Afghanistan's civil war was responsible for the existence of tens of thousands of prisoners captured by the two major parties to the conflict, the Taliban and the Northern Alliance.

One of the POW camps maintained by the Northern Alliance was located at Do-Ab, which literally means "two rivers, or waters", on an island in the heart of the Panjsher Valley. At the time of my visit to the area in September 2001, the camp was home to several hundred Taliban fighters, most of whom had been held there for more than five years.

Yet they all were determined to take up arms and fight again on the side of the Taliban for a truly Islamic Afghanistan, if released. Conditions in the camp did not seem too awful, although cells were pretty crowded; guards were friendly with the inmates and food was no different from what prison wardens themselves ate: pilau. In fact, journalists in the Panjsher Valley treated themselves to that same dish every day. Not because they liked it, but because there was almost nothing else available: it was war time.

One of the prisoners, a bespectacled man with refined manners and fluent English, looked and sounded like a university professor who was here by mistake but his long beard and white skull cap belied his affiliation with the Taliban. Incidentally, Salahuddin Khaled was a theology scholar in Pakistan, who arrived in Afghanistan to implement with sword and fire the ideas of a true Islamic state.

Dr. Khaled had not heard about the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York City, but when I told him what happened he was more than pleased: "Good job. I'm not sure if that was ben Laden or the Palestinians, but the work was well done." He, too, was prepared to continue the armed struggle if the Northern Alliance let him go.

I have no information about the fate of Dr. Khaled and other Taliban POWs from the Do-Ab camp following the demise of the Taliban regime in Kabul late in 2001. The Northern Alliance command said they would set all of them free once the war was over. It is very unlikely, though, that the midget assassin pictured with his long-bearded friend on the porch of their prison cell was allowed to go. The Afghan man was such a good cook, Northern Alliance officers vied for the right to hire him as their chef. Once he won their confidence, he would put poison in the food, thus killing a number of top commanders in several parts of Afghanistan. The malicious dwarf continued his poisoning spree for many years because no one could have suspected such a seemingly harmless guy to be so dangerous. The Do-Ab camp, it must be noted, had no perimeter walls or barbed wire, although cells were locked for the night. How come nobody had ever escaped? There was nowhere to go, was the answer. The chief warden explained that the Panjsher Valley was a natural outer prison for inmates in this and other POW camps. Once, he said, a sick Taliban fighter was allowed to go home; he had all the documents proving his release, but local inhabitants caught and returned him to the camp at least four times, until he finally disappeared.

There were several POW camps that I visited during my trips to Afghanistan in 2001-2002, including a prison in Taloqan, Takhar Province, whose inmates are seen sitting in line (bottom of the page) for a decision on their fate.

These three men and other inmates of the Taloqan prison said they were local farmers who had been inducted by the Taliban to fight on their side. November 2001.