Sun, Nov 25, 2001 page5

• Taliban, foreign fighters going unmourned

  ANONYMOUS SLABS Juma Gul has buried over 300 Afghan, Pakistani and Arab men in the five years since the Taliban entered Kabul -- 11 in the last week alone

  • THE GUARDIAN
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  There are no mourners to remember the Taliban, Arab and Pakistani fighters buried at the graveyard in the forgotten, dusty plains of Tarakhel.

  Anonymous slabs of cold slate numbered with strokes of red paint rise up from the mounds of 56 newly dug graves. For days Juma Gul, the toothless, wiry gravedigger, has been burying the bodies of Taliban troops killed in the American military strikes and the battle for Kabul.

  "Two were old men, the rest were young. They came here to fight a jihad and it was good to come. The policies of their leaders are not our concern," said Gul as he walked down the lines of graves.

  

  A digger prepares fresh graves next to those buried yesterday at a cemetery where unidentified victims of the recent fighting are put to rest near Kabul.

  PHOTO: AFP

  "The Taliban were following the way of the prophet and this is what we wanted. They were not tyrants."

  Most of the men buried here in the past week were Pakistanis, their bodies collected from the battlefield north of Kabul by the Red Cross.

  By Afghan tradition the bodies lie in the parched soil in a state of temporary burial, waiting to be collected and taken home by relatives. But only one father, a man from Qalat in the southern Pashtun heartland, has come to collect his son. For most others the battlefields of Afghanistan were far from home.

  Nearby more than 200 other graves, whose stony soil has dried and cracked, hold the bodies of men killed in the past five years of fighting as the Taliban's military machine swept through Afghanistan.

  Among them are the graves of two young men from Britain, members of the feared Pakistani militants, Harakat ul-Ansar, who fought alongside the Taliban and their Arab allies.

  At the head of the gravestone of Afraisab Ilyas is carved the word shaheed, or martyr, painted in a brilliant red with three tears beneath, three drops of blood. His father, Mian Mohammad Ilyas, came from the Pakistani city of Gujarat. The young man himself was from London, the gravestone says. He died far from home on the frontline in Kunduz on July 8, 1998.

  "The body has gone, his eyes are closed but he lives on," says the Urdu verse at the foot of the stone.

  A few rows away lies Arshad Mahmood, who took the name Sama for his holy war in Afghanistan. Another fighter with Harakat ul-Ansar, Arshad's father was from Jhelum in the Punjab but the youngster travelled from "Britannia" to fight. He died on the Shomali plains, north of Kabul, exactly a week later, July 15, 1998.

  "No one from their families has come to claim the bodies," said Gul. Small, sharp pebbles cover the graves. Above them, short scraps of colored rags hang in greens, reds and purples from long, wooden poles.

  The graveyard is full of mystery for the villagers. When they dream of a dead fighter they come to the grave in the morning and tie a new scrap of cloth to the pole.

  Many times they swear they have seen flames leap across the graves.

  Amatullah, a villager who works at the nearby airport, said: "Every night, especially on the night before Friday, we see flames coming from one side to another like lightning. This is a sign that they are near to God. They are real martyrs."

  The gravedigger opens his thick, scarred hands. On Thursday he buried 11 bodies here. "If we get dirt on our clothes we feel proud," he said.

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