The Taliban Shuffle (20 page)

In 1999, another obedient army chief decided it was his turn to run Pakistan. Pervez Musharraf, promoted by Sharif, deposed Sharif. As both president and army chief, Musharraf soon grew popular for a rebounding economy he had nothing much to do with, and for slightly more liberal policies, at least in the cities. After the September 11 attacks, the love affair with America reignited. The Bush administration repeatedly praised Musharraf as a key partner in the war on terror, a bulwark against Islamic extremists.

But by the time I arrived in Pakistan this trip, he had lost considerable popularity, largely because of his professed support for America, his refusal to step down as army chief, and his aggressive megalomania. The removal of the country’s chief justice in March 2007 was close to the final straw. In the West, especially in the Bush administration, Musharraf still enjoyed almost universal support. But some senior officials had started to doubt Pakistan’s actual intentions. They privately worried that Musharraf and the country’s powerful intelligence agencies were playing a double game—taking Western money and hunting Al-Qaeda, while doing little against their old friends, the Taliban. There was a running joke that whenever a finger-wagging U.S. official visited Islamabad and berated officials to do more, the number-three leader of Al-Qaeda would
suddenly be killed or captured somewhere in the tribal areas. (Not only a joke; this happened several times.) The numbers backed the doubters—although more than seven hundred Al-Qaeda suspects had allegedly been arrested in Pakistan, few senior Taliban leaders had been captured. Several top militants had mysteriously escaped custody or been released.

The contradictions created by sixty years of obfuscation in Pakistan played out on a daily basis, in the continual whiplash between secularism and extremism, the contorted attempts to hold this fracturing nation together with Scotch tape and honeyed tongues. Islamic clerics forced me to wear a black abaya showing only my eyes, but then privately asked to see my face and hair. One province banned females on billboards, but a subversive drag queen ran one of the country’s top talk shows. The tribal areas—officially the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, seven tribal agencies and six frontier regions—were theoretically part of Pakistan, but the laws of Pakistan didn’t apply. Islamic militants roamed freely there, but very un-Islamic drugs were sold along the roads, advertised with animal pelts. Alcohol was illegal for Muslims, but most Pakistani men I knew tossed back Johnnie Walker Black Label like eighteen-year-olds at their first college party. The Pakistani military and the three major intelligence agencies, referred to simply as “the agencies,” had run the country directly or indirectly for its entire existence and helped form powerful militant groups, which they now disavowed. And, in a particularly brilliant contradiction, Pakistan was still run by a military dictator, who despite seizing power almost eight years earlier and holding on to it through sham elections, had somehow convinced the West that he was setting up a democracy.

A mother and son holding hands at the Karachi airport summed up Pakistan for me. She wore a black abaya and heavy eyeliner. He wore jeans and a T-shirt proclaiming
NO MONEY, NO HONEY
.

Given my new penchant for punching at rallies, I knew Pakistan had shortened my fuse. What little restraint I had acquired elsewhere
had evaporated, largely over issues of personal space. (I was still a Montanan at heart—preferring few people, lots of open range, and boundary lines meant to be respected.) But I knew I needed to dive into the country. I had to stop resisting Pakistan’s pull, because Afghanistan and Pakistan fed into each other, and I needed to understand how. It would not be easy. Reporting a story here was like trying to find a specific needle in a stack of needles using a needle, an endless attempt at sorting through anonymous quotes from anonymous intelligence sources and anonymous diplomats. Most terrorist plots in the West traced somehow back to Pakistan—as many as three-quarters, according to some estimates. After a plot was linked to someone in Pakistan, journalists like myself predictably converged on the alleged militant’s home village in the middle of nowhere, where the most powerful spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), tried to convince us that what we had been told was wrong, and that this was not the village we were looking for, and that there was no way any terrorist would ever come from Pakistan. Wrong town, wrong country. We weren’t allowed to go to the tribal areas where many militants had supposedly trained, we weren’t supposed to roam free, and we were told that this was all for our safety. The subterfuge here was an art that had been institutionalized.

