Our Man in Waziristan
Dining with the stars in Pakistan
It might have been the second or third time that we dined at the Grub Hut in Manshera that I noticed the conspicuously Arabic looking guys sitting at one of the tables waiting for takeout. It wasn't that they were Arabs so much as the way they were dressed. In this part of the North West Frontier Province, the only men you saw from the peninsula in public were Immans, dressed in clerical robes but these guys looked more like other aid workers or fixers or hired muscle. Their choice of western style trousers, plain button up shirts and sleeveless multi-pocketed vests in muted autumn colors contrasted sharply with the pale blue and bone colored pajama-like shalwar kameez worn by pretty much everyone else. They were also sporting gold Rolexes, bracelets and Ray-Ban Aviators, which would be some pretty fly bling for low paid fixers or aid workers.
In any case they didn't hang around long as the parade of plastic bags loaded with steaming Styrofoam containers came shuffling out of the kitchen to their table and out the door. I looked at their black minivans with blacked out windows as they zipped away and wondered aloud who they worked for.
"Some rich guy from Waziristan", said Abdul Raheem in answer to my rhetorical question.
"Those guys don't look like they're from Waziristan", I said,
"Yes, maybe they are relatives visiting from the Emirates", suggested Majid with his usual helpfulness bordering on the obsequious.
"I don't like the look of them Mr. Chris", mumbled Yasir with one cocked eyebrow, a look I knew he'd been practicing in secret.
The portly owner of the restaurant eagerly shuffled over to our table followed by a young server juggling a stack of menus which he distributed among the crew. The laminated sheet he handed me listed dozens of fabulous dishes with exotic sounding names of which I recognized only a few despite innumerable late night curries at Faheem's Fast Food back home. The Urdu descriptions were often little help, even when translated by someone with a grasp of the sublime. The best I could hope for in most situations was figuring out what type of meat a certain dish contained and how spicy it was and leaving the rest to gastronomical fate.
"What's our Man from Waziristan's favorite dish", I asked, motioning to the empty doorway which the Arabs had just exited through with their large takeout order.
"Oh, the mutton handi sir, it's very good", the manager responded immediately.
And it was good. Very, very good. So good it didn't just become my Grub Hut favorite but rather my culinary White Whale, a dish I would spend years hunting for around the world but failing to ever find again. Tender chunks of braised mutton baked in a rich, creamy sauce in a tandoor oven and served with safron rice and paratha naan. A meal fit for a Sultan!
I never did see the Arabs inside the restaurant again, but there were several times their minivans were parked outside when we arrived. With the engine running and windows up, they waited for the restaurant staff to bring their takeout orders down to them, which I assumed included at least one serving of mutton handi for the Man from Waziristan.
Just north of Manshera lay the ruins of Balakot, a once thriving town of over 100,000 people on the Pakistani side of the Kashmir Line of Control and my home for several months in the Summer and Autumn of 2006. The town itself had been largely destroyed in the Kashmir Earthquake the year before and I had taken a short term contract to manage the logistics of a large relief project being run by Oxfam International. Several hours drive from Manshera on winding, poorly built and unmaintained narrow roads that weaved through the Kaghan Valley on the way to China, the project's base was built in a fallow wheat field. It consisted of a dozen winterized canvas tents the size of small plane hangers and several sheds for storage and a mess. The base was home to about 80 odd people, including five internationals of which I was one.
I spent the majority of my time with my Pakistani colleagues and only saw the other internationals at mealtime or if there was a meeting about their team's logistics needs. There were two I barely saw at all, a Spanish chick and some Nepalese guy who spent all of their free time and most of their work time fucking. Daniel, from the Philippines, was the livestock restocking program coordinator and he was cool and we hung out every now and then after hours. The project was run by a Pakistani "Intranational", an inept, corrupt and arrogant Pashtun who looked like a fat Imran Kahn and spent most of his time at his home in Peshawar, four hours drive to the south. We didn't get along.
My predecessor, an ageing alcoholic racist from England, had helpfully typed up several pages of gossipy notes about the logistics team with a lot of details that an actual manager would have done something about rather than just punting to the next guy. His security notes consisted of little more than a handful of bullet points, one of which was the phone number of the MSF project leader ("this guy knows what's going on") and another which was just the word "PORN!!!".
Fortunately I had the chance to ask him what that meant before he left.
"It means porn." he chuckled "the staff at Balakot are downloading hundreds of megabytes a day of it over the satellite connection. It's costing a fortune."
I broached the issue immediately with the IT guy as soon as I arrived in camp.
"Porn!"
