Journey from Taliban to democrat

Before he leaves his village for Kabul, Abdul Hakeem Muneeb is given strict instructions by his constituents.

"The first thing is Islam," they whisper to him. He agrees: "If we follow Islam, all the rest, development and security, will follow naturally."

A delegate to the loya jirga, a grand council that will produce Afghanistan's new constitution, Mr. Muneeb makes an unlikely founding father. A former deputy minister in the ousted Taliban government, he still wears the black turban favored by Taliban leaders. Without it, he says, his head feels naked.

While some Afghans consider him a representative of the past, the Karzai government sees former Taliban like Muneeb as windows into the volatile countryside, where the vast majority of Afghanistan's 21 million citizens live. Making men like Muneeb feel like citizens, with rights and responsibilities, may be a crucial first step in undercutting Taliban support and giving disaffected Pashtun tribesmen an option other than the gun.

"There is a difference between the military commanders who use the name of Taliban, and the educated and religious people, the real Taliban," says Muneeb. "These people are not criminals, but they are concerned that the American forces will mistake them for the criminals who are fighting the government."

From Zormat, the road to Kabul is a three-hour, bone-crunching ordeal. Muneeb is crammed in a public minivan, full of shoppers, businessmen, and whole Pashtun families carrying gifts for relatives in the big city. Outside the window, the arid mountains of Paktia Province slowly give way to the fertile farmlands of Logar, recently planted with winter wheat.

Ever since he left a caravan of supporters - and armed bodyguards - back in the provincial capital of Gardez, Muneeb has felt nervous. He thinks of his wife, two daughters, and infant son in Zormat, who will need the protection of relatives for the next few weeks of the loya jirga. Just three months ago, Taliban fighters attacked Muneeb's home with Kalashnikovs. It was the second such attack in a year.

But there are risks in Kabul too. Militiamen for the Northern Alliance, manning the checkpoints to the city, keep their eyes out for bearded Pashtuns. With the Taliban attacking aid workers, UN officials, and road builders all across the South and Southeast, these northern soldiers don't want to let anyone in who might bring violence to Kabul itself.

In Kabul, he meets his brother Mohebullah - a delegate from Ghazni Province - at the bullet-pocked campus of Kabul Polytechnic, the site of the loya jirga. Like high-school kids on a field trip, they hire a taxi and see the city of Kabul. Muneeb's first stop is an electronic store; he buys himself a mobile phone. Until recently, he never imagined holding one - even when he was the Taliban's deputy minister for telecommunications six years ago. The phone will be quite useful in the days ahead, to make deals, influence other delegates, play the game.

Driving from the Polytechnic campus to the main bazaar at Pul-e Chishti to the government ministries of Shar-e Naw, Muneeb stares wide-eyed at the changes the city has undergone since he left two years ago. Internet cafés in every city block, Chinese, Thai, and Italian restaurants, tens of thousands of cars in a city where bicycles once ruled.

To Muneeb, Kabul is paradise. In Zormat, there is no school, no health clinic, no electricity, no source of jobs except agriculture and nearby brick kilns.

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