FLYING HOME

I have left Afghanistan but there is still so much to say ...

Getting to the airport is an experience - and if possible, one I'd never like to repeat! The security is laughable - you drive in through a checkpoint - the car drives straight through but passengers have to disembark and go through manual security checkings. I noticed people were dragging their suitcases with them - I was too lazy to do this so when I climbed back into the vehicle and was asked at the next security checkpoint whether or not my bags had been checked, I just said yes and they waved us through. Very, very concerning!

You then have the pleasure of waiting in a queue for two hours - and noticing how the people who know someone or who've presumably rubbed the palm of an airport staff members, just get waved through. I was standing next to this British journalist and the two of us were getting more and more angry. As he said, being British and all, he doesn't get nearly so worked up about global warming or Afghan politics as he does about people pushing in queues! Quite a sight that - him and me directing Afghans to the back of the queue and asking them in English if they thought we were standing there for our health!

When we finally made it to the check-in counter, we were told not to worry because the plane had been delayed by "at least an hour" - how reassuring! Then the two cameramen were told that because they didn't have visas for Frankfurt they couldn't leave. It made no difference that we explained they were merely in-transit there - and that they'd flown exactly the same route to Kabul via Frankfurt from Moscow - with no problem. I marched off to the head of immigration (imagine doing that in another airport!) and he spoke in fluent Russian and said no, his staff was right, we needed a visa, end of story. We continued to argue - for another two hours (so you can imagine just how delayed the plane was!) when finally we landed up back in the same guy's office. I'm not joking, but he turned around and said "I like this woman (ie me) and because of her you can fly!" I then took his card to show to the check-in staff who said they didn't believe me and proceeded to try and get hold of him on his cellphone for the next twenty minutes. To say that I was happy to finally get out of there is an understatement!

The in-house flight magazine is something special! You know how they showcase all the attractions one should visit in the country to which one is flying, well, there was this write-up about Kabul Zoo. The biggest attraction, it said, was the one-eyed lion. How did he get that way? Well, during the civil war there had been lots of bullets flying in and out of the zoo and his enclosure was very damaged as a result. One day a Talib jumped into his cage (he was presumably running away from someone). Predictably, the lion attacked and killed him. The next day - wait for it! - the victim's brother came back seeking revenge, jumped into the cage, and tried to kill the poor creature. Hence, the one eye. (The article doesn't mention what happened to the brother though ... ) So that my friends is one of the attractions in Kabul city!

Am feeling a little sad to leave - although I realise I haven't been exactly relaxed here (understatement again!)

Last week a Canadian journalist, Michelle Lang, was killed, along with four Canadian soldiers on a routine patrol along what was regarded as a safe road. They were killed by a landmine. We went on many such "safe patrols" ourselves - and the unit she was embedded with was the unit we had applied to go with. It makes me ask the same questions all over again - is it fate that determines what happens to us or are we really in control of our destiny?

LITTLE BOYS IN KANDAHAR

We are working with a new fixer and he's an educated guy who studied abroad and who mixes among the affluent and successful circles in Kabul. We were talking about the exhorbitent prices for weddings and I've heard this in other Arab countries as well - it's so expensive to get married (paying the wife's family, the wedding hall, gifts and the like) that most men stay single for years. A friend of the fixer had just returned from abroad and remarked - seriously - that he was going to forget about marriage for a while and take up with some little boys. Seriously - and our fixer thought that was a "normal" reaction. As he told me, "many (men) in this country believe that women are for making babies; boys are for pleasure and sex."

I'm told (and I've read) that many warlords have young lover boys. Apparently it's particularly prevalent in Kandahar. (Max and Alexey would kill me for saying this but I swear I saw a few men in the country look at them in a way that suggests they were - should we say, appreciating them more than me!) I've read about how some of these warlords have literally gone to war with each other over little boys.

They pick them up off the streets (in other parts of the world this could be called "kidnapping"), sometimes the boy's families might even see it as "something to be pleased about" but I guess in most cases there's just nothing they can do about it. Apparently Kandahar city is the most known for this.

