President Ronald Reagan meeting with Afghan Mujhideen leaders in the White House

A reflection of my 1980 trip (at the age of 20) to Afghanistan, as retold and printed in the Birmingham Weekly in 2003:

"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 had been fiercely fending off invasions 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.

Arms merchants in Darra, Northwest Frontier Province, Afghanistan

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 practicing 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 served in 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.

, Khyber Pass from Pakistan to Afghanistan

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

Welcome to Afghanistan - Kabul 225 km

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

Soviet helicopter base outside Jalalabad

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.

View from inside the bus on the road to Kabul

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.
 

Burned out Soviet scout car.  One of the many vehicles destroyed by the Mujahideen on the road to Kabul.

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.

Glimpse of convoy and burned-out Soviet troop carrier

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.

Tanks guarding power station.  Passenger covering head to avoid being in photo...

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.

Armored personnel carrier on the outskirts of Kabul

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.

Following an armored personnel carrier into Kabul

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.