Reporting from Afghanistan

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March 18, 2002
Kabul, Afghanistan

I'm the only insomniac at the Mustafa Hotel. I walk the halls, try the doors and windows. I attempt to climb onto the roof for better reception on my sattelite phone, but the doors are padlocked. The manager is trying tosleep wrapped in a blanket on the floor in the dining room.

Breakfast is a fried egg, a wheel of soft cheese, nan, instant coffee. There has been a bombing in Islamabad. Grenades thrown in a church on Sunday morning, the day I left. An American woman is dead.

The International Security Assistance Force holds a press conference every morning at 9:30. ISAF are UN peacekeepers in Kabul. They patrol the streets in armored caravans. No warldord has yet been willing to tangle with the ISAF, which is good for Kabul's safety and stability. What happens when ISAF leaves is an open guess.

ISAF, also known as the International Shopping Assistance Force, comprises British, Danish and Finnish soldiers who are often seen buying rugs, wool vests, caps, anything and everything.

Paul, a beefy Canadian reporter, says he's going to the ISAF press conference. I can catch a ride with him. The British head of the ISAF is handing over the reigns to a German. Part of the reason for the transfer of leadership may be that British special forces troops have been deployed, and the security force strategists don't wan't locals taking pot shots at the ISAF because the Brits are out killing Muslims with the Americans.

Paul shoots the shit with Tony, a compact, barrel-chested American with sandy hair, a Tennessee twang and a handlebar moustache that drops straight down to his chin. Seems like a military man. Possibly, as they say, CIA.

"Tony who do you think they were shooting at last night?"

"I think they were shooting at you."

"Is that why you were hiding behind me? Looking for something big to stop the bullets?"

Laughter all around.

Tony wants to know who I'm with. It's invariably the first thing people as here at the Mustafa, which is like a college dorm full of journalists.

"Hustler."

Tony's thumb goes up. He swallow coffee. "Alright."

I tell him the nature of my mission. Combat. U.S. forces. The shit.

"You should come talk to me. I'm in 407."

Upstairs, Tony seems to be running an operation. There are tactical maps on the walls. A few computers on a desk, a satellite phone pointing out the window.

"It's dangerous. You heard about the woman who got the grenade thrown at her? Fucked her up; separated the muscle from the bone from her ass to her knee. They will throw grenades at you. They will shoot at you. The U.S. has every kind of soldier out here. They're savages up north."

"Good fighters?"

"Well, more like savages. They make people do the dance. The death dance. They'll cut off your head, then pour hot oil over the stump and the bodies dance. Jerk around and dance."

Tony tells me he's a former Green Beret. He thinks we should go after Iraq, Yemen, Iran.

"Hey, we've got the same watch," he says.

I tell him I want to get into the shit.

"You just gotta go up there to Bagram and hang out. Meet people. Talk to the PAOs [Public Affairs Officers]. It's just like anyplace ele. People help their people. Just go up to the gate and say hello. Just go. Go now. Don't wait."

I catch a ride with a Time magazine correspondent, Simon, an Australian based in Nairobi. Simon's driver takes us through the tangle of streets in downtown Kabul, and then out into the suburbs, then down into the Shomali plain. The people of the Shomali plain, Uzbeks mostly, were allied with Northern Alliance, and when the Taliban took control of the area, Shomali was destroyed. Taliban tanks blew apart the mud huts, some of them elaborate, walled mud castles. Taliban tanks destroyed the grape vines. Just plowed them over with their treads, like reverse farming. The road is littered with the ruins of Soviet armor.

At Bagram, the huts are close to the road. A Mad Max type gate made of battered sheets of iron abutts a Soviet-built bunker, steel-reinforced concrete a foot thick, with metal-plated gun ports. A hole has been neatly blown in the bunker, probably by an RPG round. This is a much tougher checkpoint than the other three that we passed. In fact, we cannot pass. The Afghans sit behind a card table that is laid out with three Rocket Propelled Grenade launchers, a .30-cal gun and Kalashnikovs. We must wait for the Americans to come and escort us. An ancient Afghan approaches and shakes my hand. Then he opens his palm. "Baksheesh."

I give him a 10,000 note. A clot of kids surrounds me. They teach me the words for the parts of a bicycle.