AMERICAN AFGHANS : MAKING A DIFFERENCE OR JUST MAKING A PROFIT?

A five minute drive from the poverty of the old city and we landed up in a beautiful opulent house that would be extravagant anywhere in the world (although the ugly thick wall and nets of barbed wire are probably a bit of a give-away that we are in Kabul and not Paris!).

Here we met two really nice brothers. As Alexey remarked, five minutes and 200 years difference! They're Afghans who emigrated from this country years ago and now live in the United States, but they've returned in their words "to help their country" but also - again in their words - "to make money". ISAF, for example, hires outside contractors to help move its transports of fuel all over the country. On the one hand it would be an unnecessary risk to its own forces (it's estimated that the US spends $1 million on each soldier it sends to Afghanistan) to have them overseeing convoys of fuel. But, on the other hand, it's probably just cheaper to hire independent services. The thing is that these companies - like the one headed by the brothers we interviewed - have to have local contacts and when travelling through an area controlled by warlords or Taliban, they have to "strike agreement" with these guys to let them pass. The army says it doesn't want to know (at least one commander I interviewed admitted it was probably happening that the Taliban was being paid to let these convoys pass) and the guys I interviewed shifted responsibility to the local guys they hire to run the convoys. All in all, by what was not said more than by what was said, I am sure in some bizarre reality, the Taliban is being paid by the foreign forces not to attack their convoys!

Talking about ISAF, which officially stands for "International Security Assistance Force", I came across a few more interpretations of the term.

I'm told it can also mean "I Saw Americans Fight" - often said by disenchanted American soldiers who feel other nationalities, unlike them, do very little to put their lives on the line (of course no American will ever admit this on camera).

It can also stand for "I Suck At Fighting".

And then the one I really like - "I Surrender - Afghanistan is F***'ed!)

So is Afghanistan today an easy place for ex pats to make money? I don't know because these brothers really do help promote and subsidise quite a few projects in their ancestral village. They told us (which only reaffirmed what I'd already sensed) that most Afghans don't like foreign troops in the country and they don't support Taliban. But all you need - and they gave an example of one of their friends - is for a mistake to be made and allegiances to be completely reversed. A group of soldiers shot at a car carrying this man's wife, sister-in-law, mother and two children. All were killed. The man returned to work the next morning with a rifle threatening to kill those "foreign bastards". So, in a matter of seconds, an ordinary villager becomes a "Taliban".

They also confirmed that the locals don't really appreciate the involvement of the foreign armies' PRT's (provincial reconstruction teams). They said (and it was later confirmed by the head of the umbrella NGO group in Kabul, headed by a Frenchman) that when soldiers involve themselves in reconstruction work - like building schools and hospitals - it confuses issues. It doesn't make sense to locals that some people wearing soldiers' uniforms are building schools - while down the road others are killing innocent villagers. The Frenchman said reconstruction work should be left to NGO's - the problem is that it is simply too unsafe for NGO's to go to these areas and get involved in the community. So the answer for the US military is to spend billions of dollars in getting its soldiers to do the work because their solution to the Afghanistan problem is not only wiping out the Taliban but putting in some kind of sustainable programmes where local government structures are strengthened so when the army leaves, the Taliban will not resurface. But it's not an easy solution.

These brothers are from the community. They say when they travel to their grandfather's village, the local Talib commander welcomes them and sits with them for a meal - telling them that although they know they're working with the enemy, because they do so much good for the community (money, voluntary projects) they won't harm them. This is for sure a country of confused allegiances - where I think we as foreigners would do better to learn from the locals, rather than think we can teach them what we think they need to learn!

Driving through Kabul today I was again struck by different impressions : children wash parked motor cars for money by dipping buckets in the dirty water that runs down the sides of the roads; a man with a Kalashnikov was holding open the back door of a car for a man carrying a wedding cake. It is a completely different Afghanistan to the Afghanistan the American soldiers are exposed to. Many (if not most) of the foreign soldiers come and serve out their term at Kandahar airforce base or the like - they never see the cities or the people as they are without the veneer of army uniform, bullets and dark glasses.

