Joshua Partlow - A Kingdom of Their Own

THE VILLAGE OF KARZ sits amid grape fields in the low river valleys southeast of Kandahar, one of the last weak patches of green before the land empties into miles of flat desert browns. You can get there by the one paved road that runs down from Kandahar, a scorched outpost on the old Asian trade and conquest routes. Most of the people who live in Karz are sheepherders or peasant farmers. They irrigate their fields from generator-powered wells and dry their green grapes into raisins in mud structures perforated to let the hot wind blow through. The other business is brickmaking, and from where I stood at the entrance to the village I could see black smoke drifting sideways from the towering sand-colored kilns, adding another layer of haze to the dusty air. One thing that distinguished Karz from the countless identical mud-hut villages across southern Afghanistan was that it happened to be the ancestral home of the family of the then Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, the place from which they had taken their name. That was why I was standing exposed on that lonely country road, a foreigner sweating through his unconvincing Afghan costume of billowy brown blouse and matching pants, on the morning the presidents favorite brother would be buried.

An Afghan army Humvee had parked crosswise in the road, blocking my approach. In case anyone wanted to slip past, Afghan snipers wearing wraparound shades stood on the rooftops of the roadside shops, muttering into their earpieces. On my way out of Kandahar City, I had seen American soldiers idling in their mine-resistant armored vehicles at various intersections, their Apache helicopters running slow loops overhead. They would be staying away from the ceremony this morning, in a distant cordon, and I began to think I would miss it, too. The day before, July 12, 2011, I had left my house in Kabul, where I worked as a reporter for The Washington Post, and rushed to the airport when Id learned that Ahmed Wali Karzai had been shot to death inside his home by one of his closest lieutenants. To me, he was one of the wars mythical figures, a short, scowling, anxious man who had, everyone took for granted, amassed more power and fortune than anyone else across Afghanistans south, at the center of Americas war against the Taliban. How hed made that fortune and exercised that power was one of the mysteries that none of his American allies could fully explain. Everyone had theories: the CIA payroll, the opium trade, a private security army, a healthy cut of the logistical billions needed to house and feed and arm the tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers and Marines in outposts across the south. You could find among American soldiers and civilians those who considered him our countrys best friend or its worst enemy, the only man preventing a Taliban takeover or the reason America was losing the war.

President Hamid Karzai was even more of a puzzle. He was the pacifist commander in chief for the duration of the longest war in the history of the United States. On the spectrum of Afghan politics, he held liberal, pro-Western beliefs but had become the scourge of America. He was the ascetic in a family of millionaires; the workaholic head of an ineffective government; a profane lover of poetry with a weeping heart and tactical mind and twitchy left eye. He was constantly sick. He had ridden a miraculous wave of luck and circumstance into the presidential palace after holding only one government job, a one-year stint a decade earlier as deputy foreign minister that had ended with his arrest, torture, and escape into exile. He was not brave in battle, like Afghanistans other bearded and berobed leaders. He commanded no militia following and had grown up in Kandahar leafing through Time magazine, playing Ping-Pong on the dining room table, and riding a horse named Almond Blossom.

In the family of seven sons and one daughter from two mothers, the half brothers Hamid and Ahmed Wali had been particularly close. During Hamids postSeptember 11 return to Afghanistan, Ahmed Wali devoted himself to the logistics of fomenting the Pashtun uprising against the Taliban and helped the CIA set up its operations in Kandahar. Throughout Hamids presidency, Ahmed Wali had been the enforcer of his political agenda in southern Afghanistan. They talked on the phone nearly every day. Ahmed Wali worked to undercut tribal rivals to keep their Pashtun tribe, the Popalzai, dominant and well funded. He helped the other siblings realize their outlandish dreams, smoothing the road for elder brother Mahmood Karzai to build a giant gated city in the Kandahar desert, while blocking challengers within the family who burned to steal his mantle as Kandahars reigning don. Ahmed Wali put his elder brother Shah Wali, a shy engineer, to work for him after he couldnt find a job he wanted in the palace. For years, while other siblings sought their daily comforts in Maryland or Dubai, Ahmed Wali grappled every day in the death match of Kandahar politics. And in his sudden absence, nobody knew what to expect.

Out on the road to Karz, I felt a throb of energy, thinking about this prospect. Work as a journalist, even in war zones, often numbs into routine. Foot patrols, tea with governors, round-table briefings, village council meetings. PowerPoint slides, press releases, bar charts, death tolls. The war got explained and narrated and re-created, and you often felt absent from whatever forces were animating it. Your vantage point was always obscured. You were always racing toward something you had just missed, arriving just as men were hosing down the blood and sweeping up the glass. Bombings in Kabul roused us from our desks and beds. We would meet at the scene to jot down the particularsred Corolla, severed headand chat about parties. Who even read bombing stories anymore? Kabul City Center. The Finest supermarket. Bakhtar guesthouse. Serena Hotel. Kabul National Military Hospital. ISAF front gate. Indian embassy. Ariana Circle. Microrayon 4. Jalalabad Road. Lebanese Taverna. The British Council. I used to be surprised by how quickly the vendors set up shop and put out their wares after their market was shredded by explosives, or their neighbors, friends, or coworkers killed. After some time in Kabul, the question seemed nave. For Afghans, and for those of us involved in this late stage of the war, bombings had become both as routine and as unpredictable as a clap of thunder: attacks as natural disastersan unfortunate run of climate.