"Yes Mr. Chris, porn" he said, shrugging, "we've told everyone that we are tracking who is downloading it but that hasn't stopped them. The Project Manager is aware of who they are."
"What are they doing?!?" I groaned, shaking my head.
Later that evening I was working in the office when Yasir one of the logistics assistants came in and asked if he could speak to me alone.
"I know what they are doing on the computers at night Mr. Chris", he whispered, alluding to my conversation with the IT guy earlier, during which he'd been present.
I leaned in closer, even though it was only the two of is in the tent. "What's that Yasir?" I asked, conspiratorially, wondering if I was about to hear some terrible secret.
"They are masturbating to blasphemous images of naked women Mr Chris", he intoned solemnly.
"Uh" I tried to interject but Yasir had obviously been thinking long and hard about what he was going to say and he had to let it out.
"I tell you now Mr. Chris that I am a good Muslim and this behavior is harem and I would never do it myself. I will not lie before Allah, I have woken up in the morning and found my seed upon my belly but I am assured by my Imman that this not a sin. But these people do not care, they do it the tent or in the office even when I am there and..."
He paused, noticing the look on my face.
"Ah yes, Yasir, we figured that is, uh, what was happening".
He suddenly looked crestfallen.
"Oh, when you asked what they were doing you were asking a rhetorical question" he ventured.
"Yes, it was a rhetorical question."
"You didn't actually want to know what they were doing" he sighed, looking deeply embarrassed
"I had a pretty good idea already"
"I'm sorry Mr. Chris but English is not my first language and sometimes I am slow to learn and..."
I couldn't stifle my laughter any longer and with a sense of relief Yasir joined in and we chuckled heartily, punching each other teasingly in the arm and rolling our eyes. This was followed by a brief, awkward silence before Yasir excused himself and sheepishly slipped out of the tent.
Returning to my work, I smoothed out the crumpled security todo list that my predecessor had left and looked at the last point, "complete security plan". Thinking that would be an easy thing to tick off since the project had been running for nearly a year, I searched for the email in my Lotus Notes client (LOL) and found the attachment. The document opened to an impressive index and the status bar said page 1/23. A bit overly long I thought, but a good start and I began clicking on headings. Section after section turned out to be little more than a title with a page break until I realized that the whole document was like that, with the exception of the index and a copypasta introduction lifted from the project plan. The email to which it was attached had been circulating for months and clearly not a single person of the dozens in the cc list had actually read the damn thing.
The next morning I dialed the number for the MSF project coordinator, who turned out to be a young Australian doctor with whom I had several mutual acquaintances.
"So, should I be worried about security here?" I asked, gingerly.
"Fuck mate, on one side of us is the Kashmir Line of Control and on the other side is Afghanistan, whadda you fuckin' think?" he responded in the traditional dialect of my people.
We agreed to meet in Manshera the next time I was in town and he would share some internal MSF briefings and give me the run down. That opportunity would come soon as Oxfam had screwed up my visa renewal paperwork and I would have to drive down to Islamabad to sort it all out.
"Guess what guys?" I announced in the morning team meeting.
"The project is being renewed?" asked a hopeful Abdul Raheem.
"It's your birthday?!?" squealed Majid in anticipation.
"You are converting to Islam and marrying a Pakistani woman?" mused Yasir.
"It was a fucking rhetorical question guys, Jesus Christ on a bicycle" I groaned and pinched my nose.
"I don't think Isa ever rode a bicycle Mr. Chris, they hadn't been invented then" chimed in Majid ever so helpfully.
"Guys, OK, so here's the deal, I have to go to Islamabad tomorrow because Oxfam screwed up my paperwork, so now I'm in Pakistan working illegally to send money to my family back home." I gushed, trying not to laugh at how funny I the idea must have sounded.
Silence. The guys looked at each other, at me and then at each other again. After an awkward amount of time, Yasir finally broke the silence.
"So you are like our uncles and cousins who are working illegally in Australia to send money back to their families here in Pakistan?" he ventured cautiously.
"Yes!" I exclaimed, waiting for everyone to get the joke now that Yasir had explained it.
Silence. More eyes darting back and forth. Yasir let out a hesitant laugh.
"That is funny Mr. Chris. Is that Irony?" he inquired.
"Yes, Yasir, it is ironic" I agreed dejectedly.
"Oh, yes, irony, very funny Mr. Chris" said Abdul Raheem, and started laughing in a not entirely unconvincing manner.
"Hilarious Mr. Chris, you are so funny" chirped a visibly relieved Majid who then started howling with laughter, slapping his thigh and punching everyone in the arm.
