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When
you're wounded and left,
On Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out,
To cut up your remains,
Just roll on your rifle,
And blow out your brains,
And go to your Gawd,
Like a soldier."
Rudyard Kipling
I
remembered these words as I looked out the bus window
at the blown-up, mangled remains of a Russian vehicle
in the road ahead. We were headed to Kabul from Jalalabad
and as we eased around the crater left by the explosion,
I thought it was along here, along this road, that
the British suffered one of their most disastrous
retreats.
The
retreat that began in Kabul on Jan 6th 1842 soon ended
with what a British historian would later describe
as "an awful completeness." What Kipling
memorialized was the astonishing viciousness of the
Afghans as they slaughtered men, women, children and
even animals. A week after the retreat began; they
left only a single British survivor to tell the tale.
An
ancient crossroads of Asia, Afghanistan has been fiercely
fending offinvasions since the days of Gengis Kahn.
On Christmas Day, 1979 the Russian Army invaded Afghanistan
and seized control of most major towns. It looked
like the country was in for a long and bloody war.
America was at the height of the Cold War and pundits
said that, given advancing Soviet hegemony, the Russians
planned to conquer Afghanistan and Pakistan in order
to control the ports of the Arabian Sea and achieve
Soviet domination of the Middle East.
In
1980, I was a pre-med student in my junior year at
Springhill College in Mobile. I had grown up in a
military family and one of my earliest memories was
firing machine guns and practice parachute jumping
from the training with other kids at Fort Benning,
GA during the annual Armed Forces day. I learned to
throw hand grenades at the same time I learned to
throw a baseball. My dad did three tours of Vietnam,
and losing that country to communism had a big impact
on my family.
Although
looking back on it 20 years later I can only imagine
what I was putting my parents through at the time,
leaving school to go off to Afghanistan and volunteer
as a medic with the Mujahideen fighting the Russians
seemed like the patriotic thing to do. Although I
was enrolled in ROTC, I also took a six-week basic
training course at Ft Knox in May of 1980 to hone
my fighting skills. Two weeks after I graduated from
basic training, I was on a Pakistan International
Airlines flight to Islamabad - my first trip ever
outside the US.From
news reports in the US, I knew most of the Mujahideen
groups had offices in Peshawar. After landing in Islamabad,
I booked the flight there, a bargain at $9.
Culture
shock is generally a term used to describe the impact
of different races of people, dress, customs, food
etc. Pakistan and Peshawar had all that. Throngs of
bearded turbaned men, women with the traditional burquas,
the head to foot garment with mesh to see through,
shops selling goat eyes, everything dirty, smells,
100 degree heat, the horns and shrill yells of the
middle eastern music blaring from every shop - it
was pure sensory overload one the one hand and like
stepping out of a time machine into the 15th century
on the other.
I
took a room at the Khyber Hotel because they advertised
"indoor plumbing" at a $1.20 a night. The
indoor plumbing amounted to a trough running along
the wall from room to room so that when someone was
taking a shower the wash water flowed through the
rooms.
The
cash crop of this region was opium, and quite a few
Europeans on the dole had figured out that you could
support a habit pretty well on those regular unemployment
checks. Among my neighbors in the hotel were English
and Dutch junkies who had lived there for years. When
they weren't completely stoned, they were extremely
helpful as I navigated my way around town over the
next week to the various mujahideen offices.Jamiat-I-Islami
and Hezb-e-Islami were two of the major Afghan groups
with political offices in Peshawar. I met with them
and explained that I had medical and military training
and was there to help them defeat the evil Russians.
Speaking impeccable English with a British accent,
they politely thanked me, but each said that they
had no place for a Christian in their 'jihad' holy
war. Later, when the CIA later offered $3 billion
in military aid, they relaxed some of their fundamental
religious tenets. Both groups advised me to go to
Parichinar, where local groups there might allow me
to help and take me across the border into Afghanistan.
The
Wild West
Parachinar
is a city in a finger of Pakistan that juts into Afghanistan
to the south of Peshawar in an area called the North-West
Frontier Province. "Frontier" is the apt
description of this tribal area of Pakistan. It is
home to the ethnic Pashtun people: their forbears
were the same people responsible for the British massacre
mentioned earlier. Neither the Pakistanis nor the
British before them had any success in imposing a
government here.
