Afghan Prisoners on Cusp of Freedom, and a Choice

For nearly all of his adult life, Abdul Nabi has been a prisoner. For the last two years, the 23-year-old farm laborer has been held in a crumbling Soviet-style prison in this northern Afghan city along with 900 other Taliban fighters. For most of the two years before that, he was held prisoner by the Taliban itself.

Now he may finally get to go home.

Last month, Afghan President Hamid Karzai ordered the release of Afghan Taliban fighters at the prison, which may coincide with celebrations of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha this week. Karzai is believed to be supporting their release because he is trying to reconcile with the moderate elements of the former Taliban regime to bolster his support in its southern stronghold for this summer’s presidential election.

A spokesman for Karzai said most of the remaining 437 Afghans in the prison -- which also holds 463 Pakistanis, whose government is lobbying hard for their release -- were ordinary men who “have every right to a peaceful and respectable life in the new Afghanistan.”

He added, “The time for making people suffer and jailing them without reason is over.”

A government commission will decide which inmates are dangerous and should remain behind bars. Men such as Nabi, who says he was forced to fight for the Taliban, would appear to be deserving candidates for release.

But the prison’s security manager, Fazal Hadi, said many men were telling government officials what they wanted to hear.

“Maybe some will not rejoin [the Taliban], but I think most will come back. They belong to the fundamentalist groups, and a lot are madrasa students, and I’m afraid they will return,” Hadi said. Madrasas are religious schools where militant clerics often recruit warriors for their jihad.

“A few Americans were here recently, and these Talibs called them imperialists and said if they were released, they would come back and kill Americans,” Hadi said.

Some of the prisoners were open in their defiance, pledging to return and fight against U.S.-led forces and all foreigners working to rebuild the torn country.

“God created me a Talib,” Khal Mohammed, 55, an Afghan Taliban commander, declared behind the wooden door of his cell. “He is one who struggles for the happiness of Allah. This is the order of the almighty Allah: to fight the infidel. It doesn’t matter if they are American, Russian or British.”

When asked whether he would return to fight should he be released, Mohammed answered, “Yes, this is my profession.”

The Sheberghan facility is the third-largest prison holding Taliban fighters after Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and Bagram air base in Kabul. The 900 men have been kept here by Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, whose Northern Alliance forces surrounded more than 3,000 Taliban fighters in the northern province of Kunduz in November 2001.

Hundreds of the men who were rounded up in Kunduz suffocated in freight containers during the two-day journey to the prison. For the first few months, access to the prison was controlled by U.S. forces, who weeded out those they deemed extremists and flew them to Guantanamo or Bagram. Others have been freed since.

The remaining prisoners were largely forgotten until the loya jirga, or grand assembly, in January ratified a new constitution. During the closing ceremony, Dostum, elated by a victory that gave the Uzbek language official recognition, pledged to release the men.

The inmates are crammed into a gray building divided into three blocks. The Afghans and Pakistanis are on opposite sides of the compound, with the Taliban commanders housed in a middle block. The cells have little heat, although a prison official insisted that the men had enough blankets.

Mohammed Shahid, 32, a Pakistani from Punjab province, complained about their treatment at the hands of the guards.

“We have water problems, food problems and problems with thinking too much,” he said. “The water supply is not drinkable for humans. In the first days, we were beaten with cables, but not anymore. Four months ago, we went on hunger strike because they treated us like animals, and after that they stopped hitting us.”

Disease is also rampant. At least 47 have tuberculosis, and most have scabies. With the intervention of the Red Cross, the living conditions have improved somewhat. The men now eat beef twice a week, and they have rice and vegetables such as carrots and potatoes every day. They each receive three daily rations of flatbread.

Many appeared bewildered when asked why they joined the Taliban movement. Over and over, the Pakistani prisoners, most of whom are illiterate, said mullahs in the mosques in the cities of Peshawar and Quetta told them to cross the Afghan border and fight the Americans.

“I am from the tribal area and have never seen an American or European before,” said Zaid Ahmed Zubar, who was a driver in Peshawar.

Omar Khan, 55, from the tribal areas outside Peshawar, said, “What I expected to see ... was different from the reality. They kept telling us in Pakistan that our brothers were being badly treated, that their bombed bodies were hanging from the trees, so I came to assist the people. I didn’t know the Taliban or what they were about. I wouldn’t recognize a Talib if he was black, white or blue.”

When asked whether they would fight again, many of the prisoners cried out, “Never again, never, never,” and, “We want wives and marriage.” Some of the Afghans said they had been forced to fight, a common practice with the Taliban.

Nabi, who comes from the southern Afghan province of Helmand, said, “I spent a month with the Taliban. They told me, ‘Give us money or join.’ I did not have money to pay them, so I had to pick up a gun.

“Actually, the Taliban had kept me prisoner for two years because I fought with the [anti-Taliban] moujahedeen. Then they released me, and I had to join the Taliban. A month later, I was captured in Kunduz.

“I am just an ordinary person -- I’m not a Talib. You can look at my face and see I am a simple person. I want to go back to my farm.”