Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (The Taliban Shuffle MTI)

by Kim Barker

  “Doesn’t he know where anything is?” a friend asked.

  “Apparently not,” I answered.

  “How did you find this guy?”

  “Farouq.”

  “This isn’t safe,” she said. “The situation’s too bad to be just driving around with no idea where we are. I want to talk to Farouq.”

  I called Farouq. This was probably not a good idea. This was Friday, Farouq’s day off. In an attempt to show how productive I was, how useful I was, I had been pushing Farouq harder than in years, harder than he was used to working. I listened to my friend tell Farouq how the young man didn’t know enough to be a driver. She was right—but this conversation would have fallout. She was challenging Farouq’s Pashtun-ness and questioning him in a way that was not good. Farouq wanted to talk to the driver, then me. He was icy.

  “He is just a boy. He is just learning. And you’re making him work too late at night.”

  “If I’m paying $50 a day for a driver, he has to work,” I said. “And it’s only eight o’clock.”

  The next week, Farouq told me the driver could not work in the evenings.

  “Because of the situation,” Farouq said. “He’s just a boy.”

  The attacks in Afghanistan were almost always between seven and ten in the morning, and we had adjusted our schedule accordingly. Only one major attack had been at night.

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “Nothing ever happens at night.”

  “Something might,” Farouq said.

  Right before I left Kabul, the driver again couldn’t remember where a restaurant was. Farouq wasn’t in the car.

  “I can’t believe this,” I complained. “My company is paying a lot of money for a driver, and you can’t remember where anything is.”

  I had assumed I was paying $50 for a driver, and $100 for Farouq. But apparently Farouq and his employee had a different deal. The poor guy, struggling with his English, tried to understand me. He looked at me, and tried to explain himself in a combination of Dari and English.

  “No. Not a lot.”

  “How much do you make?”

  “Five.” He held up his hand and waved his fingers and thumb.

  I should have seen it coming. That Farouq, the master operator, would figure out a typical Afghan workaround, a way to get more money out of the Tribune in the last days of a regular paycheck. By my calculations, hiring a driver was now netting Farouq $145 a day, as opposed to the $125 he made when we didn’t have a driver. I tried to look at this from Farouq’s point of view. The driver was driving Farouq’s car, and $5 a day was a lot for most Afghans, most of whom made $1 or $2 a day. And it’s not like he drove much. Essentially, he was being paid to car-sit.

  I filed the information away, but considering what was happening with our company, considering how Farouq’s job was under threat, I didn’t confront my old friend about something so comparatively small. I figured everything would work out soon. I just didn’t know how.

  CHAPTER 23

  EYE OF THE TIGER

  I flew to London to meet my brother for Thanksgiving. But just as we stepped out of a cab to meet Sean for dinner, my phone rang. A boss.

  “Where are you?” he said.

  “London.”

  “Damn. That’s right. I’m assuming you know about the Mumbai situation. Any thoughts?”

  “What Mumbai situation?”

  A situation, as I had learned, was never good.

  He sighed. This was the same editor who had years earlier informed me about the tsunami—eleven hours after it hit—because I had taken the day off. He explained something about gunmen storming hotels in Mumbai in a coordinated attack.

  “What?”

  He told me to check the news and think about getting on a plane. My brother and I walked into a seafood restaurant to meet Sean, the first time I had seen him since our fateful lunch. We hugged, sat down, and ordered a bucket of seafood. I was distracted by Mumbai, and I kept searching the news on my BlackBerry. I knew I should head for the airport. India looked very, very bad. And I could tell who was responsible for it. Someone in Pakistan. Had to be.

  But I decided I could wait until after dinner. My brother, a lawyer, asked Sean questions about every second of his kidnapping.

  “Is this OK?” I asked Sean.

  “It’s fine,” Sean said, and he regaled us with a story told so often it no longer seemed real.