When
I stopped at the town of Dara Adam Khel, I found out
why: want to buy an AK-47? $40. RPG Rocket launcher?
Name your price. Every imaginable type of gun, pistol,
rocket, grenade, anti-aircraft weapon or mine was
for sale in the small shops along the kilometer-long
Dara Bazaar. In between bookstores and barbershops
were shops with drilling and boring machines which
manufactured exact copies of weapons.
I
should have figured that prospective arms buyers would
want to test their purchases, but I foolishly rented
a hotel room there. Across the street was a cemetery
that served as the local "firing range."
After a few hours of incessant gunfire, I hopped a
gas tanker truck to the next town of Kohat.
When
people ask me what was the most dangerous part of
the trip, they're surprised when I answer driving.
Picture a steep mountainous terrain, with switchback
roads only a lane and a half wide running up and down
the steep grades and sheer cliffs at the road's edge.
Signals, signs, and dividing lines are non-existent.
Now picture your typical Afghan driver, whose manhood
seems to depend on playing chicken with every oncoming
vehicle.
It's
hard to forget riding in a gas truck to Kohat as we
passed a bus so full of passengers they were even
packed on the roof and rounding the curve to find
a fully loaded truck barreling down on us in the opposite
direction. The screaming, yelling, and honking reached
a fever pitch before the bus driver gave in. Playing
chicken in a vehicle loaded with 5,000 gallons of
gas was all in a day's work to my driver.
From
Kohat I went to Parachinar by bus, but was intercepted
just ten miles out of town by Pakistani police who
took me off the bus and ordered me back to Peshawar.
They were very apologetic and took a long time getting
to the point. I hadn't yet learned of the custom of
baksheesh, the traditional bribe that would have sorted
out my problem.
Getting
Captured
There
are some things that when you think back 20 years
you think "I must have been insane," but
after being turned down by the Mujahideen in Peshawar,
and getting put off the bus outside of Parachinar,
I decided to hell with it - I'm just going to walk
into Afghanistan.
My
plan was simple---get near the border, walk south
for one night, rest during the day then walk west
the next night, by which time I would be in Afghanistan
and could meet up with a group inside. In Peshawar,
I purchased some local garb and a traditional hat,
rubbed dirt into everything, and caught the bus to
Landi Kotal, the nearest town to Afghanistan.
To
get a fix on the terrain, I climbed the tallest hill
just outside the city. At the peak were the ruins
of an old lookout post where I decided to stay until
dark. After about an hour, I could see a small detachment
of about 8 Pak soldiers slowly making their way up
the hill. I began easing down the backside and found
a small bunker some ways down the hill. The bunker
was empty, two small, pitch-black rooms. I hid in
the back room.
Soon
I could hear the arguing voices of the Pak soldiers
outside, the gist of which seemed to be who was going
inside to check out the bunker. I flattened myself
against the wall. The soldier who apparently drew
the short straw eased through the doorway. His eyes
had not adjusted to the dark and could obviously see
nothing. I held my breath, not making a move or sound.
I felt for a moment that he might not detect me, but
then he pulled out some matches. From a foot and a
half away, I could see every move and when the match
lit and he saw me he nearly jumped out of his skin.
I
was taken into custody, searched and eventually brought
before one of their regional commanders who proceeded
to interrogate me. Why was I here? Tourist. Why do
you have this map of Afghanistan? It's the only map
of Pakistan I could find - it just happens to have
most of Afghanistan on it. Why are you carrying this
big knife? (I had a very expensive Gerber knife with
an ebony handle). Protection.
They
held me for about four hours while they figured out
what to do. At issue was the knife. Not from my having
it, but from the commander wanting it for himself.
I was wet behind the ears and would probably have
been released hours earlier if I had just turned the
knife over to him. Finally, they put me on the bus
back to Peshawar.
