When the stranger unbolted the cell door and whispered for them to
hurry, Rahim assumed that somewhere in the prison a fight must have
broken out. It was the middle of the night, and normally the heavy metal
door remained locked until the morning call to prayer. For the past
five months, Rahim had shared this cell, in Kandahar's Sarposa Prison,
with five other captured insurgents, two of whom he'd fought alongside
in the fiercely contested district of Panjwai. Now, from where they lay
on old blankets and cushions on the floor, all five gazed uncertainly at
the man standing in their doorway. "We are your friends," the man said.
"There is a tunnel over here. Come quickly and get inside it."
Rahim and his cellmates stepped into the prison's dimly lit lime
green corridor. At the passageway's far end, a metal gate sealed the
cell-block entrance. Every ten feet or so, solid black doors led to more
communal cells. Nearly 500 Taliban occupied this part of Sarposa,
called the political block. Some were military commanders and
shadow-government officials, others hardened foot soldiers and young
recruits. Their arrests represented years of effort by coalition forces
to quell a resuscitated insurgency and impose some semblance of law in
one of the least stable regions in Afghanistan. Following the stranger
down the long hall, Rahim noticed that most of the cells were now empty...
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