  But Sean seemed twitchy and different. He had a ten-o’clock shadow, and he kept leaving the table to smoke outside. He talked about his sons, and how guilty he felt seeing how old his parents looked when he returned from Pakistan. He hadn’t worked much since the kidnapping. He wasn’t sure what he would do in the future. He wanted to be in Mumbai. We finished dinner. My brother and I left.

  “Really interesting guy,” my brother said. “I liked him. Pretty damaged, though.”

  Indeed, Sean was damaged. I thought about him, and my own life. Since moving overseas, I had seen my brother for only three meals—two dinners and a breakfast. I had missed a family wedding, countless holidays. I had skipped out on helping my mother recover from the death of her husband. I had not been around for my father’s various health problems. Back home, I was the relative no one recognized. And here I was, on my first night of a short visit to my brother, thinking about flying back to Asia. What was I sacrificing everything for? I loved my job, but my job clearly did not love me. The messages from the new overall bosses featured ominous phrases such as “your partner in change” and did not mention foreign coverage. I had never even met the new editor of our newspaper. As the cherry on my sundae of doom, owner Sam Zell had just been interviewed by the editor of Portfolio magazine, in which he again complained about my story on the TV show Afghan Star. He was like my grandmother with my marital status—he wouldn’t let it go. It’s possible he thought I lived in Chicago.

  “The entire focus is on becoming an international correspondent,” he complained. “I mean, I know that because our newspaper sent somebody to Kabul to cover the ‘Afghan Idol Show.’ Now, I know Idol is the No. 1 TV program in the world, but do my readers really want a firsthand report on what this broad looked like who won the ‘Afghan Idol Show’? Is that news?”

  So I added up everything—my brother, Sean, Sam Zell, all that death in Mumbai. If I had learned one thing in Afghanistan and Pakistan, it was that there would always be another major tragedy. If I had learned another, it was that family was important. I had rarely put any family first, or put anything or anyone first except my job. I had lost relationships over work, friendships over work. It was time to let go.

  “So you have to leave, right?” my brother asked. He knew the drill.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I said.

  I called my boss.

  “So is there anyone else who can go?” I asked. “I’m a little sick.”

  He may have known I was exaggerating my slight sinus infection, but he definitely knew how many vacations I had cut short, how tired I was. So he said I could stay in London for a few days.

  I still flew back a day early, to Islamabad. Once the horrific siege of Mumbai was finished, killing 171 people over three days, the focus of the story switched to Pakistan, hardly a shock to the world. The one surviving militant had allegedly told Indian authorities that he was from a town called Faridkot. But at least three towns were named Faridkot in the province of Punjab alone. I had no interest in running after a ghost, in driving to town after town. I wanted the right Faridkot. I also needed to go to Lahore, the capital of Punjab, to look into the charity that American and Indian authorities claimed was a front for the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, blamed for the Mumbai attack. This group—“Lash” for short—had been formed with the help of the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), the Pakistani spy agency, in the late 1980s, just after the Soviets were driven out of Afghanistan. It had originally served as an unofficial arm of the Pakistan military, doing its dirty work in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir.


  After Lash was blamed for attacking India’s parliament in late 2001, Pakistan banned the group and distanced itself—in theory, at least. Like other banned militant groups, leaders were placed under house arrest, but only for a few months. Like other groups, Lash simply changed its name. Most militancy experts and Western diplomats believed that Lash was now publicly operating as the charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa. The same man had started both groups, the groups had shared the same leaders. Even before the siege of Mumbai, the United States had imposed financial sanctions on the founder and listed both groups as terrorist organizations.

  Still, despite a public crackdown on Lash, the charity had run relief camps during a major earthquake and during the internal refugee crisis. A few weeks before Mumbai, the charity held two large meetings in Punjab Province, the first since Lash was banned. Almost a million people attended each meeting. The founder talked in vague terms about jihad, a phrase that in Islam usually meant “a personal struggle against temptation” but with these groups was often code for fighting in defense of the religion, which in recent years had included striking first. Some women in attendance were so impressed with the founder’s speeches, they handed over their gold jewelry for the cause.