I
returned to the Khyber Hotel fed-up and absolutely
determined to get into Afghanistan. A Frenchman at
the hotel told me that it was easy to get a transit
visa, good for seven days passing into Afghanistan
at one point and exiting at another. For me that meant
Khyber Pass to Kabul to Kandahar (in the south of
Afghanistan) to Quetta, Pakistan - a journey 550 miles
along very hazardous roads. After playing chicken
on the buses between Peshawar and Islamabad and back,
I finally got my visa and my opportunity to finally
get into Afghanistan
Later
that evening a Douglas B. Blanchard appeared at the
hotel. When the American Consul makes a special trip
to an armpit hotel in a seedy part of town to try
to talk you out of going into Afghanistan there's
probably a very good reason. He spent about two hours
telling me how dangerous it was, Mujahideen attacks,
kidnappings, etc. Of course, I hadn't listened to
my parents about coming here to begin with, so early
the next morning I headed back to Landi Kotal and
the Khyber Pass.
Into
Afghanistan
A
'57 Chevy with the doors and trunk lid removed to
accommodate extra passengers was the taxi accommodations.
I joined about 30 Afghanis on the switchbacks heading
through the Khyber Pass down to the border. While
there was virtually no traffic at the crossing, a
large sign warned "Slow for manual traffic counter."
The "traffic counter" was a toothless old
man dozing in a lawn chair. I got my passport stamped,
took some photos with some friendly and eager border
guards and caught the bus to Jalalabad.
Jalalabad
was home to a large Soviet helicopter base and the
soldiers there were a LOT less friendly. In the course
of taking a completely inane photo of a horse drawn
carriage, I nearly got arrested. It was only by subtly
taking the film out of the camera and showing that
it was empty did they finally let me go.
When
the first T-54 tank rumbled past my bus, I understood
what Mr. Douglas B Blanchard was trying to tell me.
The trip to Kabul was by a convoy of about 15 buses,
with tanks heading up the front and rear of the column
and armored personnel carriers sprinkled throughout.
The anxious looks and nervous tension of my fellow
passengers, all tough, turbaned Afghans was not reassuring.
The
distance from Jalalabad to Kabul was 82 miles. In
any other country, this would normally be a 1-½
hour trip in a Mercedes bus like the one I was riding
in. Tanks, though, really don't travel that fast,
especially when they are forced to weave around dozens
of burned out vehicles and craters from blown-up munitions
trucks.
Stopping
to check out possible ambushes and mines also adds
delays, along with frequent, and somewhat worrying,
stops for prayer.
After
seeing the mayhem the Mujahideen were wreaking on
the various soviet vehicles we were passing, I was
calculating, "OK, don't sit over the wheels in
case we hit a mine, don't sit near the window in case
they shoot at the bus, same with sitting at the front
or rear." A strong word of advice: if you have
to consider where you sit on a bus for safety concerns,
you probably need to rethink why you are on that bus
to begin with.
The
82 miles stretched out to over 10 hours. It was another
100 plus degree day and the route was so dusty that
we kept the windows up just to be able to breathe.
Inside, we were broiling.
After
the near arrest in Jalalabad, I got into spy mode
and took photos of the burned vehicles, and of the
Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers stationed
at frequent intervals along the route. My Afghan fellow
travelers started helping me by dropping the windows
and snapping them closed as soon as they heard the
camera click.
This
was the part that was hard to reconcile: the Afghan
people I had encountered, the ones on the bus, in
Jalalabad and at the various stops were some of the
friendliest people I have ever met. I'd liken it to
true southern hospitality - even to the equivalent
of forcing sweet tea on you every chance they get.
Yet
with each passing crater, destroyed vehicle and blood
stained section of highway you crossed, you knew there
was a complete other side to them that you'd probably
be better off not finding out about. The decimated
British force of 17,000 found out some 140 years ago
and the Russians were clearly finding out now.
Kabul
In
1980, Kabul was a beautiful city with modern office
buildings and many expensive, luxury homes. It has
become more pronounced lately, but even then I could
sense an uneasy tension as new world culture challenged
the old traditions. While there was a modern, westernized
façade, you could see in the majority of the
people that they were not mentally, or psychologically
there yet.
A
horse-drawn cart hauling a load of television sets
was the apt image of a 15th century people colliding
with 20th century civilization.
The
Neptune hotel across from the Interior Ministry was
the only hotel foreigners (at least Americans) could
legally stay. The owner could speak English and over
sweet green tea he lamented the trials and tribulations
Afghanistan had endured over the decades. It's sad
thinking back, and even laughable given what's happened
in Afghanistan since then, but at that time the owner
complained bitterly that his $240,000 home was now
worth only $40,000 after the Soviets had invaded.
