TIME: Karzai's New
Bunker
Monday, October 21, 2002
By MICHAEL WARE
On a Kabul street with no name but alive with honking
yellow taxis, something curious is happening. A new
construction site has sprung up just outside the
grounds of the presidential palace, with a formidable
wall of soil-filled shipping containers stacked two
levels high. The swarms of Afghan laborers say they
don't know what they're building. American engineers
shoo away anyone who asks about it. But members of
the palace guard, charged with protecting President
Hamid Karzai, say the construction sits above an
aging bunker complex and that U.S. forces from the
769th Engineer Battalion are refashioning it for the
President. "We're building an underground bunker for
Karzai," a member of the battalion told TIME.
U.S. forces have been overseeing Karzai's security
ever since July, following the assassination of one
of his top ministers. But a September attempt to kill
the President has heightened concerns about his
safety. Karzai's U.S. backers worry about the threats
posed by Taliban and al-Qaeda remnants as well as by
unyielding warlords such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. And
so the U.S., it appears, is helping the Afghan
President dig in.
A map of the purported underground warrens, drawn for
TIME by an Afghan palace guard, shows a tunnel
skirting the stone walls surrounding the palace.
Small chambers run off the subterranean passageway.
According to palace guards, the refurbishment plans
include not just the underground presidential bunker
but also a facility for U.S. forces and barracks for
the new Afghan national army. Whatever the ultimate
uses of the bunker, work on it is proceeding at an
urgent clip. "If the U.S. engineers are not
patrolling when we're working at night, we can steal
a little sleep," says a laborer, Ghulam Sakhi. "But
if they catch us, they kick us awake. They're always
pushing us to work very, very hard, day and night."
--By
Michael Ware