"It is like the Alanis Morrisette song" said Yasir cheerfully, chortling along now with everyone else.
That was too much.
"Get the fuck out of here and get to work" I shouted and chased them out of the office.
"Are you being ironic now Mr Chris?" asked Majid, before deftly dodging the boot aimed squarely at his arse.
On my return journey from Islamabad we were stuck in the outskirts of Abbottabad, a short distance from Manshera for more than an hour waiting for a overturned truck to be cleared out of the way. The bodies pulled from the wreckage were being laid out on the sidewalk a few feet from my car and would have to wait a lot longer than the truck to be retrieved. On the other side of the road was the Pakistan Military Academy, a sprawling complex of buildings surrounded by cranes and towering fences. There was a lot of construction work going on in and around the base. I pulled out my camera to take some photos but the driver cautioned against it, pointing to the "no photos" signs on the fences and the roaming perimeter guards that seemed to have taken an interest in us. I put my camera back in my bag just as they tapped on the driver's window. A short conversation in Urdu ensued and after the driver gave them a cigarette each they seemed satisfied and wandered off smoking.
The next evening, as I scanned through the internal security briefings that the MSF project leader had loaned me, I noted that much of this construction work had only started recently and was most likely funded by international donations that had been earmarked for earthquake reconstruction. The only building in Abbottabad that had suffered any damage from the quake was the local hospital, whose shoddy construction was known to have been the result of corruption and graft. The rest of the reports were fascinating, detailing the extensive network of radical islamists which were actively recruiting in the displaced people's camps, with the full knowledge and tacit support of the Pakistani Secret Service, the Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI as it was more commonly known. The reports also noted that there were virtually no US intelligence assets in this part of the country, as they considered it far too dangerous to operate there directly. As a consequence, they relied almost exclusively on the ISI to do their spying for them. It was widely speculated in both the humanitarian and intelligence communities that the ISI not only knew where Osama Bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan but that they were actively protecting him.
"We know they're playing both sides", read the quote from one CIA station chief, "which means that they're on our side half the time, which is better than not at all."
There was a regular humanitarian "cluster" security meeting held in Manshera between the various agencies to exchange information and the next one was coming up in a few days, so I RSVPed figuring it would at least be a good networking opportunity. I rolled into the meeting feeling a little drained after the early morning white knuckle drive up from Balakot. The parking lot at the UNICEF building was already full of Landcruisers, so I set the driver loose and proceeded on foot. The venue was one of several large rooms in a building seemingly dedicated to meetings, such is the actual business of UN agencies. As people were still milling about, I set upon the coffee on one of the tables outside the designated room. After a gentle rebuke from the chai wallah that the food and drinks was for after the meeting, I helped myself to one of the cup cakes as well.
Taking a seat at the meeting table I realized I was the only non Pakistani person in attendance, something that had already been noted by the organizers who would have to conduct the meeting in English for my benefit. The MSF Project Leader had told me that these meetings were largely a waste of time and as I struggled to hear the chair over the din of the half dozen ongoing conversations in Urdu I could see why. I started drifting off a little until suddenly I realized that the speaker was talking about me and motioning in my direction.
"Uh, yeah" I sputtered, "I'm the Logistics Manager for the Oxfam earthquake relief project down in Balakot" I continued with a salutary wave of my hand. The chair kept looking at me as if expecting me to say more while the din of unrelated side conversations continued unabated around us. Looking around it seemed like he was the only person paying attention.
"And I'm interested in security and stuff." I said shrugging my shoulders and relaxing back in my seat.
The chair looked at me blankly for about another 30 seconds, desperately waiting for me to say something else and when I didn't he simply cupped his hands and went back to stumbling through the agenda, which included very specific instructions about how and when tea would be served. Having struggled his way through this taxing exercise, he settled back into his chair to the apparent adulation of his colleagues, or at least the ones who had been paying attention. We all then sat and waited in awkward silence for another 10 minutes. I had absolutely no idea what the fuck was going on and just as I was about to ask, the main attraction arrived. A portly, middle aged man who was the security manager for Mercy Corp and a former ISI director waddled into the room and seated himself at the head of the table. Once settled he began talking as if the whole purpose of the meeting was for him to speak and for us to listen.
He rattled off a string of security incidents throughout the region, pausing briefly between each one to give his expert opinion on what the victims had done wrong and more often then not it was due to some moral failing on their behalf. He seemed to relish describing the beating that two international staff of the UNHCR had received after being supposedly discovered in flagrante delicto in the back of a landcruiser by the local community. He looked at me with his best cocked eyebrow as he ruminated on the importance of modesty and decorum on the behalf of guests to his country.
