I flew to Kabul to study Bacha Saquo, illiterate son of a lowly water-carrier, who for nine months in 1929 ruled Afghanistan. In that desolate and shell-shocked city I discovered that I was not the first on his trail: in 1929 the German Franz Wachter, a colleague of Otto Rank, had visited Sacha Baquo in prison. Franz did not survive the experience, but he did leave an account of it (in very precise German script) in three small notebooks. These are now in my possession.
By bribing dungeon guards, Wachter managed to visit Bacha after his fall from power. Wachter writes (my translation):
Amir Habibullah, no longer king but reduced once again to Bacha Saquo, son of a water carrier, pierces me with fierce, rapacious eyes, the like of which I have seen before during earlier travels to the mountains of Afghanistan. They are the eyes of his race. They are warlike eyes, eyes that love to fight and to kill, eyes that show no mercy to enemies and have no pity, not even for women and children. They are the keen eyes of the hawk, that patrols the mountain skies, always scanning for prey, and that takes its delight in swooping down and snatching the unsuspecting victim in its talons, and then tearing it apart with its sharp beak.
This was Wachter's first impression of Bacha Saquo.
Even a cursory reading of Afghan history reveals the warlike nature of its people. In Zohein's Afghanistan, the most authoritative and accurate description of Afghan culture, the hillmen emerge as throwbacks to the pitiless Vikings or merciless Mongols. The Afghans have a strong and long-standing tradition of warring among themselves and of predatory attacks upon travelers--practices that persist even today.
A hillman from Kohistan, Sacha proved violent even as a youth. In revenge for a beating by his religious teacher, he burned down the mullah's house. Shortly afterward, at the age of only fourteen, he murdered a robber who had enlisted him.
"I inserted the knife just above his left kidney," quotes Wachter, "and looked with pleasure into the man's eyes as I twisted it."
In Kabul and Peshawar Sacha passed several years thieving and soldiering, all the while observing carefully the men about him. He established himself as a bold and ruthless fighter. During this period Bacha met a mullah who told him that one day he would be king. The mullah also prophesied that Bacha would outlive him by only a short period.
This prophecy, Bacha said, rendered him invincible; he could not die before he became king. As he said this, his raptor eyes shone with a pride, almost a glory. Alfred Adler would doubtless attribute this extreme reaction to the will to power, the young man's overcompensation for being born the son of a lowly water-carrier. But I am convinced that such reductions fail to reveal the truth; anyone who gazed into those fierce, joyful eyes would know instantly, as I did, that they were lighted by a zest for life, that, knowing our existence on this earth is but short and often brutish, life must be fully lived, viscerally, at the peak of human power.
Traditionally the hillmen of Afghanistan preyed on caravans carrying goods among the region's major cities. Making their way overland, the camel trains were forced to cross the rugged mountains, where the hillmen waited with their muskets. Though accompanied by armed guards, the caravans had to twist and turn through narrow passes; it was there that the brigands attacked, capturing a few camels laden with jewelry, fur and spices, while the rest of the caravan fought its way forward.
Bacha decided to become the king of all brigands. There was a problem, however: to attack a caravan in the mountains required a team of robbers, but Sacha had only himself and his boyhood friend Jamal Gul. So he decided on a bold course. He took the unprecedented gamble of attacking a caravan out in the open, in the plains. Digging foxholes in the sand along the trade route, he and Jamal lay in ambush with their Enfield .303 repeating rifles. As their target caravan passed, Bacha fired from one side and Jamal from the other. The panicky traders raced forward to escape. Bacha brought down a camel near the end of the caravan, the lead of five camels roped together. A few well-aimed shots chased off the owner. Bacha knew that the other owners would not jeopardize themselves for this one man at the tail of the caravan.
After this feat, Bacha's name raced through the mountains. In triumph he returned to his village. His new reputation attracted the ablest hillmen. With these crack shots he set out to achieve something else that had never been done: capture an entire caravan. After a long day of travel across the plains, caravans spent the night in camp, at a caravanserai, and posted guards while their members slept. Bacha singled out a caravan of two hundred camels and attacked at night just before the tired and off-guard traders arrived at the caravanserai. Because the caravan included a contingent of mercenary soldiers, Bacha had to be very clever in his attack: with a British flare pistol he suddenly illuminated the entire caravan while Jamal shrieked, "It is the sign! The sign! The heavens are pouring their vengeance upon us! Woe! Woe! Fly, my brothers! The heavens exact vengeance!" The merchants and mercenaries had never seen flares. Amazed and terrified, they abandoned their camels and dashed down the trail. While Bacha continued to fire the Verey pistol and Jamal to shout warnings of doom, their fellow bandits led the camels toward the mountains. As Sacha had anticipated, the merchants and their guards regrouped after a few minutes and cautiously returned toward the caravanserai. Bacha discouraged them by hurling a British bomb, which killed and maimed many and sent the others scurrying back down the path, convinced that the heavens were indeed spewing death and destruction.
