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KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN — Crouched against a crumbling stone wall, Abdul Wali is a small man with curly dark hair, sweaty and matted under a cap that sits askew on the back of his head.
He plays nervously with a broken wristwatch, kneading the metal bracelet through his fingers like a string of prayer beads. He doesn't want to tell his story, he said. What good would it do? His situation is pretty much the same as everybody else's here in the national-security wing of Sarpoza prison. He stands accused of involvement with the Taliban insurgency, and denies it. No judgment has been passed, so he's not sure how long he will languish in these dark cells.
Yes, he answers in a quiet voice, he was tortured. He opens his shirt and shows scars on his chest. He refuses to show his naked back, where a human-rights investigator said he saw worse scarring on the young man's flesh.
“I'm hopeless,” he said. “I've told my story many times to the interrogators, but they don't listen.”
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His ordeal started when he met Canadian troops in a grape field last summer in Nalgham, a cluster of villages about 35 kilometres southwest of Kandahar city, on the north bank of the Arghandab River. At the time, he didn't know the nationality of the soldiers; like most people in southern Afghanistan, he referred to them only as haroji, or foreigners.
But he remembers clearly that the troops had dark-green, eight-wheeled vehicles of the kind used by the Canadians, and he has heard enough stories in prison to understand that he owes his captivity to Canada.
He has no quarrel with the foreign soldiers, he said, although it's easy to understand why the Canadians thought he was a Taliban fighter.
At age 23, he falls into the category that the soldiers usually refer to as “fighting-age males.” He belongs to Omarkhail tribe, a tiny branch of the Pashtun ethnic group, one of many smaller tribes that often feel disenfranchised under the new government. His hometown is located in Helmand province, a long way from the grape field where he encountered the Canadians. That part of the countryside was an unlikely place to be lingering, too, because gun battles had ripped through those fields earlier in the day.
None of that proves he was an insurgent, Mr. Wali said. He was obliged to stay in Nalgham despite the recent fighting because he was guarding a farm that belonged to his brother-in-law. Mr. Wali said he had been living in the district for three years, after his family started a meagre business in a nearby migrant camp.
His father was a livestock trader in Helmand province, he said, but the trade wasn't enough to support all eight sons. Mr. Wali moved with three of his brothers to set up a tailoring shop in a ramshackle camp west of Kandahar city, where thousands of people have sought shelter from war and drought. All the brothers lived with their wives and children in a mud house, 14 people crowding into three rooms. They could afford to eat meat about once a week.
He was relaxing in the shade when the Canadian troops surrounded him, he said. They took off his green pinstripe vest and tore open the lining, finding nothing except his wallet, decorated with Japanese cartoon characters and the words, “Kiki & Coco.” The wallet was later emptied of cash, although Mr. Wali said he's sure the foreign troops didn't steal anything; he blames the local police.
The Canadians tied his hands with plastic cuffs and kept him in the back of their armoured vehicle for two or three hours, he said. The foreigners didn't harm him, only asked questions through a translator and scribbled in a notepad.
Afterwards, the Canadians blindfolded him and gave him to Afghan forces. The beatings started almost immediately, he said, and only paused whenever it seemed that Canadians were nearby.
“The foreign soldiers didn't like to see beating,” he said.
The Afghans took him to a nearby town and uncovered his eyes. He found himself in the Panjwai district headquarters, a high-walled compound where Canadian officers often meet local leaders for cups of green tea.
Mr. Wali was shown less hospitality. Afghan officers took him to a room with bare cement walls and cudgelled him with rifle butts, he said. They also jabbed him in the chest with the muzzles of their Kalashnikovs, he said, which left him with the rash of dark scars on his chest.
At one point, he said, about nine police officers forced his face into the floor. One officer sat on the back of his head, while the others pummelled him. A man in civilian clothes questioned him between beatings, he said.
The local police kept him in that cell for three days, he said, with only two meals of tea and bread. Next he was transferred to Kandahar city, and thrown into the grey block of holding cells beside police headquarters.
Around midday, a fat officer and a thinner one took him up the cement stairs of the headquarters building. They brought him to a room overlooking the busy street, shut the windows, and closed the yellow curtains.
He had a quiet moment to contemplate what was about to happen, he said, as the officers searched for a suitable whip. It seemed they wanted to find a length of chain, but settled on a bundle of electrical cables.
They forced him onto his stomach, he said, and thrashed him on his back and legs.
It was hard to guess how long the beating lasted, he said. He didn't bleed, but later he found himself covered with black bruises. They beat him on three consecutive days, he said, and then started asking for money.
Tales of extortion and bribery are very common among people who have passed through Kandahar jails; in Mr. Wali's case, he said the first person to ask for a bribe was the police interrogator, a tall man with red henna in his neatly trimmed beard. He didn't quote a price, but suggested that a gift would mean freedom.
“I said, ‘What if I don't give you money?'” Mr. Wali said.
“He said, ‘The pen is in my hand. I can send you to the NDS, right now.'”
The National Directorate of Security, the domestic intelligence agency, has a fearsome reputation. Mr. Wali knew his family didn't have enough money for a bribe, however, so he refused the interrogator's offer. He was sent to the NDS the same afternoon, he said, escorted in a taxi by two police officers and a prosecutor.
His got a little relief when NDS officers took him to a bathroom and allowed him to wash, he said, and they gave him a few minutes for prayers. Then they sent him to interrogation, the first in a series he would endure over the next month.
He was introduced to the questioner that prisoners have nicknamed Shin, meaning “green,” because of the sickly colour of his skin. Other prisoners called him Bobo, local slang for a B-52 bomber.
“His beating was like a bombing,” Mr. Wali said. “He kicked me in the head, and I fell into a table. Blood came out my nose. He told me, ‘Don't bleed on the carpet. Go wash your face.' ” The bleeding didn't stop, however, so his interrogation was suspended until the next day. The NDS wanted him to give his signature and thumbprint to a written confession, acknowledging himself as a Taliban insurgent. Some interrogators also wanted money.
“I said, ‘I have no money in my pockets,'” he said. “‘I have to call my family to bring money. Give me a phone.'” The interrogator refused, and instead demanded his relatives' phone numbers. Realizing it was useless, Mr. Wali admitted that his family was too poor to afford telephones.
The beatings continued. From his tormentors, he learned that the written accusations against him claimed that the Canadians who originally detained him had discovered two bullets in his pockets.
These two bullets, he said, were considered physical evidence of his involvement with the Taliban.
“Please, ask the Canadians, did I have two bullets?” he said, flicking a reporter's notebook with an angry gesture. Then he sighs, deflated, and slumps back against the prison wall.
The abuse stopped when the NDS sent him to Sarpoza prison, he said. He has been waiting eight months for a formal sentence.
“I saw many people who were beaten for five months, six months,” he said. “They want to put pressure on people and make them say lies. If the beating is one or two days, okay. But six months?”
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