I couldn't help but think that at least this guy could benefit from reading the Little Yellow Book of Gender in Emergencies, the in house Oxfam guide to woke Humanitarian Aid. I found his approach particularly strange at first, given that Mercy Corp is a US organization and they were exporting identity politics to the developing world long before it was even called that. But then I realized that they are also largely a CIA front and that any presence here in Pakistan was going to be purely to further those goals and no one cared what they were actually doing as long as the right reports were filed. It was what he said next that really got my attention though.
"Several large groups of Afghan refugees have arrived in the North West Frontier Province in the last few weeks which has raised concerns for increased terrorist activity". He intoned solemnly.
"Why does the arrival of Afghan refugees mean that there are concerns about increased terrorism?" I interjected, thinking it was an odd accusation for someone whose organization was supposed to be helping those very same refugees.
"Everyone knows that Afghans are terrorists" he replied, looking at me as if this was a self-evident truth.
"Are you for real?" I sputtered. "I mean, is that the official position of Mercy Corp, that Afghans are all terrorists?"
Suddenly most of the side conversations stopped and I realized that the English speakers in the room were all looking at me with a weird expression on their faces. It was like I'd stood up in the middle of class and told the math teacher that two plus two is five.
"No, no, not all Afghans," he replied starting to look agitated, "just the refugees"
I couldn't help but laugh but I saw that he was deadly serious.
“You have to understand that they are very primitive people and as their more civilized neighbor..."
I didn't let him finish.
"You can't be serious. Not a single one of the 9/11 hijackers was Afghan. The Taliban was basically a creation of Pakistan who funneled them arms and money from the CIA to fight a proxy war against Russia. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans have died and millions are refugees as a consequence of Pakistan's meddling and you have the temerity to call them the terrorists?!?"
You could have heard a pin drop if the other entirely unrelated conversation that was taking place in Urdu hadn't barreled on in complete obliviousness to the rest of the room.
"But, but, we did it all for you!" he squealed in protest.
"What? What are you talking about? You did what for whom?"
"For you," he paused for a second, "you know, for England, the US, the West..."
I realized I'd been speaking in my best BBC World accent and so it was a fair cop that he assumed I was British, that and the whole Oxfam thing.
"I didn't ask you to do any of that, and I'm pretty sure if you'd asked most of my fellow westerners they'd feel the same." I retorted.
"But we had to ensure regional peace, you can't understand as a foreigner what it's like to live next to such savages..." he blubbed.
"Oh, I think I understand garden variety racism, I'm pretty sure we have that where I'm from too." I said with the sort of rising indignation that only a true arsehole can muster.
One of the first things you learn when working in Pakistan is how racist they are towards Afghans. Like, Klu Klux Klan level racist, and they'll just straight up tell you that to your face. I would read statements in Internal project documents like "Pakistani staff are extremely racist towards their Afghan colleagues" and one of the Pakistani staff would come into the tent and say something blatantly racist about an Afghan colleague.
"We have done so much for them as neighbors and all they have done is thrown it in our face!" whined the ISI director.
I'd forgotten how many tens of thousands of dollars Pakistan was getting from the UN per Afghan refugee, but it was more money than the poor bastards themselves were ever going to see in their lives. Not to mention being exploited as a source of cheap and plentiful labor.
"Someone had to do it, someone had to keep the godless Russians at bay" he stammered on, indignant but still unable to completely overcome his ingrained deference to westerners. The dark burning look in his eyes left me in no doubt he'd tortured and maybe even had foreigners killed before when he was a young, but his current station suggested he'd been pensioned off to a CIA cutout. Hopefully this meant he wouldn't be having me dragged off to a damp basement any time soon. The meeting chair hastily closed the first part of the meeting and suggested we break for early tea. I noted the ISI guy beat a hasty retreat so I helped myself to his portion of cake and made for the door myself.
Two months later, a car bomb ripped through the same UNICEF parking lot, killing 8 people and wounding dozens as they waited for the security meeting to start. I'd RSVPed but had decided the day before that it was a waste of time and stayed at the guest house watching reruns of Lost with the housekeeper and smoking the weed I'd been drying in my bedroom's cupboard. The news blamed the bombing on Afghan terrorists and dozens of refugees were rounded up, tortured and god knows what else. The ISI guy was on TV assuring everyone that no stone would be left unturned in their pursuit for justice which was kind of strange thing for a supposed aid worker to be doing when you think about it. Between the news and the half a pound of Nutella I'd just eaten straight from the jar, I had a bad feeling in my guts. It was time to get out of here.