Finally, we are allowed through the gate, and nearly bump into a convoy of armor-plated Humvees. Each car is mounted with a heavy machine gun. The driver of the lead car is stocky, blue eyed, blond hair. These are Americans, armed to the teeth, going out on patrol.

The three-car carvan leaves, and our car is stopped. We wait an hour and a half to pass the last barricade, an American guard booth. Black, fixed-wing cargo aircraft bank and land. According to the ground rules that all media are compelled to sign, "number and type of aircraft may be described in very general terms such as 'large flight,' 'many,' 'few,' 'fighters,' 'fixed wing,' etc."

Sergeant Major Smiles rides in on a six-wheeled dune buggy.

"It's a gorgeous day," he says. Smiles is gregarious, cheery. He's a career soldier with leathery skin.

"God bless America," he says as he shakes hands with several Afghans who are at the gate waiting to enter and do construction work.

Smiles turns to me. "You got to teach 'em how to say that, because next thing you know, they're saying fuck America." He laughs. "God bless America."

It feels great to hear essential American English. Among men with machine guns, and the wreckage of war littering the field around me, I feel safe.

Seargant Smiles drives me in the dune buggy past the wire and onto the base.

"So who are you with?"

"I'm with HUSTLER."

"HUSTLER! We've been waiting for you."

"It took me a little while to get here."

"We're happy to have you."

A media ground-rules agreement forbids journalists from divulging any details about security precautions at military installations or encampments; so specifics of the guns and barbed wire have been cut out of this description. The base itself is about what would be expected from a military airfield: big and busy.

The Russians constructed Bagram. When they pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989, they left behind all of their office buildings, hangars, runways, bunkers, checkpoints, trenches, guard towers and revetments intact, along with dozens of Sukhoi Su-17 long-range bombers and MiG-21 fighters. The Americans have towed the abandoned aircraft to a field, where the planes sit in the sun and decay. Construction is going on everywhere; bulldozers shove dirt from place to place, and backhoes gobble up giant shovelfuls of gravel and toss them out. Large quantities of soil are moved from one place to another at Bagram on a regular basis. Soldiers are doing what soldiers do in wartime: they dig. They also wait for something interesting to happen. To keep in shape while they wait, some thick-necked soldiers are jogging in gray Army t-shirts and black shorts. Others lift free weights. More urgent needs preoccupy other enlisted personnel; they walk with pink rolls of toilet paper, headed for the daisy-fresh, cleaned daily shitters. Most are attired in desert fatigues--low button-up jackets and cargo pants and beige army boots. Beige army tents are assembled in a field.

A massive hangar is the center of press operations. Some of ceiling's support beams are stenciled with Cyrillic script, and the massive doors of the hangar are scribbled with Arabic, top to bottom, like the tablets of a giant book.

Inside the hangar, soldiers eat breakfast at white pine picnic tables that look like they were just whipped together with a buzzsaw. Everyone is armed, even the tall, gangly guys with spectacles and prominent adam's apples. A trooper joins the chow line humping a .30-cal light machine gun with a 100-round magazine; then a young woman with braces and glasses similarly armed joins him. He makes the weapon look heavy, slung low below his gut like a guitar; she caries her gun on her shoulder, pointing up, and she walks with an easy stride. As they eat, both gunners stow the tools of their trade under the bench, propped up on their bipod stands. Another pair of soldiers have M-16s slung on their backs, one pointing up, the other pointing down.

I introduce myself to the senior public affairs officer, Major Freckles, and tell her I want to go into the field.

"No problem. Except for one. Operation Anaconda is ending tomorrow. Major General Hagenbeck will be giving a press briefing tomorrow morning to make the official announcement. You can put your name on the Notorious List. And then it's just a matter of waiting. But as of tomorrow, we will be having zero soldiers out in the field, which means there will be zero chance of going out on a combat mission."

"Are you talking about conventional forces."

"This is conventional forces."

Special Forces is a completely different can of worms. The SF guys don't like people to talk to them, don't want to be photographed. Don't even look at them if you're a reporter.

It's late in the day, and I don't want to be stuck traveling back to Kabul after dark. I've made contact and introduce myself; so I head back to the hotel, planning to return for the morning press briefing.

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