Reporting from Afghanistan

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March 19, 2002
Kabul, Afghanistan

Last night I got back from base and wolfed down a steak in the dining room downstairs. I slept until midnight and tried to make some phone calls. After curfew, the door to the roof is locked. The roof is where people with satellite phones go to place calls. The sat phones need a clear view of the sky to function. The concrete of the building tends to interfere with reception. I went back to sleep, and didn't wake up until 5 a.m., when the mosques opened.

The calls ring out for prayer. The city's motorists have been in their cars, bundled up, sitting and waiting in the cold of morning for the mosques to open so they can twist the keys in their ignitions, turn over their peppy, 4-cylinder engines and take to the streets. How long it will be before I hear the beep of a horn? The streets are empty, with no one to honk at. It is less than a minute before I hear a beep.

I take a freezing cold shower and pack my gear for the day. There is an 8 a.m. press briefing at Bagram. General Hagenbeck will be announcing the official end of Operation Anaconda. I hang around the café waiting for other journalists to show up so I can try to hitch a ride with them. I still haven't found a fixer I feel good about. I'm mostly doing U.S. military stuff, and I don't need an interpreter for that.

A women in a silk scarf from Canadian TV has a minivan, but it is full. She knows a driver. He sits in a white station wagon the size of a bumper car. His name is Hazargul. The set price to take a white person to Bagram, wait around for half the day, and return to Mustafa is an astonishing $95. The price was set back when banditry was common, and security was required-two special friends with Kalashnikov's was considered standard. Today's security situation is much improved, but the price hasn't changed. Before she steps into her waiting minivan and takes off, the Canadian TV woman urges me to bargain Hazargul down. Problem is, Hazargul's English vocabulary begins and ends with "Hello. How are you?"

"Sixty," I say. "Sixty U.S." I write on a pad. 60.

"Okay, okay," Hazargul says.

Problem solved. New problem arises. By the time Hazargul pulls onto the road, it's already 6:45. It is best to allot 90 minutes for the 30-mile trip to the air base. The asphalt is crumbling, and sometimes missing altogether. There are three checkpoints manned by Hamed Karzai's men. Making the drive slower, scores of busses that ferry sand, gravel and plywood for construction at Bagram clog the two-lane road.

Hazargul stops for gas. He stops to chat and goes toward the gas station building. I point at my watch.

"Okay, okay." He takes off his shoes and disappears into the building. Two mintues later, Hazargul jolts us onto the roadway and swerves around slower cars. Stuck behind a heavy truck, Hazargul leans on the horn, wails, blasts away.

At a traffic island, a man dressed like a Soviet general tries in vain to impose order on the chaotic mass of metal that orbits him. Hazargul zips by, passes a truck on the turn. Suddenly, we have left the congested, labyrinthine streets of Kabul. We are in the suburbs, in the hills, where cherry trees blossom on the side of the road. We pass an Afghan army base with a tank parked in front of a banged-up metal gate. The concrete wall that runs the perimeter is pocked with bullet holes, with some gps as big as a washing machine. We pass a block of pancaked apartment houses. A chain-link fence is decorated with shell casings. A red rusted shipping container is so riddled with bullet holes it looks like lace.

The Afghan Army checkpoints are merely for show; three armed men in fatigues peek into the car, and wave to a boy, who lowers a rope to the ground. Hazargul barely slows down; the soldiers have to jump out of his way, and he tramples the rope and bolts for the next one.

As we leave the city, the road climbs into hills that are covered with ancient looking mud houses the color of the hills with square, smooth earth walls. Some have carved a backyard out of the mountain. A few buildings are made of brick. On the side of the road, deep gouges have been knocked out of the rock wall; this is where the inhabitants quarry their stone. In the distance, snow covered peaks.

"Shakardarah," Hazargul says.

"Shakardarah." I think this is the word for mountain.

Hazargul bulls through the three checkpoints, clunks through potholes, passes trucks loaded with dirt and rock. At one point he passes a car while it's passing another car. Hazargul throws his shoulder into the horn, and we penetrate further into the Shomali plain, rocketing through abandoned villages that have stood here for centures. The mud walled structures are melting back into the plain. Mounds of dirt signal where a home used to be. The plain is littered with wrecked Soviet armor-tanks and personnel carriers that left their bases on final, doomed missions and were picked off by the Mujahideen. A dead tank is on its side out in a field, its turret dead next to it. On the shoulder are APCs with no tracks, no wheels, no doors, no guns.

