
black-turbaned Talibs have just ar-
rived at the chawk next to the mosque
in the village center. They've de-
manded that the village hand us over,
"just for a week or so." Tehmina had
sent the Jeep and driver out on er-
rands, but apparently both are being
held hostage. "We need that Jeep,"
she says,"but they can keep the driver."
We laugh nervously. It occurs to me
that this could just be a village ruse to
send us on our way. Then Momin
sneaks to the chawk to see them, re-
porting back their words: "Give us the
Christian." I turn to Alyssa, terrified.
She is dark-haired and golden-skinned,
with a face that could passfor Mexican
or Arab or any number of other eth-
nicities. I am not so fortunate.
We rifle through our bags to see
what might give us away. I tuck my
notes in my underwear. The T alibs
aren't known to be rapists, and, in
any case, the Afghan refugee boys
who fled to Pakistan say that they
prefer boys. In the sink, we burn the
photocopies of our passports. Uzma
watches as we light match after
match. I can almost hear her won-
dering if we really are CIA after all.
As a gesture of respect, we are told,
the Talibs had gone to the chawk in-
stead of appearing armed at a house
of women. But now they are coming
to the house. Apparently the teen
T alib who helped us change our tire
told them that we were CIA agents,
using an X-ray camera to see the
martyrs' corpses. But it turns out that
Atlas refuses to hand us over, and
the Tal ibs won't come to the
house-if indeed we are CIA, they
think that we may be able to seize
them, Uzma says. She laughs at the
idea that the Talibs are afraid of us
but looks a bit stunned: could it be
that we are not who we say we are?
Finally, our Jeep is returned, and
word comes from the chawk: we must
leave by sundown. The T aliban claim
they've aimed missiles at Uzma's
house. A warning shot alone, Ghuta
explains, would put the entire village
at risk: "If the Taliban should fire at
you, just as a tease, without hitting
you, it's called a bayizatee, an insult,
for which our men must fight." We
veil ourselves and climb into the car.
"At least I learned how to change a
tire," says Tehmina, with her deep-
bellied laugh, picking a piece
of marzipan from a box in
her lap.
A week after we left Waziristan,
the frontier police stopped a pickup
truck full of armed men at a check-
point outside of Janikhel. After a skir-
mish with local tribesmen, the police
were forced to free the men, whom
they believed to be Chechen Al Qae-
da. As punishment the Pakistani army
rolled nine-pound guns into Janikhel
the next day. Against their will, vil-
lagers marked the houses of local Tal-
iban collaborators with red paint, so
that they could be destroyed. Ghuta's
house was among them. That house
is gone now.
Two months later, for the first time
in thirty years, NWFP elections
brought into power the Muttahida-
Majlis-e-Arnal, a pro-Bin Laden,
anti-United States religious coalition,
which vehemently opposes the inva-
sion of Iraq. There also have been in-
telligence reports of a "huge quantity
of weapons" being smuggled into
North and South Waziristan, slated, it
is assumed, for waging a war against
American forces across the Afghan
border. In January, after an American
soldier was shot by a tribal border
scout, the United States retaliated by
dropping a SOO-pound bomb on a
Waziristan madrasa, killing two Wazir
scouts, members of the paramilitary
tribal force supposedly working with
the 82nd Airborne. Their brother
scouts fasted in protest. Now U.S. While another company might settle for inventing the industry's most highly reviewed radio, Bose couldn't.
troops on the Waziristan border have We challenged ourselvesto repeat our success - with the Bose'Wave®radio/CD. We started with our patent-
reportedly hired eighty Wazirs as ed acoustic waveguide speaker technology. It's what delivers the clear, natural, room-filling sound that
guards. Taliban and Al Qaeda resis- Men's Journal says ''fills a room with sound so bold, your visitors will be looking for hefty speakers." The
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ty miles from Khost, one of the worst get a free Bose CD car~ng case. This versatile carrier protects up to CD Case.
pockets of fighting still left in south- 24 of your favorite CDs or DVDs in static-free sleeves.
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eleven tribesmen have been killed in
errant bombings.
When the United States invaded
C2003BooeCo:pyali)l.Pailnlri!tltSi.ss.JOOiI"dI(fpn::i1g.Tbe\vmeercmdesi;Jnisaooa~oIBooel'.aJm.lKn"nsBllrrentP?fl'lll1I81ilV"~ootrel1navtlocrersf1tJaldsttJied\)ctIaIq:lwitnrtrotre.F'ajmrrtlb"isst,qed
Iraq in March, the tribesmen threat- mll'3lit~tn'fclI, <rd cttao:OOtlns may~ \ttl a'editl3ll omlte dnedea:t1 nnrth witl m i1eresIdIffges frooJBase,(ajlard oo;oj ntErestrr<1'lawi, mt payrnertto ixli.KEewc<tle sales l3x.fWmenlliJ,rl, fiee~,JId frre
CIlGa.9;dlersRlttlrecorrtiled\'littIfi'YciOO'oIerct~iJJXf'/W3i1JLtlases.RisklreemlO:JJ-4ylrialt*fero1y.lloIelelffiedbypermi5:sioo:RdlWiJrenI'oo1~sJ:una11U99,l1!t/ens.hrnalCoo1panyLP.1999.
ened to raise a force of more than 1,000
fighters to launch cross-border attacks,
and apparently they did just that, giv-
en the increase of such attacks last
spring. In response, a joint U.S. and
Italian force has launched Operation
Dragon Fury to prevent, according to
the U.S. Defense Department, "the
reemergence of terrorism" along the
Afghan border, where the Pashtuns
wage jihad not only for their own
people but for the Iraqis now as well.
Last year, Uzrna had claimed that if
the United States went to war in Iraq,
she would know that the mullahs were
right: America had indeed launched a
jihad against all Muslims. This year The. Twilight of
she is living in California with Ilyas, C;onsu"r,nptibn
pregnant. When their son is born this A~the sun sets on the cheap energy
fall, he will be an American. _ economy,iwillth~ :best of moder~ ,
culture ~tirvivethe transformation?
.David Eh;~nfeld· .
Answers to the August Quiz, "La-
bor Pains" A/so:

00 Beauty Unperceived
1 Cobblers; 2 Females; 3 World War Mary Oliver .
I; 4 All three; 5 Zero; 6 The strike; 7 Insecurity underfoot
Grover Cleveland; 8 Ronald Reagan; Robert Mic.hael Pyle
9 Joe Hill; 10 U.S. president; 11 New
York Tribune; 12 half ... half; 13
W.E.B. DuBois; 14 Convicts.

LETTER FROM WAZIRISTAN 65