I had two more weeks left in my contract, one of which would be spent on R&R in Lahore and the other in Islamabad for a staff retreat before returning to Balakot for a brief handover with my replacement. The time passed agonizingly slowly with interminable car rides from one side of the country to the other and back again. My butt grew number and number as I spent hour after hour stuck in random traffic jams in the middle of nowhere or hurtling around treacherous mountain passes at breakneck speed. At one point, we were stuck in a seemingly unending traffic jam when I noticed a sign pointing to Mohenjo-daro, the famous prehistoric city which some claimed was destroyed by a nuclear blast thousands of years ago. It was only a few kilometers away but frustratingly out of reach, the sign taunting me as we idled for an hour beside it.
"Have you heard about the theory that Mohenjo-daro was destroyed by a nuclear explosion?" I asked the driver.
"Yes, every one knows it, and it's true, Pakistan was the world's first nuclear power!" he beamed triumphantly.
On my last night in Manshera, after the obligatory visit to the Grub Hut, the guys suggested we go for a walk in the Abbottabad gardens. The view of the city below by night was entrancing, a long, wide river of sparkling light running through a dark, moonless night. We wandered around for a half an hour, smoking cigarettes, talking and joking.
"Where to next Mr. Chris?" asked Abdul Raheem thoughtfully,
"Yes Mr. Chris where in the world will you go next?" chirped Majid as he swooshed around with his arms outstretched making plane noises.
"Take me with you Mr. Chris" begged Yasir.
"Dunno", I said, "might see if there's anything going at Greenpeace when I get back."
"Why don't you stay longer in Pakistan, the project has been extended until the Spring" inquired Abdul Raheem.
"Yeah, why don't you stay Mr. Chris, we love having you here" chimed Majid has he hugged himself and grinned like a Cheshire Cat.
"Get out while you can Mr. Chris," beseeched Yasir.
"I think my work here is done and honestly, I don't think I could handle the winter" I lied as whitely as I could.
"Oh Mr. Chris, we still have so much to learn from you, and you're a very strong man", soothed Abdul Raheem.
"Why don't you want to stay with us?" whined Majid, crossing his arms and frowning so hard his bottom lip slapped his nose with a wet squelch.
"Run Mr. Chris, it's a trap" implored Yasir.
"Guys, all good things must come to an end" I said cheesily. "Group hug?"
Abdul Raheem deftly slid to one side, affecting a classic Abrahamic-faith-side-hug while Yasir flopped into me like an giant puppy, his eyes wet with tears. Majid leapt off the rock he'd been balancing on and pranced his way into the group hug, jumping up and down making cooing noises. Still arm in arm, we turned to look at the brilliant lights of Abbottabad burning below a pitch black night. Just then a shooting star arced briefly across the sky.
"Make a wish guys" I said.
In the early morning hours of the 2nd of May, 2011, a pair of Black Hawk helicopters carrying a detachment of SEAL operators nearly crash landed outside the compound of Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad, some 15 minutes drive from the Grub Hut. The famous SEAL Team 6 were chosen for the job as they were the only US Special Forces outfit that had not yet established a long record of fucking this sort of thing up. Nevertheless, after hours and hours of rehearsing on the back of years of grueling training, they gave it the old college try and very nearly blundered the whole mission. Despite almost crashing their helicopters and then mutilating Bin Laden's corpse against orders, they still at least managed to kill the bad guy and get out alive.
Although the ISI denied that they had any knowledge of his presence, the Bin Laden compound was built less than a mile from the Pakistan Military Academy. You could see it from the front door. Built in 2005, US intelligence has concluded that Osama was living there as early as January 2006. His bolthole was well stocked with hardcore porn and several black minivans with darkened windows. The place was also rumored to be full of empty Styrofoam takeout containers. The locals called it the Waziristan Mansion.
Did the one man who knew the real truth behind 9-11 die that day, or did the body dumped at sea the next belong to a mere patsy, an actor who never knew more than his own lines? We'll never know because he was summarily executed, without a trial, without an opportunity to tell his side of the story nor the chance for those bereaved by his actions to face their tormentor. Regardless of your views on the death penalty, the way that Bin Laden was dispatched, his body mutilated and dumped in the sea like a bag of trash was a travesty. Even if the final sentence of any process were to be death, a society that claims to be opposed to the brutal sadism of terrorism should afford even the condemned the most basic level of dignity and respect. The right to spiritual counsel, an opportunity to ask their god for forgiveness, a chance to see their loved ones for the last time, a final meal of their choosing.
I like to think I know what Osama would have had.