I blamed India. Everyone here did. To understand Pakistan, India was the key. Why did Pakistan direct its militant groups toward disputed Kashmir instead of disbanding them after the Soviet Union left Afghanistan? India. Why did Pakistan support the Taliban regime in Afghanistan? India. Why did Pakistan develop a nuclear weapon? India. Why did Musharraf support the country’s homegrown militant groups even as he arrested Al-Qaeda’s alleged number three at any given time? India. And why did Pakistan continually give me such a crappy visa? India.

Being based in New Delhi did not help my attempts to cover Pakistan. India-based journalists were usually given two-week visas.
We were only supposed to go to Islamabad, Lahore, or Karachi, and we were automatically assumed to be spies. As soon as I checked into a hotel, the ISI knew where I was. My phone was tapped. The driver from the Marriott Hotel reported back whom I had talked to and what I had said. Or so I was told. Covering Pakistan was an excuse to let my paranoia run wild. It was like starring in
The Benny Hill Show
, trying to run slightly faster than that creepy old man. If Pakistan had a soundtrack, it would be “Flight of the Bumblebee.” If it suffered from a psychological disorder, it would be bipolar.

But the chief-justice controversy was a relatively easy way to dig into Pakistan—obvious, messy, and important. This spat between the judiciary and the presidency was the biggest threat Musharraf had ever faced, bigger than the assassination attempts, the Islamic extremists, the squabbling with Pakistan’s neighbors. It could influence the country’s presidential elections and the country’s future. It was that big.

After the suspended chief justice Chaudhry refused to step down, the lawyers nationwide rose to defend him, saying that the country needed rule of law and the judiciary needed to be independent from the messed-up executive branch. Wearing their uniforms of black suits and white shirts, the lawyers held demonstrations, picking fights with police, who retaliated with tear gas. Some lawyers beat a supposed spy with their shoes right in front of me, even ripping off his tie. Momentum built. Lawyer protests grew into anti-Musharraf protests. Every few days, people met in Islamabad, shouting catchy slogans such as “Go Musharraf go,” which meant he should step down, not run for a touchdown, and, my personal favorite, “Musharraf doggie, son of Bush.”

Chaudhry’s legal team decided to take the chief justice on the road, on a speaking tour to various cities. But the goal was not speeches, as Chaudhry was no orator. The goal was a forever journey, a slow ride. Like all political campaigns in Pakistan, these road trips aimed to yank people out onto the streets to prevent the chief
justice’s vehicle from moving much at all. The team’s top lawyer even drove, at times slower than he probably needed to, and always with the goal of creating drama. Lawyers vied to ride on top of the Chaudhry-mobile, a white 1994 Mitsubishi Pajero on its last wheels. The roof was dented and covered with black shoe marks from the lawyers who had stood there. The sunroof was broken. The running boards had been removed to prevent too many fans from hitching a ride.

In two months, Chaudhry had given six speeches. Each road trip was slower and longer than the one before because of the crowds and occasional stops for spontaneous lawyer speeches. It took about nine hours to drive the hundred miles from Islamabad to Peshawar, and twenty-six hours to drive the hundred and seventy miles from Islamabad to Lahore.

Musharraf wanted none of this. In the seaport of Karachi, Chaudhry’s speech was preempted by riots and gun battles sparked mainly by a thug-led pro-Musharraf party—at least forty-one people were killed. TV stations were eventually stopped from broadcasting the road trips live. Hundreds of Musharraf’s political opponents were rounded up. Public gatherings of more than five people in Islamabad needed government approval. Musharraf appeared increasingly under siege, paranoid and suspicious. He railed against members of his ruling coalition for failing to support him.

“I bluntly say you always leave me alone in time of trial and tribulation,” said Musharraf, a fan of colonial-era English like much of the elite.

The chief justice’s team then decided to take the show to the town of Abbottabad, in the North-West Frontier Province. Like every other journalist, I begged to ride in the suspended chief justice’s car. I was told no—he did not do ride-alongs, or interviews, or any meetings with the media. A few of us did the next best thing—we rode in the vehicle just behind the Chaudhry-mobile, with the wife of Chaudhry’s top lawyer. My good friend Tammy, a glamorous
Pakistani lawyer and talk-show host prone to heat stroke, diamond bling, and citrus-scented facial wipes, was close to the lawyer’s family. In Pakistan, such connections were the only way to cut through the British red-tape hangover.

Unfortunately I had gotten out to stretch my legs. So now, just after punching an older man with a comb-over, yards away from the chief justice, I watched a window roll down on his vehicle.