His eyes dancing, Bacha Saquo told me that later, secure in the hills, he laughed until his sides split; he regaled himself with the image of the hapless traders, some with their fat bellies blown open and their limbs torn off, others with their round bellies bouncing as they ran for their lives. These happy images often interrupted his thoughts as he plotted his rise to power.
This daring adventure made Bacha the most famous brigand in the mountains. He had only one rival in reputation. This poor fellow was soon dispatched through another unprecedented strategem, a stealthy night attack on the man's village.
Bacha Saquo told me that the supporters of his rival "lost their courage when they saw their leader's head upon my pole."
After this Bacha had no rival. Soon his reputation rendered it unnecessary to raid caravans: instead, the merchants paid him tribute, a percentage of their goods, to guarantee safe passage through the mountains. He became rich as well as famous.
And he became a national force. At that time Amanullah, the King of Afghanistan, was experiencing grave difficulties. Like Kemal Ataturk in neighboring Turkey he had instituted reforms to Westernize his country, introducing public schools, for example, and Western dress. This infuriated the population and especially the very conservative mullahs; to make matters worse, the King financed the reforms, including a lavish trip to Europe to witness modernity at first hand, by taxing the population several years in advance. To the country's southerners these reforms were especially onerous and odious; they rebelled; alliances quickly formed; civil war ensued.
Bacha Saquo said to me, "Amanulla wrote a law that every Afghan in Kabul must wear the absurd clothes of the European, and every visitor also, on pain of a stiff fine. Such a fool could not long survive as king."
In the mountains Bacha waited and watched. When the country's rage had ripened he struck, besieged Kabul, and after a brief struggle took the city and declared himself king. But even as his peasant soldiers overran the royal palace, Bacha discovered a serious problem: Amanullah had taken away everything, all gold, all valuables--even the crown jewels. How was Bacha to pay his clamoring troops? The country's peasants had already been badly overtaxed. This left only one source of immediate funds, the class Bacha detested as parasites--the merchants. These he terrorized into producing the money he needed to pay his soldiers.
Bacha Saquo threatened to cut off the merchants' hands and feet if they failed to dip into their hoards; and for the dilatory, he made good his threat. Speaking of these matters now, Bacha Saquo flashes his teeth in a grin of pure pleasure at the memory, and slaps his thigh. "I disliked having to think always about raising money," he said, "it was the curse of my rule. But I did enjoy making those fat merchants squirm when I handed them the severed hands of their colleagues."
Bacha's entire tenure was a reign of terror during which he subjected recalcitrants to ingenious tortures in the dungeons under the royal palace, and made public examples of the unregenerate by cutting off their limbs or impaling them on spikes or strapping them to the mouths of cannons and blowing them to bits. Apparently even these grisly amusements were not sufficient entertainment for Bacha, however, because he soon instituted on the priceless carpets of the palace weekly cock fights; these became the primary attraction of his reign, especially since any argument over a contest was settled by handing the disputants knives and thrusting them into the ring.
Bacha withstood several challenges during his nine months of rule. He led his army against tribal adversaries; after the relative boredom of the capital, he enjoyed the hand-to-hand combat. However, relishing cruelty, lacking not only funds but the skills of administration, and with numerous factions in the country scheming to oust him, Bacha could not long remain king. A formidable general, Nadir Khan, was prevailed upon to return from convalescence in Europe and depose this upstart son of a water carrier. It was at this time, too, that Bacha learned that his mullah had died, meaning, according to the prophecy, that Bacha himself had only a short while to live. After numerous battles Bacha's men were defeated, and though Bacha himself escaped to the hills with a price on his head, in the end he was betrayed by his fellow hillsmen.
Wachter's final notes:
Before his sentencing, the result of which was a foregone conclusion, Bacha Saquo said, "Allah has been good to me. He has answered all of my desires. How many men have been King? How many men have led such a life as mine? How could I ask for more?"
In all of my years I have never met a happier man.
Bacha found himself in the very dungeon to which he had consigned so many of his victims. It was there that Franz Wachter last spoke with him. Or with anyone else for that matter; on returning to the dungeon after receiving his sentence and before the guards could intervene, Bacha, with his iron manacles, crushed the skull of his German biographer. In Kabul I spoke to one of the guards, a very old man. He claimed that Bacha murdered Wachter for the sheer joy of it. And he said that standing at last before the firing squad, Bacha Saquo laughed.