She secured a fine black stallion and matched the warlord stride for stride
Herat efore setting out for Afghanistan we took the precaution of visiting Robert Cranborne, who had
= : dealings with the country in the ....iL.44# 1980s. He provided a letter of introduction to Amir Ismael Khan, the great warlord of the west. In the 1980s Khan and his mujahedin fought the Russians: he was imprisoned for three years by the Taleban in the 1990s. We discover Khan on Thursday morning in the governor's ornate palace in Herat, dispensing justice. He sits at a tiny desk; in front of him are several hundred supplicants. One by one they come and sit by him. Khan, dressed in white with a grey headdress, listens intently, his eyes creased with compassion. A lady in black is involved in a land dispute. Khan gives advice about how to fight her case and obtain the right documents. The widow of one of his mujahedin martyrs brings her young son, suffering from jaundice, to the table. Khan signs the authority to admit him to hospital. A nurse complains that she has been unfairly dismissed. Khan promises to speak to her employer. It is an age-old scene; but for the machine guns held by the guards who man the entrances to the hall, Ismael Khan could have been King Solomon.
Next we follow the warlord on his progress through the countryside. Our rattling old taxi bumps along behind Khan's entourage of half-a-dozen Land Cruisers, each bristling with armed men. At the entrance to each village, Khan and his warriors debauch. The village elders come forward to kiss his hand. Women and children line the route, singing songs and throwing petals. Khan has fought wars, endured exile, escaped from prison, come back. He has seen and experienced everything. Now he wants peace. That, at any rate, was the message he spelt out in a 70minute oration, delivered without notes to an audience of 500 warriors, before prayers at the end of his progress. His speech was interrupted at intervals by a low, ululating chant from the crowd, translated by my guide as. We are obeying you, merciful Amir, we are supporting you.'
uties done, the inexhaustible warlord Land his retainers set off for a stretch of flat, rocky ground on the plain above Herat. Horses were called for Khan mounted a spirited white charger. Our glamorous coproducer. Lucy Morgan Edwards, asked if she could ride too. Khan said that his horses were fierce. Lucy insisted. An elderly, slow nag was produced, at which Lucy professed disgust. A piebald mare was no better. She soon secured a fine black stallion and matched the warlord stride for stride as they beaded off into the distance, stopping just short of an uncleared minefield.
Three weeks ago a human-rights monitoring organisation audaciously launched an office in Herat, Khan's chief of police, Mr Aluwi, chose the moment to take a local journalist outside and beat him close to pulp for criticising the regime. Not a man who believes in delegation, he carried out the task himself. While we were in Herat, Aluwi was at it again, personally thrashing a local doctor who offended him by refusing to allow one of Herat's two ambulances to be made available for his private use. The journalist, who fears for his life, is in exile in Iran, I do not know what has become of the doctor.
Warlords like Khan provide a problem for those who wish to unify Afghanistan. Though he pledges support for the Karzai regime, he fails to pass on to Kabul more than a fraction of the customs revenue — estimated at $800,000 a day — which he collects at the Iranian border. His private guard, perhaps 20,000 strong, is several times larger than the Afghanistan national army, and better equipped. Last week President Karzai launched an ambitious scheme to decommission all the local militias in time for the elections next summer. In public Khan supports the plan. In private it is a different story.
rr he Waverley novels of Sir Walter Scott are by far the most relevant guide to the problems of modern Afghanistan. Scott's overwhelming theme is the contrast between the sober burghers of the Scottish Lowlands, who yearn for peace and prosperity, and the wild clansmen of the Highlands. It is exactly the same here. The townspeople want peace, but the bulk of the people live in lawless, tribal areas and refuse to be tamed. With his head, Scott understood that the burghers were right. But his heart was on the side of the tribesmen. His dark romantic hero Rob Roy has his Afghan counterpart in the great mujahedin leader Pdimad Shah Masood, who was murdered on orders from Osama bin Laden three days before 11 September. The Taleban is merely an Afghan version of the grim, fanatical and murderous sect of Covenanters brought to life by Scott in his greatest novel, Old Mortality. It is, of course, right that we should try to end the endemic violence of Afghanistan. But, as Scott was painfully aware, if we ever succeed, much will have been lost as well.
rr he security situation remains dire. The latest 'international' to be killed is an Italian traveller on a lone motorcycling trip. His motorcycle must have broken down, because he was discovered by bandits in the back of a taxi not far north of Kandahar. He was bundled out and shot. Two nights ago mortar fire landed in Kabul. It was probably aimed at the International Security Assistance Force base, but fell short. Last week, returning on the road to Kabul from Jalalabad — considered relatively safe — we were pursued by a jeep containing five hooded brigands. They tried to cut across us and force us to stop, but our driver sped us Out of trouble. Dozing at the back of the car at the time, I noticed nothing untoward, while the driver made little of it, treating the episode as routine.
NoMithstanding these alarums, I suspect that the main threat of violent injury or death comes from the armed men we are obliged to take with us on journeys out of town. My bodyguard on the journey to Jalalabad lounged on the front seat beside the driver, his AK47 pointing directly towards my chest, and amused himself by making faces and generally creating a very convincing impression of being stoned on hashish. When I politely suggested he might point the gun somewhere else, he took the request amiss, as if it were a reflection on his professionalism.
Peter Oborne and film-maker Paul Yule are making a documentary for Channel 4 television about the reconstruction of Afghanistan.
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