“Is something wrong?” shouted one of the lawyers inside.

“Yeah, something’s wrong. These guys keep grabbing me.”

He sighed and whispered something to lawyers outside the Pajero. Half a dozen then walked over to me, surrounding my rear flank, trying to protect it. But they were as effective as the country’s legal system. The hands kept poking holes in their defenses. I kept spinning around, screaming, gesturing like I was conducting an orchestra on speed, randomly catching hands mid-pinch and then hitting the offenders.

I was creating a scene. This time, the door of the Pajero popped open.

“Kim. Get in,” the lawyer said.

This was unexpected. Every journalist I knew had been trying to get inside this vehicle for months. None had. But somehow, where skills, talent, and perseverance had failed, my unremarkable ass had delivered. I climbed into the backseat as another lawyer jumped out of the vehicle to make room for me. I sat quietly.

“Just sit there. Don’t say a word,” the top lawyer told me, glaring at me in the rearview mirror. “You can stay in here through the worst of the crowds. Do not talk to the chief justice. Do not try to interview the chief justice.”

I waited for a beat.

“But what if the chief justice wants to talk to me?”

Chaudhry laughed. I was in. And pretty soon, Tammy and another friend were in the car as well, because once I had breached the car, the others couldn’t be kept out. Especially Tammy, who as
a minor celebrity had a Wonder Woman ability to make men talk, even without the lasso. As soon as the top lawyer stepped out of the SUV to make a speech, the chief justice, his minder gone, started gushing to Tammy.

“I’m quite happy, you yourself can imagine,” Chaudhry said, adding that he felt “wonderful.” He said he never would have imagined such a scene before being suspended. “Never, being a judge and a lawyer. Never.”

The top lawyer stepped back into the SUV, looking suspiciously from the judge to the backseat. All of us sat quietly.

At points the convoy reached speeds of sixty miles per hour. But whenever we hit a town, or even an intersection, crowds swarmed, bringing traffic to a standstill. People ran through the maze of cars, clutching handfuls of rose petals, trying to find Chaudhry, whom they called “chief.” At times it seemed like the SUV would be buried in petals or people. Supporters pounded on the windows so insistently that it occasionally felt like a zombie movie. They shook the vehicle. Stickers and posters showed Chaudhry superimposed over crowds of thousands like a political leader, or Chaudhry and the words “My Hero.” Our soundtrack veered between cheering crowds and loudspeakers, blaring a new hit song that repetitively asked army chief Musharraf, “Hey, man, why don’t you take off your uniform?”

We reached Abbottabad at a ludicrous 11
PM
—driving seventy miles in fourteen hours, meaning an average speed of five miles an hour. A crowd of ten thousand people, mainly lawyers in their black suits and white shirts, had waited in front of a stage since the afternoon. Rebellion was everywhere. A moderator announced that the head of the youth wing of Musharraf’s ruling party had quit to join the chief justice’s movement. The mayor of Abbottabad, a military town, gave Chaudhry a key to the city. The head of the courts for the province said the government had asked him to stay away from the rally, but he decided to come anyway.

Onstage various people gave speeches, but the highlight of the night was definitely the lawyers, who sporadically burst into dancing
conga lines, tossing rose petals in the air. This felt like a party, but no one was drunk.

Chaudhry finally took the stage at 2
AM
. He looked at his notes, gave five minutes of thank-yous, and said he would make no political statements. Instead he put on his glasses and diligently read a fifteen-minute speech about the value of an independent judiciary and the equality of law. He looked down at his notes and occasionally seemed close to whispering. He reminded me of Andy Kaufman’s character Latka on the sitcom
Taxi
, avoiding the hand-waving theatrics essential to any popular Pakistani speaker.

It didn’t matter. The crowd roared.

This had been the longest day I had ever spent in Pakistan. It felt like one of the longest days of my life. But despite the assault on my rear flank, I had never had more fun here. Never before had I actually felt that strange rising-up sensation in my chest about Pakistan—not indigestion but hope. After Afghanistan, I had vowed not to get too attached to a country. And here I was, falling in love again. I was such a chick, endlessly fooling myself that this time a country would be for keeps. Maybe the NATO guy was right: Maybe I was just naïve.