Law & Order: Kabul

With apologies to Dick Wolf.

I submitted this story to a few media outlets for consideration as a guest essay and much to my disappointment, but not my surprise, I received no response and the reason can be summed up in four words: nobody gives a shit. I probably would have been more surprised if I had actually received a response quite frankly, so I will just publish this myself like I figured would happen anyway.

I was recently contacted by a friend of mine in Kabul, whom I will refer to as Abdullah. I first met him two years ago when he reached out to me looking for help getting out of the country, but by then it was already too late, the last flight out was already gone, and the Taliban had taken control of the airport. He is a member of one of the many groups that the Taliban were hunting down and continue hunting to this very day, so his life was at imminent risk. That risk may have diminished slightly since then, but it nonetheless remains, and so he must do everything he can to keep a low profile and off the Taliban’s radar.

Unfortunately, Abdullah would one day find himself in the totally wrong place at the completely wrong time, and as a result, he found himself being placed under arrest for suspicion of armed robbery. His story made me remember that even in dictatorships, there are still those crimes that aren’t in breach of humanitarian laws. Murders, rapes, robberies, and assaults will continue to happen no matter what regime is in power. The things that motivate these crimes are the same whether in a democratic system or under the repressive thumb of totalitarianism. We tend to forget this however when we hear of the many atrocities being committed by such regimes, as though the only people who are being sought are the opponents of those regimes, who are typically made political prisoners or are summarily dispatched.

For instance, most people have heard of the Gehaime Stat Polizei, better known as the Gestapo, who were the Nazi’s feared secret police while they were in power. The Gestapo didn’t investigate things like murder or robbery though, this job was left to the Kriminalpolizei or the Kripo as they were colloquially known. These were the law enforcement officers, whose background and training were such that they were at least professionals.

The same cannot be said in present-day Afghanistan, which should be no surprise to anybody. Every day law enforcement is now done by members of the Taliban, and as they have demonstrated many times in the past, they will take on any task no matter how little knowledge or experience they have. This has of course proven detrimental to them at times, usually resulting in seemingly unanticipated and fatal results for those involved, yet they continue to plow along without regard for processes or consequences. These things only go to further demonstrate what appears to be a complete and substantial lack of intellectual capacity among the Talibs. These are not the hallmarks of a competent criminal investigator.

Instead, the men in the black turbans rely on what they know best to solve such criminal activity, and that is through simple brutality. Abdullah was making a delivery nearby to a location where a gang of armed robbers was about to be set upon by members of the Taliban. He would go on to tell me “Sir there (sic) local criminology is not too much active but their intelligence are very active” and that they didn’t appear to be any ranks saying that “all of them are bosses. Nobody reports to or receives orders from anyone.”

Once he was taken into custody, his jailers began their “investigation” by beating the living crap out of Abdullah. He sent me a photo of his badly bruised and swollen face, the broken nose being more obvious than the fractured orbit he also received. The beatings continued until the next day when they decided to introduce repeated electric shocks. He says they attached something to his arm and that he was subsequently “shocked very bad from my head to my toes and burning my body.” He went on to tell me that those shocks took away the other pains that he was feeling in his body.

For 70 hours he had to endure this as well as the fear of possibly being exposed as a wanted person through his biometrics. Fortunately, this didn’t happen, and it was his boss vouching for him and providing video evidence of his employment that finally got him released. He was bruised and battered, and covered with electrical burns, but he was alive, though definitely in need of some medical intervention which I can only pray he manages to find. I can only surmise that Abdullah isn’t alone and that there are countless others who have suffered the same fate as him, or worse.

Two years ago, I promised him that I would do everything that I could to get him the hell out of there, and I remain committed to that promise. I also promised him and a few others who are still trapped in Afghanistan that I would not forget about them and that I would tell their stories to the world, and I will continue to do so until they no longer live in fear for their lives.

This was one of those stories.

Dedicated to those around the world who vowed to keep their promise and didn’t forget those who were left behind in Afghanistan. You’re all heroes each and every one.