Soldiers of God by Robert D. Kaplan Page A

English, and Italian. He wrote in English for
Newsweek
and in Russian for his current employer, Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe. He had reported from Lebanon, Chad, Nicaragua, and numerous other places. He had an Italian wife and newborn baby and was studying German. He was writing two books simultaneously. Like his friend Abdul Haq, he never seemed to sleep, and the two often spent half the night talking. When Shuster would finally return to his room at Dean's, Haq would phone him about something they had forgotten to discuss, or Shuster would phone Haq. After he went back to Munich, the headquarters for Radio Liberty, Shuster phoned Haq often.
    Shuster took life so seriously that he could only live it in overdrive. There was an intensity and self-awareness about him that reminded me of the characters in a Milan Kundera novel. Like many Eastern Europeans, only with alcohol did Shuster unwind; his personality then became like that of an ordinary person when sober.
    When Shuster came to Peshawar for two weeks in late May 1988, he produced over a dozen long radio reports, went inside near Kandahar for two days, drank every other night at the American Club, and helped negotiate a three-way deal between Abdul Haq, Haq's oldest brother, Din Mohammed, and the office of Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuéllar for Haq to visit the United Nations. Shuster finished these negonationsat 1:00 on the morning of his departure and dashed out at 1:30 on a three-wheel auto rickshaw to pick up a friend's tape of traditional Afghan music, which he needed for one of his radio shows.
    UN officials had told Shuster that they were willing to welcome Haq in New York as a representative of the mujahidin commanders. Haq was willing to go, but only under certain conditions, conditions that were still unacceptable to perhaps the one person on earth whose respect Haq himself psychologically required: that of his oldest brother, the de facto head of Yunus Khalis's Hizb-i-Islami. Din Mohammed was not in favor of Haq's “exposing himself as a politician.” Until now, Din Mohammed thought, his younger brother was seen by other Afghans as purely a soldier. It was in that context — or such was the perception in Afghanistan and Peshawar — that Haq had met with President Reagan at the White House in 1985 and with Prime Minister Thatcher in London the following year. At any rate, for all the press coverage these meetings brought, they stirred no controversy among the various mujahidin political factions in Peshawar. Reagan and Thatcher were so friendly to the mujahidin that meetings with them aroused no suspicions. But the United Nations, influenced as it was by the Soviets and their allies, was considered an enemy camp. Meetings with UN officials did arouse suspicions in Peshawar and were the responsibility of politicians, not soldiers. If he now came to be thought of as a politician, Haq could be in danger. Though the commanders and leaders of other resistance parties besides Hizb-i-Islami wanted Haq to represent them, he could never go to New York without his brother's approval. Shuster's challenge was to mediate between the two brothers and convince Din Mohammed that Haq should go to the United Nations.
    Abdul Haq's father died when he was still a small boy, making Din Mohammed the family's father figure. He even looked the part. Although Haq, on account of his hefty size, appearedolder than his twenty-nine years, Din Mohammed, with a bald head and long gray beard, looked like an old man at forty. And while Din Mohammed, Haq, and the middle brother, Abdul Qadir, had all gone on the
haj,
the pilgrimage to Mecca, only Din Mohammed was always referred to as Haji — Haji Din Mohammed, he was called. It was a title that seemed to suit the crusty graybeard better than it did the other two brothers.
    In the 1970s, Din Mohammed had experienced the same trauma as his younger brothers: he watched as his house west of Jalalabad was burned down, his cattle were