IT WAS about 1.30pm when the 12-strong election registration team, protected by American soldiers, arrived at the village of Bagolot in Uruzgan, a landscape of plunging ravines and gorges in southern Afghanistan.
Within minutes the visitors — apparently seeking revenge for an earlier ambush — were embroiled in a gunfight with suspected Taleban. Some of the suspects fled, others surrendered. One man, shot in the back of the head, was loaded into the back of a United Nations pick-up truck.
He spent the rest of the day dying as the convoy proceeded. When the team finally reached a US Special Forces base, the corpse was used — preposterously — for medical training.
Welcome to democracy Afghan-style — crude, violent and shorn of Western niceties, but arguably still better than anything the country has witnessed before.
Registration for Afghanistan’s first presidential election in October has generally gone well. A nationwide campaign has enrolled more than nine million Afghans, about 90 per cent of the potential vote. But it has not been without its hitches. At least 30 registrars have been killed by suspected Taleban insurgents and more than 30 wounded.
This particular registration team was led by Atiqullah, 45, a Tajik, who is Uruzgan’s chief registrar; the team was protected by more than 100 members of Charlie Company of the 2nd Battalion Fifth Infantry Regiment.
The gunfight last Sunday happened as the soldiers were starting a torturous 18-hour return journey to their base at Tirin Kot, capital of Uruzgan, after a successful three-day tour through the remote west of the province — the birthplace of the fugitive Taleban leader Mullah Omar.
Atiqullah had been ambushed near Bagolot the previous week. Unaccompanied by the Americans that day, two of his men were killed and four vehicles destroyed before his team escaped. This time Atiqullah was keen for some justice. “People here know that when I start a job I finish it,” he told The Times. “The Taleban are basically finished. When someone is weak here they receive no help and are finished — that’s our culture.”
He had already informed Major Perry Beissel, the 2nd Battalion’s operations officer, that a suspected Taleban financier lived in the village and he suggested his compound be searched. As the convoy halted beside Bagolot, Atiqullah and six armed Afghans — brought with him as private insurance — left their vehicles and pointed a man out to the Americans. “Atiqullah told me the man was Taleban, ” Major Beissel said. “I haven’t just arrived, so I know that can mean anything. At minimum it means it’s someone Atiqullah doesn’t like. At most, maybe he’s a Taleb.”
The man was questioned but turned out to be merely a shepherd. Atiqullah and his team, with a squad of Americans, then moved towards the suspected financier’s house. En route they saw nine men, three of them armed. It was not clear who fired first, but the men started to run away. As Atiqullah’s team opened up on them one of the unarmed men fell, wounded. The gunmen escaped while five unarmed Afghans gave themselves up.
Revenge seems the obvious reason for the chief registrar and his bunch of locally hired gunmen to be involved in the shooting.
“Everyone in this country has their own agenda,” Major Beissel admitted. “We know that Atiqullah has a high profile here and possibly has political aspirations. The intel I expected off him as to what happened . . . a little personal score to settle? That could be why their ardour was so high.”
But what happened next was inexcusable. A search of the alleged financier’s home revealed nothing. As the five suspects were blindfolded and bound, the wounded man was loaded into the open back of Atiqullah’s pick-up. Comatose and obviously dying — one soldier had already vomited at the sight of his head injuries — he was given only cursory treatment and lay gasping as the convoy continued its journey.
Late in the afternoon the convoy halted at the village of Yakdan. Atiqullah presented the casualty there, almost as a trophy, and tried to leave him with the local people. They refused. “I don’t know what transpired but the village wouldn’t take him,” Major Beissel said. Unknown to the major, the dying man continued with the convoy, expiring en route.
That night Charlie Company and its prisoners reached a small Special Forces base near Dhirawud.
At dawn a medic told me of the casualty’s fate. He explained that the Charlie Company medics had been roused after midnight by an irate Special Forces counterpart, who was angry at having a body brought to the camp.
“He said we should’ve left him out there,” Specialist Guerin said. “Then he calmed down and they started to intubate him with some other guys.”
Intubation involves passing a tube down a casualty’s throat to clear an obstruction and pump air into the lungs. Dummy medical aids are not realistic enough and it is best to practise on a corpse.
“It is safe to say the SF guys are a bit callous,” Major Beissel told me later. “I was there when they pronounced him dead and asked if we wanted to do a bit of intubation before he was bagged.
I can see it from both sides. I’m kind of neutral about it.”
DEMOCRACY TAKES SHAPE
- The UN says that more than 9 million of Afghanistan’s estimated 9.8 million eligible voters have registered for the forthcoming elections
- There are 23 candidates for president, including one woman. About 42 per cent of registered voters are women
- Afghanistan has an estimated population of 28.5 million and an average life expectancy of 43 for men and women
- The country’s interim administration was chosen at a Loya Jirga, a grand assembly of tribal representatives, which took place in June 2002
- At the same meeting they selected Hamid Karzai as interim head of state. One of his tasks was to prepare the ground for free and fair national elections this year