  Now India and the West accused Lash of planning the Mumbai attack. Given the group’s historic ties to the ISI, the group had either gone rogue or someone linked to the agency had known what was happening. I needed to go to Lahore, where the main mosque for Jamaat-ud-Dawa was. And I knew, with plenty of reservations, that I needed to go to Lahore because of Nawaz Sharif. If anyone knew the right Faridkot, he would.

  That Friday, Pakistan seemed to have launched its typical crackdown on the charity—in other words, lots of noise, little action. A charity billboard in the heart of Lahore proclaimed: “We can sacrifice our lives to preserve the holiness of the Prophet.” I sent my translator into the group’s mosque because I wasn’t allowed. There, flanked by three armed guards, the founder of Jamaat-ud-Dawa and Lash preached to about ten thousand men. His bluster was typical Islamic militant stuff—about sacrifice, about Eid al-Adha, the upcoming religious festival where devout Muslims would sacrifice an animal and give part of it to the poor. The holiday honored Ibrahim, or as Jews and Christians knew him, Abraham.

  “Sacrifice is not just to slaughter animals in the name of God,” the founder said. “Sacrifice also means leaving your country in the name of God. It means sacrificing your life in the name of God.”

  His meaning seemed fairly clear.

  Meanwhile, the spokesman for the charity tried to rewrite history. He said the founder was barely involved with Lash—despite founding it—and insisted Lash was now based in India. The spokesman also drew a vague line in the sand, more like a smudge—he said the charity talked about jihad, but did not set up any training camps for jihad. The man who ran the ISI when Lash was founded denied having anything to do with the group. “Such blatant lies,” he told me, adding later that Jamaat-ud-Dawa was “a good lot of people.”

  These men seemed convinced of their magical powers, of their ability to wave a wand and erase a reporter’s memory. This obfuscation was not even up to Pakistan’s usual level.

  With a heavy heart, I knew I needed to see Nawaz Sharif. I figured I might be able to get something out of him that he didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to tell me—as former prime minister, he’d certainly be told what was happening, but because he wasn’t a government official, he wouldn’t necessarily know that he was supposed to keep the information quiet. But this time, I planned to bring my translator along, a male chaperone. Samad drove our team out to Raiwind. I sat in the back of the car, writing up my story about the charity on my computer, trying not to think about what Sharif might try to pull this visit.

  Eventually, we walked inside Sharif’s palace. Sharif looked at my translator, then me, clearly confused. He invited us both into his computer room, where we sat on a couch. Sharif sat on a chair, near a desk. When he answered my questions, he stared at my translator. My translator, embarrassed to be there, stared at the ground.

  Sharif told me the right Faridkot—the one in Okara district, just a couple of hours from Lahore. He gave me the phone number for the provincial police chief. He told me what Indian and Pakistani authorities had told him about the lone surviving militant. For us, this was big news—a senior Pakistani confirming what the government had publicly denied: The attackers were from Pakistan.

  “This boy says, ‘I belong to Okara, and I left my home some years ago,’ ” Sharif said, adding that he had been told that the young man would come home for a few days every six months or a year.

  “He cut off his links with his parents,” Sharif also told me. “The relationship between him and his parents was not good. Then he disappeared.”

  Once the interview was finished, Sharif looked at me.

  “Can you ask your translator to leave?” he asked. “I need to talk to you.”

  My translator looked at me with a worried forehead wrinkle.

  “It’s OK,” I said.

  He left. Sharif then looked at my tape recorder.

  “Can you turn that off?”

  I obliged.

  “I have to go,” I said. “I have to write a story.”

  He ignored me. “I have bought you an iPhone,” he said.

  “I can’t take it.”

