Many Afghans are celebrating the imminent surrender of the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar. Not taxi driver Rahmatullah Khan. For him, the city's fall is bad for business.
In recent weeks, Khan has made a living transporting families desperate to flee the fighting around Kandahar, his hometown -- and fighters eager to join it. He takes passengers on the 500km trip through the frontlines almost every day. The price for the 12-hour, one-way journey from Kabul is US$230, twice his normal rate.
"It's an excellent business," Khan, a 25-year-old Pashtun, said Wednesday while standing next to his yellow and white Toyota Corolla cab at an improvised taxi station outside Kabul. "I make much more money now, and the risk is OK." The surrender of Kandahar began yesterday, two months to the day after the US began its bombing campaign. Taliban fighters in Kandahar handed over weapons to a commission of tribal elders and religious leaders headed by Mullah Naqibullah, the Afghan Islamic Press said.
Khan said he was one of 100 or more drivers working the high-risk route between the cities. They set off from Kabul at daybreak and race to arrive in Kandahar before sunset. A driver still on the road when night falls, Khan said, travels without headlights -- with lights on, the taxi becomes a possible target for bombers.
"Two to three civilian cars get hit every day by US jets," he said.
American jets aren't the only hazard. To avoid raising suspicion among fighters he might encounter along the route, Khan shuns both a black turban -- a Taliban symbol -- and the distinctive woolen hat favored by the Northern Alliance. He wears a simple prayer cap.
His beard is neither long, nor short, and his clothes are those of a rural Afghan.
Life in Kandahar has remained "normal," he said, despite the war and the US bombing raids. There are plenty of products for sale in the shops, Khan said, a sign that not only taxi drivers but also commercial truckers have decided it's worth the risk -- and reward -- to do business in the Taliban-controlled city.
On the Kandahar-to-Kabul leg of the route, Khan carries families escaping from the war zone. On the opposite route, his passengers are Pashtuns who fear retaliation from the mainly Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara Northern Alliance, he said. "There are many Pashtuns who would still prefer to die in Kandahar than anywhere else," he said.
The only type of passenger he hasn't carried out of Kandahar, he said, are Taliban trying to desert. "Most of the deserters cross into Eastern Pashtun provinces, near the border with Pakistan," Khan said. "They would be foolish to go to Kabul."
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