Written by way of Victor J. Blue, Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Safiullah Padshah
A tender Taliban fighter with a couple of handcuffs dangling from his finger warily watched the movement of coming near automobiles as he stood in entrance of a collection of metal barricades.
Friday prayers would start quickly on the Sakhi Shah-e Mardan shrine and mosque, a holy Shiite website in central Kabul that he was once guarding.
There were two bombings of Shiite mosques in Afghanistan by way of the Islamic State workforce in fresh months, killing dozens, and this 18-year-old Taliban fighter, Mohammad Khalid Omer, wasn’t taking any possibilities.
He and his police unit of 5 different combatants, colloquially referred to as the Sakhi unit after the shrine they protect, constitute the Taliban’s leading edge of their latest fight after the gang’s surprising takeover of the rustic in August: They received the battle, however can they protected the peace in a multiethnic nation racked by way of greater than 40 years of violence?
Reporters from The New York Occasions spent 12 days with the small Taliban unit q4, occurring a number of patrols with them of their zone, Police District 3, and travelling to their properties in Wardak province, a neighbouring mountainous space.
Up to now, the brand new govt’s solution to policing has been advert hoc at absolute best: Native Taliban gadgets have assumed the function at checkpoints around the nation, whilst in massive towns, akin to Kabul, Taliban combatants had been imported from surrounding provinces.
Taliban fighter Zahed, assigned to protect the Sakhi Shrine, a Shia mosque and shrine, on patrol within the Kart-e-Sakhi group of Kabul, Afghanistan, on Nov 3, 2021. (Victor J. Blue/The New York Occasions)
Even with most effective part a dozen contributors, the Sakhi unit gives a telling snapshot of the Taliban, each when it comes to who their core combatants are and what the most important problem is for them as Afghanistan’s new rulers: As soon as a principally rural insurgency, the motion is now being compelled to deal with governing and securing the unfamiliar city facilities it were saved out of for many years.
Now not are combatants like Omer drowsing beneath the celebs, heading off airstrikes and making plans ambushes towards international troops or the Western-backed Afghan govt.
As an alternative, they’re wrestling with the similar financial hardships gripping their countrymen, with the similar risk of Islamic State assaults and with the raucous, puzzling, winding streets and again alleys of Kabul, a town of about 4.5 million those that they’re nearly strangers to.
Participants of the Taliban police unit tasked with protective a Shiite shrine acquire round their unmarried electrical heater at their dwelling quarters in Kabul, Afghanistan, Nov 14, 2021. Their telephones are the point of interest of a lot in their downtime. (Victor J. Blue/The New York Occasions)
The Sakhi unit lives complete time subsequent to the shrine in a small concrete room painted shiny inexperienced with a unmarried electrical heater. Metal bunk beds line the partitions. The one ornament is a unmarried poster of the sacred Kaaba in Mecca.
In Afghanistan, many Shiites belong to the Hazara ethnic minority. The Taliban, a Sunni Pashtun motion, significantly persecuted Hazaras the ultimate time they dominated the rustic. However the seeming implausibility of a Talib unit in reality guarding such an emblematic Shiite website is belied by way of how critically the boys perceived to take their project.
“We don’t care which ethnic workforce we serve, our function is to serve and supply safety for Afghans,” stated Habib Rahman Inqayad, 25, the unit chief and maximum skilled of them. “We by no means assume that those persons are Pashtun or Hazara.”
Habib Rahman Inqayad admires a Taliban patch he received on the major army items mall in Kabul, which was once referred to as the Bush Bazaar, after the United States president, and has since been renamed the Mujahideen Bazaar, on Nov 3, 2021. (Victor J. Blue/The New York Occasions)
However Inqayad’s sentiments distinction with the Taliban’s meantime govt, composed virtually totally of Pashtun hard-liners who’re emblematic of the motion’s harsh rule within the Nineteen Nineties, and who’re perceived as anti-Hazara.
As he spoke within the unit’s cramped barracks, a small speaker incessantly performed “taranas,” the spoken prayer songs, with out musical accompaniment, well-liked by the Talibs.
Some of the workforce’s favourites was once a tune about shedding one’s comrades and the tragedy of adlescent misplaced. In a prime skinny voice, the singer intones, “O dying, you smash and kill our hearts.”
On a fall day ultimate yr because the Sakhi unit appeared on, households amassed at the tiled terraces across the shrine, ingesting tea and sharing meals.
Circle of relatives footage on the house of Habib Rahman Inqayad, a Taliban fighter assigned to a Kabul police unit, in Wardak Province, Afghanistan on Nov 19, 2021. Inqayad’s father, Mullah Gul-Wali, best proper, a Talib within the earlier regime, was once killed preventing within the northern province of Balkh all over the United States invasion in 2001, when his son was once simply 4. (Victor J. Blue/The New York Occasions)
Some cautiously eyed the Talibs patrolling the website and one workforce of younger males rushed to position out their cigarettes as they approached. The Taliban most often frown on smoking and the unit has every now and then bodily punished people who smoke.