The Shomali was the breadbasket of Afghanistan. An elaborate irrigation system brought water from the mountains to the plain, and fed fruit trees and grape vines that stretched for miles. When the Taliban took Kabul, they smashed the weirs, dried out the plain and killed the grape vines. Tajiks and Northern Alliance supporters lived in the plain. The Taliban mined the villages and cut down every tree in sight. What was once Afghanistan's Garden of Eden is now haunted by destroyed tanks and villages empty of people.

Some high-walled compounds have intact armor and are painted with Arabic script. These mark the home of a warlord. Every village is overseen by a protector. A hut will have anti-aircraft guns mounted on a mud tower. One house has an impressive array of armor in front, four tanks and a fifth mounted with a 88-mm gun with four barrels.

Men bend over shovels, digging mud. This is a sign of reconstruction. Some of the walls around the houses are topped with fresh wet material. We enter and exit a village cluttered with shot-up shipping containers.

"Sarakhojah," says Hazargul.

A little later, we cross a bridge over a gulley that is littered with APCs.

"Kalakhon."

Further on, a field is full of white tents donated by the UN to returning refugees. The tents are pitched in front of old buildings. One large house probably belongs to the malik, which in Arabic means "king" or "ruler," but in this instance seems to signify something closer to "the mayor."

"Karabhol."

At Karabhol, a demining team is ready to start their day. They loiter on the road with metal detectors over their shoulders. Much of the Shomali plain has already been demined, and the safe areas are marked by a chain of painted rocks. The rocks are painted red and white; red points toward the minefield that is yet to be cleared. It is safe to walk on the white side of the rocks. Some pranksters have switched the rocks in places. Sometimes the rocks describe footpaths that wind through villages. In other places, the rocks are directly on the asphalt of the road, meaning you can't take even one step off the road safely. Afghan villagers walk across the fields, trusting their lives and legs to the painted rocks.

Hazargul turns on the radio; the regional music sounds Indian to the untrained ear. Hazargul claps his hands to the beat, and gestures to me to do the same. What the fuck; I clap. Hazargul laughs and snaps his fingers like a Turk. I pound out a syncopated string of claps; Hazargul busts up laughing. It's better than worrying about arriving at the base late.

Once again, the U.S. military is not overly hasty about escorting reporters onto the base. We are scheduled to be picked up at 7:30 a.m. A soldier arrives at 7:55, with the press conference due to start at 8.

"Will the briefing be delayed?"

"No. It will be starting at 8.

"Do you think they'll want to wait for the media to show up?" another reporter asks.

No, the media's already there: CNN, Fox.

By the time we pass security, metal detection and frisking, the press conference is well underway. General Hagenbeck is dressed in desert fatigues, with a baseball-style military cap. He is being raked over the coals about the campaign's suspect efficacy.

"I take exception to the notion that the enemy got away. The number that left that area was very small indeed. Al Qaeda and the Taliban took a body blow in that area."

The general claims a total of 51 detainees from the fighting.

"I don't know where they're regrouping. There are folks down in there now with lots of money in their pockets. We'll let the situation develop."

A TV reporter asks the general to repeat his comments for the late arrivals. Hagenbeck obliges and reads a statement to the cameras.

"Operation Anaconda is over. It ended last night. The world's a safer place than it was on 2 March . Hundreds died. Eleven coalition warriors and heroes also died. Terror decided to fight, and we obliged them. We have destroyed bases of terrorist operations and reduced terrorist ability to fight. The hunt continues. Coalition war in Afghanistan is not over."

This is good news and bad news. The good news is that there will still be an opportunity to cover battle firsthand; the bad news is the same.

"The enemy is not ten feet tall," the general adds. I wonder why he says this. Probably to dispel the notion that the al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, with their reputation for brutality and effectiveness, are better suited for this war than the U.S. forces. Many of the American troops have never shot their guns in anger, let alone killed a man. "They [the terrorists] are really and truly no match with the trained soldiers we've assembeled in the area.

"Right now, the enemy is going underground, they're hiding."

The general is asked to explain his estimate of enemy dead, which the late arrivals missed.

