The Man Who Retrieves The Taliban's Dead

Kevin Sieff: KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Abdul Hakim gets the first calls just after the bombs explode and the firefights end, when all that is left are the remains of the dead.

The voices on the other end belong to Taliban commanders whom Hakim has come to know well. The first sentence is almost always the same: "We're looking for a body."

In the southern province that has borne more violence and death than any other since the war began, the Taliban knows Hakim as the man who can retrieve insurgents' bodies from American and Afghan authorities and return them to their families and comrades.