Any other day, two teenage boys got here to the shrine, overtly walking with their two girlfriends. They have been faced by way of the Sakhi unit, who requested what they have been doing. Unhappy with their solutions, the Talibs dragged the men into their bunk room to respond to for the transgression. In conservative Afghanistan, such public consorting is taboo, doubly so in a holy website beneath Taliban guard.
Within their room, there was once an issue a number of the Sakhi unit about learn how to take care of the 2 boys: excellent cop as opposed to unhealthy cop. Hekmatullah Sahel, some of the extra skilled contributors of the unit, disagreed together with his comrades. He driven for a verbal lashing quite than a bodily one. He was once overruled.
From left, the Taliban combatants Habib Rahman Inqayad, Hekmatullah Sahel and Mohammad Khalid Omer greet a tender customer on the Sakhi Shah-e Mardan shrine and mosque, which their unit is charged with protective, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Nov 6, 2021. (Victor J. Blue/The New York Occasions)
When the teens have been in spite of everything allowed to depart, shaken by way of the thrashing they’d simply won, Sahel known as out to the men, telling them to come back again once more — however with out their girlfriends.
The episode was once a reminder to the shrine’s guests that the Taliban combatants, whilst most often pleasant, may just nonetheless revert to the techniques that outlined their spiritual hard-line rule within the Nineteen Nineties.
For the gang of six combatants, contending with flirting youngsters was once simply any other indicator that their days of preventing a guerrilla battle have been over. Now they spend their time preoccupied by way of extra quotidian policing concerns, like recognizing conceivable bootleggers (alcohol in Afghanistan is banned), discovering gas for his or her unit’s pickup and questioning whether or not their commander will grant them depart for the weekend.
Omer had joined the unit most effective months prior to. “I joined the Islamic Emirate as a result of I had a perfect want to serve my faith and nation,” he stated.
Mohammad Khalid Omer, left, reaches out to his 1-year-old sister at his circle of relatives house in Qurbani village within the Chak District of Wardak Province, Afghanistan, on Nov 19, 2022. (Victor J. Blue/The New York Occasions)
However to a few Talibs, Omer is what’s derisively known as a “21-er” — a fighter who most effective joined the motion in 2021, as victory loomed. This new era of Talibs convey new expectancies with them, leader amongst them the will for a wage.
They and maximum different rank-and-file combatants have by no means won a wage from the motion. In spite of seizing billions in US-supplied guns and matériel, the Taliban are nonetheless a ways from being smartly provided. Warring parties are depending on their commanders for elementary provides and they have got to scrounge for anything else additional.
Sahel, at 28, is older than maximum of his comrades, slower to excite and extra restrained. He spent 4 years learning at a college, running the entire time as a clandestine operative for the motion.
“None of my classmates knew that I used to be within the Taliban,” he stated.
Within the Sakhi shrine, a Shiite holy website, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Nov 16, 2021. (Victor J. Blue/The New York Occasions)
He graduated with a point in physics and math training, however returned to the struggle.
Relieved the battle is over, he and his comrades nonetheless omit the sense of goal it supplied.
“We’re satisfied that our nation was once liberated and we’re lately dwelling in peace,” he stated, however added, “we’re very unhappy for our pals who have been martyred.”
Each and every few weeks, the boys are allowed to talk over with their households again in Wardak for 2 days. On a crisp morning in November, Inqayad sat in his house within the Masjid Gardena valley, a phenomenal choice of orchards and fields hemmed in by way of mountain peaks.
Hekmatullah Sahel, a Talib assigned to Kabul’s Police District 3, within the hills above the Sakhi Shah-e Mardan shrine and mosque, which his unit is charged with protective, on Nov 6, 2021. (Victor J. Blue/The New York Occasions)
He defined that many households within the space had misplaced sons to the preventing, and estimated that 80% of the households within the space have been Taliban supporters.
Inqayad attended college till the 7th grade, however needed to drop out. Non secular research stuffed in some gaps. He joined the Taliban at 15.
Lately married, he faces new demanding situations now that the motion is in energy. The one doable breadwinner in his circle of relatives, he wishes a wage to reinforce his spouse, mom and sisters, however to this point he has no longer been drawing one.
Again in Kabul, the Sakhi unit loaded up for an evening patrol, bundling as much as struggle the chilly wind that blows steadily from the mountains ringing town.
Omer rode within the mattress of the unit’s truck, a gadget gun resting on his lap and bands of ammunition wrapped round his neck like birthday party beads.
However there was once little to warrant the heavy weaponry intended for suppressing enemy troops. Their space of accountability was once quiet and the boys appeared bored as they spun across the town as packs of side road canine chased and snapped on the tires of passing automobiles.