$400 FOR MY CHILD

The number has climbed to eleven dead at my hotel : two security guards and a third who is still in hospital. I'm told the former vice president's two daughters and a secretary were also killed. Thankfully the Chinese woman who was staying next to me in the hotel came back and collected her things - I never saw her but at least I was told she's okay. I spoke with one of the hotel guests who was in the reception area at the time of the blast - he said he normally waits in front of the hotel but because the taxi driver had been late the previous few days - and it was getting cold - he'd decided to wait inside. The driver was two minutes away when the bomb exploded. If he'd been on time - or if my colleague had gone outside to wait for him... that would undoubtedly have been two more people dead. He said the glass had just shattered around them in the reception area - the noise was so loud he was convinced he was dead. He told me that he'd been told that if you hear the bomb that's a good sign; it's when you don't hear it that one should worry. He said the sound was nerve-wreckingly loud. (Reminds me of advice I once received from a cameraman - it's not the bullet with your name on that you should worry about the most - it's the one labeled for "whomever it may concern" that is the real concern...if that makes sense?)

At the same time that the bomb exploded we were interviewing one of the few female army generals in Afghanistan - it was a little strange - she had these long nails and heavy makeup and shiny (presumably) plastic diamond rings on - and when the explosion happened and the building shook she almost started crying. She was visibly upset and one of her assistants brought her water to calm down. It was quite a reaction from an army general! We had to wait a while for her to calm down; this, after getting permission to speak to her in the first place which was quite an involved affair. We were told we couldn't talk to her about anything personal, political, related to the army and security - so needless to say the interview wasn't that eventful in the end!

(I have posted pics of the bombing on our facebook page under the heading "Our hotel bombing").

I spent most of the day in the poorest part of Kabul - the old city. There I had the displeasure of meeting two sisters (25 and 26 years old respectively) and their 45 year-old mother (who looked like she was nearing eighty). All three women are heroine addicts and felt no shame in smoking and injecting themselves in front of us, while sitting on the floor in their one-room apartment. It might not have been that bad if all the children and grandchildren - the youngest of which is three-years-old - had not been there in the room! The twelve-year-old, to the pleasure of her mom, took a few puffs of marijuana just to show us she too knows how to do it. It was the most difficult interview to do. I wasn't sure if the women were opening up to me because they wanted to share their story, or if they were acting and then felt justified in asking (which they did) for money at the end. It is the most awful position to be in - I didn't want to give them any; but they live in such poverty and the children look like they're starving (the one mother opened a sack of rice with mice droppings that a neighbour had given them and told us it was their only food!) that I wasn't sure what to do. I knew the money would go to drugs, but when three women are  crying in front of you, and the children pleading with you (something they've obviously been taught to do) and your heart is sore but you don't want to encourage expectation and behaviour that journalists pay for stories - to pay or not to pay?

But my real shock came later - when, as I was wrapping up the interview, the twelve-year-old opened up in a whisper that her mother had tried to sell her - twice! In this painful childish voice she told me that her mother had told her she was taking her to the bazaar, and the little girl had a panicked forewarning that something bad was about to happen. When she asked her mom what she planned to do, and her mom admitted she was hoping to sell her, the little girl started screaming and drew the attention of an old man who disciplined the mother and gave her some dollars and told her to go away.

I asked the 25-year-old woman what she thought she could get for her daughter - between $300 and $400 was her reply! Imagine being the little girl and living with the fear that your mother is going to sell you! The girl told me her mother had promised her that as long as she spent her days going from house to house begging then she wouldn't sell her. (She then stretched out her palm to me!)

All in all a heart-breaking day and I was quite happy to drive away - past the donkeys eating trash, the putrid smell of sewerage everywhere and the hundreds of snotty-nosed children who'd come to stare at us.

