 The body of a dead Talib is removed by car |
  KABUL, AFGHANISTAN -- Dec 21, 2001 An advance party of British Royal Marines tip-toed a few steps closer to realizing the United Nation's ambition of deploying a security force in the Afghan capital today. About 50 of the elite troops escorted dignitaries, arriving for tomorrow's swearing-in of the interim Afghan government, from the battle-scarred runway at Bagram airport to their accommodation about an hour's drive to the south in Kabul. It's expected that more than half the 200-man marine unit now based at Bagram will stand guard at the Afghan interior ministry, where the main inauguration ceremony will take place, and possibly at a number of other sensitive buildings. They will be lightly armed and without helmets or body armor. They are soldiers almost wholly dependant on the good will of all who surround them. |
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Which is less than comforting, since there is no agreement as yet between the UN and the Northern Alliance military leaders whose soldiers currently occupy the capital as to what role will be played, after tomorrow's ceremonies, by the Royal Marines and the several thousands of other foreign troops scheduled to join them in the coming weeks. That issue hangs over the city like the U.S. B-52s that have appeared each morning lately, painting the sky with lazy white vapor trails from their engines, evidently to encourage all below that the military giant that dispatched the Taliban and sent al Qaeda's legions running to the hills is still here, ready to support Prime Minister-designate Hamid Kerzai and his fledgling council. Meanwhile, some 38 days after the Taliban's sudden retreat from Kabul, gruesome reminders are still being found of the crushing power that hammered loose the extremist regime's grip on the city and its people. |
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This morning, the body of a young Taliban soldier was pulled from the ruins of a house in the city's Wazir Akhbar Khan district. Neighbors said the sprawling, two-story structure had been hit by a bomb from an American warplane the evening of November 12th, just hours before the Taliban withdrawal. Built as a private home, it had been confiscated by the Taliban several years ago; its owner and resident, Haji Azam, had been ordered to take his family and go. |
 The ruined house where the body was found. |
| The building then became a guest house for the Taliban military. If that fact alone didn't place the address on the Pentagon's target list, the next door neighbor did: Mullah Niazi, the Taliban regime's governor of Kabul. But the corpse discovered today was nothing like an illustrious kill for the U.S. air campaign. It seems clear he was yet another young Afghan, not long out of his teens, who had been sacrificed to the idiot warlords who have savaged this country. |
 Identity card of Abdul Malik. |
The dead man's identity card names him as Abdul Malik, a 23-year-old laborer from the Showal Kot district of Kandahar, the Taliban's former stronghold in Afghanistan's southwest. His father was a farmer called Dad Mir. Abdul Malik's age and humble origins indicate he was probably a low-ranking soldier; he could well have been the guard or gatekeeper of the guest house. His body was found at ground level under a huge slab of concrete. He was in his bed roll, tucked in a fetal position. Had he been awakened by the bomb's blast two stories above and to the rear of the building, and tried to protect himself by drawing his legs in to his chest ? Or had he been sleeping soundly, and crushed instantly by the upper floors' collapse ? |
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Those questions didn't matter much to the medical examiner supervising the body's removal. He simply noted the address of the cratered ruin on his clipboard and tried to ensure that the corpse was properly and swiftly dealt with. That wasn't easy, since rigor mortis had long since set in. The body wouldn't fit in to the makeshift coffin, lined with cotton batten, that had been brought along for the pick up. So the coroner and his driver bundled what was left of Abdul Malik in a few blankets, and stuffed him in to the back of their hatchback. The neighbors watched quietly. No-one mumbled a bitter word, no-one laughed. Even the children spoke softly. On his final departure from his last post, Abdul Malik was an Afghan again, not just one of the hated Talibs. He leaves behind only the young face on an identity card of the Taliban's ideologically debauched, spiritually debased Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, a graphic reminder of how the young are so often recruited to the schemes of older, more cruel minds. And, in this case, abandoned to die alone as almost all the party leadership escapes to misrule again. Now this country's new leaders will try to distance their people from this legacy. The 27 men and two women of the interim governing council will pledge, tomorrow, to ensure that future governments never again drag Afghans in to the purgatory of totalitarianism, or the hell of civil war. Kabul, and all of Afghanistan, will be watching and listening closely. Hopes are very high, but few people here would bet that Abdul Malik will be one of the last young Afghans given up to the criminal futility of war. |