88 Days to Kandahar: A CIA Diary (61 page)

(14) View of Kandahar City from the roof of the Governor’s Palace, early January 2002. Days before, CIA bomb experts had defused a parting gift from the fleeing Taliban, buried in that earthen roof: twenty land mines wired together and set to fire downward.

(15) Another view from the Governor’s Palace in Kandahar. The blue dome of the mausoleum of Ahmed Shah Durrani, father of modern Afghanistan, can be seen through the dust haze; next door is the shrine of Kerqa Sharif, where a cloak said to belong to the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is kept.

(16) The outer wall of Mullah Omar’s house, surprisingly intact after General Tommy Franks’s promise to turn it into a “smoking hole.” Second from right, facing the camera, is Haji Gulalai, Gul Agha’s security chief, who would later become infamous for his harsh methods. At the far right is Ahmed Wali Karzai, Hamid Karzai’s half brother, later to become the “strongman” of Kandahar; he would be assassinated in July 2011.

(17) Sitting with Gul Agha Shirzai on Mullah Omar’s bed, early January 2002.

(18) Watching as the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit is replaced by elements of the 101st Airborne Division at Kandahar Airport, early January 2002. Brig. Gen. James Mattis, the Marine commander, took me to observe the al-Qa’ida militants captured by the Pakistanis just south of Tora Bora, who were then being held at Kandahar.

(19) Looking back from the co-pilot’s seat of the station aircraft on a stopover at Kabul, early January 2002.

(20) Gen. Tommy Franks, Commander CENTCOM, during a briefing at ISI Headquarters, January 2002. In the right foreground is an appreciative Lt. Gen. Ehsan ul-Haq, director-general of the ISI. I’m dressed in mufti, about to depart for North Waziristan in the Tribal Areas.

(21) With General “Jafar,” far left, and the commander of the Tochi Scouts at the Ghulam Khan border observation post in North Waziristan, January 2002.

(22) General “Jafar” and me with officers of the Thal Scouts in southern Kurram Agency, January 2002. Behind us is the Kurram River Valley.

(23) The Safed Koh, or White Mountains, seen from Parachinar in northern Kurram, in January 2002. Al-Qa’ida militants, fleeing from Tora Bora, had come through the snowy passes a few weeks before. Some 130 of them were captured by Pakistani security forces.

(24) A graveyard at Arawali, in northern Kurram Agency, where a number of escaped al-Qa’ida detainees were killed by Pakistani
lashgars
, or tribal militias. Women from the local tribes decorated their graves with prayer flags to honor them as
shouhada
—martyrs.

(25) The British-era officers’ guest quarters at Miram Shah Fort, home of the Tochi Scouts, in North Waziristan Agency, April 2002.