With
the help of the friendly hotel manager, I spent two
days trying to hook up with the Mujahideen in Kabul.
Looking like an invading Russian with blond hair and
blue eyes didn't exactly inspire trust. And while
every potential Mujahideen contact was cordial, with
much green tea consumed, ultimately, no one I met
would acknowledge they knew anything--who, what, where
or when, about the Afghan freedom fighters.
I
had hidden most of my cash in my boots and the walking
had worn holes in most of the bills so no one would
exchange them. I had exactly $20 to make the next
400 miles to Kandahar and out of Afghanistan. I went
to the American Embassy to see if they would exchange
the bad bills and that's when I got the full court
press.
Douglas
B. Blanchard had called ahead and told the Embassy
to be on the lookout for me. The Ambassador laid into
me hard: travel is impossibly dangerous to Kandahar,
you won't be able to get there before your visa expires
and then you will be arrested, etc. He even had the
Marine guards at the embassy warn me about the dangers
and the fighting breaking out in the Kandahar region.
It's
one thing to have a state department type in a suit
tell you something is dangerous, but when you have
Marines from an elite fighting unit of the US military
tell you that it's DANGEROUS, well that has an effect
on you - it did me anyway. Couple that with the carnage
I had seen in just the 82 miles from Jalalabad and
I decided to take their advice. The embassy arranged
to get my visa changed to I could transit out back
through Jalalabad, into Pakistan and back to the US
to finish my senior year in college.
This
first trip out of the US made such a deep impression
on me that I have followed the twists and turns of
fate of the Afghan people since then with a keen interest.
When I was there, a superpower Soviet force was bombing
Afghanistan and opposition forces were fleeing the
cities for sanctuary in the mountains. Afghans friendly
to Soviet interests eventually took control of the
country. Decades have now passed. After almost ten
years, the Soviets finally gave up on a war contained
in guerilla mountain outposts, where the Afghans had
the clear advantage.
The
Taliban, comprising the Pashtun tribal majority, and
religious fundamentalists, stepped in to restore normalcy
to civil government. To a war-torn country, civil
order surpassed the need for civil liberty. To many,
a ban of music and equal rights for women seemed a
fair price to pay for order and security. Today, the
political dynamics between tribal and ethnic factions,
especially between the Pashtun and other northern
tribes or alliances have changed in ways that are
confusing to Americans, and probably even to the Afghans
themselves.
The
US is now bombing Afghanistan as the Taliban flee
for the mountains. Our "friend" the Northern
Alliance, has rapidly taken control of the country,
and even the Taliban stalwarts, the Pashtuns, are
defecting. As America seeks to win the war against
terrorism, we can only ask ourselves if we are going
to face a similar 10 years of hit and run guerilla
attacks as the Russians did? In a country where tribal
factions have held supremacy over every foreign invasion
for centuries, will we be sucked into another quagmire,
another Vietnam? These are all pressing questions.
There
are some major differences from 20 years ago. While
the September 11th attacks by Afghanistan's most infamous
resident have been the most publicized, Osama bin
Laden and the Taliban have for years been exporting
their fundamentalist terror to most of the nations
surrounding Afghanistan - not exactly winning friends
and influencing people in the governments of those
countries. It's one of the reasons Russia is a US
ally in the current operations. As long as we can
cut the Taliban forces off from re-supply and maintain
air superiority we should be able to keep them in
the mountains, in the caves or on the run.
I
can think back on my experience there and see the
germination of Taliban terrorism as the fierce protection
of a people, abetted by a long history of invasion,
girding itself for a modern incursion into its very
ancestral identity. Bin Laden's refuge in Afghanistan
and his support of the Taliban swept an entire country
as an unwilling or at the very least unwitting Muslim
accomplice into his personal vendetta of revenge and
destruction.
America's
war on terrorism in Afghanistan will require the cooperation
of the Afghan people. If they truly desire peace,
we will have peace in that country. But foreign interests
will never impose it. The Muslim tribal factions counterpoised
between democratic freedom and fundamentalism will
tell the tale of Afghanistan's future.
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