Sixteenth in a series

As in real estate, so in the current Afghanistan crisis: “Location, location, location.” Now more than ever, whereabouts are crucial: Where events are (and are not) taking place; where individuals are currently hanging their headgear (karakul lamb skin caps or elaborate silk turbans or pancake shaped wool pakools).

Let’s start with Osama bin Laden: public enemy No. 1 or hero, depending on which public. Osama (whose headgear is none of the above but rather a variant of the kaffiya and arbiyya worn by males in Arabia) is probably – but by no means certainly – still in southern Afghanistan. Probably not moving around as much. Probably underground. If so, how long can he hide from digital eavesdropping and heat-seeking technology hawked to the Pentagon by defense contractors like GlobalSecurity and Recon/Optical? Their gizmos can supposedly hear a pin before it drops and penetrate a hundred feet of solid rock.

The fact that in Afghanistan he’d have to dig ever deeper requires consideration of two alternative locations for Osama: First, he could be in the axiomatically ungovernable “Tribal Areas” which border Afghanistan. On world maps, these belong to Pakistan. On the ground they belong to the Pushtun tribes who live there. In an arrangement inherited from the British, Islamabad leaves the tribes alone in return for guarantees that tribesmen won’t plunder the plains. Osama could be anywhere in this Wild East no-man’s-land between Quetta and Peshawar.

Second, it’s conceivable that he could have split for parts unknown and far away. The Afghanistan-Pakistan border is famously porous. Likewise still full of holes is President Musharraf’s control over his own intelligence service. Osama could have hoofed it from Afghanistan by any number of mountainous “scenic routes” which by-pass frontier checkpoints. He could even have flown out on some low-level aircraft … such as the two reported last week to have landed briefly in Taliban-controlled Kunduz. Their home airport could be in only one country: Pakistan. And once in Pakistan, other small planes could take Osama onwards and elsewhere: to the sea, for instance, and thence who knows where.

Now the whereabouts of Mohammed Zahir Shah, ex-king of Afghanistan for 40 years, and exile in Rome for the last 38. One more instructive number: Zahir Shah is 87 years old. Age explains, in part but only in part, why he and his entourage are still in Rome. Other stay-put reasons include the royal family’s innate caution, residual Pakistani opposition, lack of firm international support, and the fact that the Pushtuns around Kandahar – ancestral base of Zahir Shah’s lineage – are fragmenting into mutually hostile tribal groups as Taliban control collapses. In the words of an extraordinary Pakistani journalist who knows more about the Afghanistan crisis than almost everyone else put together: “Zahir Shah wants to arrive and preside only after it’s all solved. It won’t work. If he wants to come at all, he’ll have to come now and be part of the solution process.”

Likewise Hamid Karzai, the brave pro-Zahir Shah leader of the Populzai Pushtuns and former Afghan government deputy minister who entered Afghanistan more than a month ago. He’s survived – at great risk – on a mission similar to that of the betrayed and murdered Abdul Haq, but he’s still in the hills of Uruzgan province. To be decisively effective, he’ll have to march with his people on Kandahar.

Kandahar – a location more crucial at the moment than even Kabul – is still (as this piece is written) in Taliban hands. Some of the Taliban have left for Pakistan – either to the Tribal Areas or to madrassas (Islamist colleges) where many were ideologically programmed. But not all. The Taliban day is not quite done yet in Afghanistan. Once it is, some Taliban will pop up in other locations – to ill effect.

Bonn, erstwhile capital of pre-unification West Germany, may be a key location as this piece appears. It has been chosen by Lakhdar Brahimi, special United Nations envoy for Afghanistan, as a safe and neutral corner for “all-Afghan” talks on forming a transitional government. Bonn – like Rome, Cyprus, and Istanbul – has been the site of an ongoing exile/diplomatic “process.” Note where the meeting will not be. Not the Afghan capital Kabul – which, if chosen, would have legitimized the recently victorious (and pakool wearing) northern alliance. Not Peshawar, Pakistan, base camp of the 1980s Afghan Resistance against the Soviets but also home base of several Pushtun (and turban wearing) political groups. And not Rome which would tip the process prematurely towards the (karakul-wearing) ex-king. (Karakul hats were also favored by the 1980s Afghan communist leaders … and thus are still in disrepute.)

Let’s hope that Bonn succeeds, or at least appears to succeed. If it does, peace will acquire The Big Mo (Bush-ese for momentum). If not, forget your plans for New Year’s Eve in Kabul.

Then there’s the whereabouts of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar – ex-agent of Pakistan intelligence hopes for a puppet Afghansitan, chief wrecker of post-Soviet Kabul, and murderer of dozens of Afghan moderates. After Pakistan realized its mistake (one of many) and cast him loose, this psychopath took refuge in Iran. There he remains, for now.

A plea to Iranian President Khatami: Please imprison this person and ship him to the Hague International Tribunal for War Crimes. Your country, President Khatami, is here to stay (unlike Pakistan and Afghanistan and many others worldwide). The West needs to realize the permanent existence and importance of Iran. Giving Gulbuddin what he richly deserves would help us recognize your status as an enduring and positive fixture in world affairs.

Finally (and personally) the location, on the road between Jalalabad and Kabul, of the murder this past week of four Western journalists. I don’t know who, exactly, killed them or exactly why. I do know the location, most likely the exact location where the road climbs and narrows and enters a gorge. I know because I was attacked, robbed, pistol-whipped, and abandoned there with three companions this past March.

But why were these four newspeople killed – in the same place – and not the four of us? How come we’re alive and they’re not? I flat-out don’t know.

Here’s one of Afghanistan’s lessons for those who hang out there: That there are some things in life you’ll never, ever understand.

Dr. Whitney Azoy, a cultural anthropologist and former U.S. diplomat in Kabul, has worked for 30 years with Afghanistan and the Muslim world.