  “Why not? It is a gift.”

  “No. It’s completely unethical, you’re a source.”

  “But we are friends, right?”

  I had forgotten how Sharif twisted the word “friend.”

  “Sure, we’re friendly, but you’re still the former prime minister of Pakistan and I can’t take an iPhone from you,” I said.

  “But we are friends,” he countered. “I don’t accept that. I told you I was buying you an iPhone.”

  “I told you I couldn’t take it. And we’re not those kind of friends.”

  He tried a new tactic. “Oh, I see. Your translator is here, and you do not want him to see me give you an iPhone. That could be embarrassing for you.”

  Exasperated, I agreed. “Sure. That’s it.”

  He then offered to meet me the next day, at a friend’s apartment in Lahore, to give me the iPhone and have tea. No, I said. I was going to Faridkot. Sharif finally came to the point.

  “Kim. I am sorry I was not able to find you a friend. I tried, but I failed.”

  He shook his head, looked genuinely sad about the failure of the project.

  “That’s OK,” I said. “Really. I don’t really want a friend right now. I am perfectly happy without a friend. I want to be friendless.”

  He paused. And then, finally, the tiger of Punjab pounced. “I would like to be your friend.”

  I didn’t even let him get the words out. “No. Absolutely not. Not going to happen.”

  “Hear me out.” He held his hand toward me to silence my negations as he made his pitch. He could have said anything—that he was a purported billionaire who had built my favorite road in Pakistan, that he could buy me a power plant or build me a nuclear weapon. But he opted for honesty.

  “I know, I’m not as tall as you’d like,” Sharif explained. “I’m not as fit as you’d like. I’m fat, and I’m old. But I would still like to be your friend.”

  “No,” I said. “No way.”

  He then offered me a job running his hospital, a job I was eminently unqualified to perform. “It’s a huge hospital,” he said. “You’d be very good at it.” He said he would only become prime minister again if I were his secretary.

  I thought about it for a few seconds—after all, I would probably soon be out of a job. But no. The new position’s various positions would not be worth it. Eventually, I got out of the tiger’s grip, but only by promising that I would consider his offer. Otherwise, he wouldn’t let me leave. I jumped into the car, pulled out my tape recorder, and recited our conversation. Samad shook his head. My translator put his head in his hands.

  “I’m embarrassed
for my country,” he said.

  After that, I knew I could never see Sharif again. I was not happy about this—I liked Sharif. In the back of my mind, maybe I had hoped he would come through with a possible friend, or that we could have kept up our banter, without an iPhone lurking in the closet. But now I saw him as just another sad case, a recycled has-been who squandered his country’s adulation and hope, who thought hitting on a foreign journalist was a smart move. Which it clearly wasn’t.

  The next morning, Samad drove us to Faridkot. As soon as we pulled into town, dozens of men in cream-colored salwar kameezes flanked our car. One identified himself as the mayor—he denied all knowledge of the surviving militant and his parents. Other Pakistani journalists showed up—we had all found out about the same time that this was the Mumbai assailant’s hometown, a dusty village of ten thousand people in small brick houses along brick and dirt paths. My translator said many of the cream-attired men here were ISI. Another journalist recognized an ISI commander. Their job: to deny everything and get rid of us.

  They tried flattery. I was their first foreigner ever. Would I like some tea? Sure, I said.

  Then they tried intimidation. Two journalists who worked for an international news agency started filming. Alleged villagers screamed about the privacy of their women, rushed the journalists, and punched and kicked them. Someone took their cell phones and digital-video cassettes (DVs). The mayor called us inside a building to talk. I figured we were getting somewhere. But in a dark room, the mayor’s lackeys put my translator and me in rickety chairs. “Just wait,” the mayor said.

  Outside, Samad stood near his precious car, worried that we had been kidnapped. A few men talked about smashing its windows and stealing my purse, locked inside. “Just burn their car,” one said.