"We make reasonable estimates. We're watching the skirmishes out there, tracking them on predator drones. Forty guys go into a mud hut. We call in an air strike. We went in there and found in excess of 40 pairs of shoes. All we saw were a couple of body parts sticking out of a mud heap."

After General Hagenbeck finishes his comments, a few media people line up for an exterior base tour. They'll be viewing the al Qaeda front lines, which are a few hundred meters outside the wire. The tour is filled up. I chat with a Public Affairs Officer, Captain Niceguy, and try to finagle my way on board.

"Too bad you didn't get here a couple days ago," he tells me. We talk about the destroyed Rusian armor that litters the road from Kabul to the base.

"Those are all T-55s. Some of them are blown to bits--that's a precision guided bomb. Most of them, it just takes a well-placed RPG."

Niceguy reveals that lots of Chechens have been found among the al Qaeda dead and captured.

"They're vicious. When they were fighting the Russians in Grozny, they cut off the heads of the Russian soldiers, the dead and the prisoners, and they put them on stakes on the road into the city. When the Russians counterattacked, they saw the heads on the stakes of their soldiers, their buddies."

Captain Niceguy has assembled a group of soldiers all dressed in civilian clothes--jeans, polo shirts, tennis shoes. Regulation dictates that they are not to be in uniform when off base, unless specifically engaged in a combat mission.

My friend from Time has helped organize the trip beyond the wire, and several others have had their names on a list to join in. One last spot remains in the mini van. I approach Captain Niceguy during a moment when he's alone.

"Do you think there's any chance I can squeeze into the back of that last minivan?"

Niceguy surveys the situation.

"Probably not. We'll see how things go."

I hang around.

Captain Niceguy resumes the work of piecing together protection for the caravan.

"Okay, we've got four minivans. John, you got a nine mil? Good. And I've got a 16. We need another guy with a 16 for the lead car. Who do we got?"

Another soldiers joins the expedition; he has a commando version of the M-16, with a folding stock and a pistol grip. He is stocky, and older than most of the soldiers, who look to be fresh out of high school.

"We'll be going out to the old al Qaeda front lines," Niceguy tells us. "Since we'll be going outside the wire, this is considered a combat mission. In each car we'll have someone with a 9-mm and someone with an M-16. In the event of a flat tire, we'll set up a perimeter, with a 16 on each end. In the event that we come under fire from behind, we'll punch through and regroup in 2,000 meters."

"Unless you see smoke," adds a soldier.

"Unless you see smoke," says Niceguy. "If you see smoke, go another 2,000 meters, and regroup there. If we're ambushed from in front, and we come under fire, we'll punch it in reverse and regroup in 2,000 meters. You guys can pop some shots out the windows, but be sure not to shoot each other. Colonel Stark will be the senior officer; if he's dead, I'll be in charge. If I'm dead, Major Thickneck will be in charge. If he's dead, Seargant Major Smiles will be in charge. If he's dead....If he's dead, you're all dead."

Captain Niceguy talks about his own death with the insouciance of a man who has accustomed himself to the idea of his own demise. I, on the other hand, am a newcomer to the regimented arena of organized mayhem, and all this in-case-I'm-dead contingency planning is unnerving.

"We'll be walking through a mine field," Niceguy says. "That means walk directly behind the person in front of you, preferably in his or her footsteps. The Marine who lost his leg in Kandahar was the fifth person in line. Four other guys walked over the same ground, and he stepped on the mine. The Nothern Alliance guys are the only ones who know where the mines are, and they move them around all the time. No one knows where the al-Qaeda mines are. Usually someone finds them the hard way."

This field trip sounds more horrible at each turn, but I still really want to go. Turns out I had nothing to worry about. A wispy British journalist joins the group later. He asks Captain Niceguy if he can join the group. The captain and Sergeant Smiles tell him categorically no, no way, no room, not going to happen.

The British journalist hangs around. When everyone climbs into the minivans, the two of us are left.

"I think you've still got an empty seat," I tell Niceguy. "Could I just hop in there?"

"There's no way I can make a decision between you two and be fair about it," Niceguy tells me. "I'm sorry."

Niceguy gets in and slides the door closed behind him. I walk away filled with irritation for my British colleague, my least favorite person in Afghanistan.

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