SOBERING NEWS

I haven't written for a few days and I have so much to say but I can't write right now. A suicide bomb went off today at the entrance to the hotel in Kabul where we are staying. At least eight people were killed - including one of the security guards of the hotel. We drove out of the hotel forty minutes before it went off. I passed that security guard.

Normally I like to start my days later and I usually leave in the morning at around 9am (when the bomb exploded) but for some reason today the interview was scheduled for earlier. I have just returned to the hotel now - it's early evening - because until now all roads leading back here were blocked. The hotel's windows and many of the rooms' doors have all been blown apart - Alexey and Max are waiting for the glass to be hammered back into the windows of their rooms. The carpenter has just left my room. I am in shock. By the grace of God we are all alive .... I will write later but I am shaken, sad, grateful, and reminded again that this is not a game, but reality - and tonight some family is mourning a son, father, husband and brother - the security guard whose job it was to simply open the boom in the parking lot. He was probably just standing there when the car drove past with explosives.

You cannot believe the damage in front of the hotel. The reception area is just a room without windows where the staff are now checking out guests - we are the only ones still here. It's late and dark and we have nowhere else to go. In front of the hotel is the house of former vice-president Ahmed Zia Massoud - it looks like it's been in an earthquake (and I guess it was the reason for the bombing). I've reported from three earthquake zones and the way the entire side of the building has been blown apart is exactly the way earthquake-damaged buildings look. Driving past it I felt as if I was driving in the twilight zone.

I feel really really sad about this country and the thousands upon thousands of innocent people who have lost their lives here.

LEARNING THE LINGO

Been learning how to cope when you're part of the US army ... an entirely different language is spoken here.

First of all the guys were telling me that when you're in the middle of absolutely nowhere (and when the first teams arrived to Afghanistan eight years ago) they carried with them MRE's - meals ready to eat. But apparently the real translation is "meals rejected by Ethiopians". And then sometimes they're interpreted as "meals rejected by everybody."

Another colloquialism is FUBAR - F***'ed up beyond any repair. I asked in what context one would use this particular phrase and I was informed "often when dealing with certain journalists" as in so-and-so is FUBAR. I laughed until I thought about it and decided it's probably best to keep quiet!

Went for dinner last night to the DFAC (dining room facilitiy) or "chow hall" and there's this NATO sign in front that says "alert code - bravo; weapon code : ua" - we asked what "ua" means and the soldier with us said "no-one knows ....Nobody understands what Nato does." To which Max replied "only the Georgians."

We all laughed.

There is a Georgian platoon here - which got Max to admit that he and Alexey had actually tried the American MRE's .... they took them off dead Georgian soldiers when they were in South Ossetia during the war a year-and-a-half ago. The guys said they were starving there and it was the only food around in Tskinval at the time (they agreed it was awful!)

We spend a lot of time waiting to do interviews. I'm not sure if its the army's media support centre that is slow-moving or if they're up against a huge amount of buracratic FUBAR. Have a few options in waiting for today but in the meantime we're going to the local doghnut haunt on the boardwalk. I hear the chocolate-dipped ones are the best.

It's getting colder and colder here. Things seem quiet. It's nearing Christmas and there're lots of Christmas trees and decorations up - a lot of the guys just want to go home!

HONOUR FIRST, COFFEE SECOND

We're back at KAF after waiting for more than a day and a half for the weather to clear up.

I swear they forgot to properly close the chopper today - the back was open and the guy sat over the edge looking at the view. It was actually very beautiful. Afghanistan is beautiful.

Am writing this from "Open Season" restaurant - the only place on the base I can find with reliable (albeit expensive) wireless connection. The people who run the place are Dutch and there're flags of all countries here hanging from the ceiling. There's also Christmas decorations up - in fact they're up all over the base.

Won't write long 'cause I only have a few minutes. We're on our way to the local "Green Beans Coffee" where there's nothing better than sipping hot chocolate out of a plastic cup that says "Honour First, Coffee Second" while reading the latest "Stars and Stripes" newspaper.

We're found two Ukrainians to interview - and hopefully soon will be going out on patrol.