afghan scene magazine october 2011

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Afghan Scene October 2011

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A Kabul at Work vignette

Pictures from the latest events and parties

In an exclusive extract from his new book on Afghanistan’s meteoric rise through the world cricket standings, Tim Albone looks back to the start of the dream

Jerome Starkey reports on one Soviet soldier who never went home

A review of Edward Girardet’s new book

Braving bandits, bike crashes and bad food, reporter set out from Kabul or the fabled Minaret of Jam, 800 km away, on a journey that would take him through some of the most remote territory on earth

A fictional take on Afghanistan by the BBC’s Jill McGivering

All you need to know about where to go in Kabul

Publisher: Afghan Scene Ltd, Wazir Akbar Khan, Kabul, AfghanistanManager & Editor: Afghan Scene Ltd, Kabul, AfghanistanDesign: Kaboora ProductionAdvertising: [email protected]: Emirates Printing Press, DubaiContact: [email protected] / www.afghanscene.comAfghan Scene welcomes the contribution of articles and / or pictures from its readers. Editorial rights reserved. Cover photo: Jerome Starkey


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For all the boots on the ground, there are places in Afghanistan that seem little touched by foreign intervention, and Ghor is one of them. It’s the

place the West (save for a small detachment of Lithuanians) forgot. There’s even a Soviet soldier there who never went home. This summer, Scene set out on an 800km motor bike ride to investigate. But there’s a different sense of timeliness here in the Afghan capital. Take these three quotes from Western military commanders and draw your own conclusions: “Now we can see [success in Vietnam] clearly, like the light at the end of a tunnel.”-- Gen. Henri Navarre, Commander French forces in Vietnam, May 20, 1953

“A new phase is starting…we have reached an important point when the end begins to come into view…there is a light at the end of the tunnel.”-- Gen. William Westmoreland, Commander U.S. forces in Vietnam, November 1967

“Yesterday’s attack [in Kabul] was a fleeting event; it came and it went. The insurgents are on the defensive.” The performance of Afghan security forces should tell Afghans “they can sleep well at night.”-- Gen. John Allen, North Atlantic Treaty Commander in Afghanistan, Sept. 14, 2011!"

[email protected]

Several readers have commented that the previous edition of Afghan Scene did not make clear that the feature ‘Waiting for Massoud, and other stories’ by Edward Girardet was an extract from his new book ‘Killing the Cranes - A Reporter’s Journey Through Three Decades of War in Afghanistan’ published by Chelsea Green Publishing company (www.chelseagreen.com) and reprinted in Afghan Scene with their kind permission. Afghan Scene would like to apologize for the confusion. A review of ‘Killing the Cranes’ can be found on p38.




Afghan Scene October 2011 Team

Jeremy Kelly is an Australian journalist and photographer who first visited Afghanistan under Taliban rule in 1998. He has lived here since 2005.

His preferred method of transport is a motorbike.

Leslie Knott is a Canadian photographer and film maker who has been following the Afghan Cricket team on their quest for world cup glory for more than a year.

The documentary, which takes them to Peshawar, Jersey, Tanzania, Argentina and South Africa is due out later this year

www.outoftheashes.tv

Tim Albone spent three years as The Times correspondent in Kabul. He has been following Afghan Cricket Team for more than a year. Learn more about the most

talked about sports documentary in decades, and ways you can help, at www.outoftheashes.tv

Jill McGivering is a senior BBC broadcaster, specialising in Asia. She’s covered foreign news for the past 19 years for the BBC’s main radio and television news outlets. Her

first novel, THE LAST KESTREL (Harper Collins) came out in paperback in August and is set in Afghanistan.

Former ASM editor Jerome Starkey is The Times correspondent in Afghanistan. He is currently renovating a 1969 VW Beetle called Herb-i-Islami.

For more information visit jeromestarkey.com

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Afghan Scene October 2011at work at work

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Afghan Scene October 2011Afghan Scene October 2011

Khatol Mohammadzai | David Gill




Afghan Scene October 2011at work at work

got married, I lost my husband. I have a son, who is a student now, and very proud of me. I had to be his father and his mother; I was the only person supporting the family. I dedicated my life to my career and looking after my son.

Despite being an officer in the ministry, I am a woman, a mother and a daughter at home. When I get home, then I am like all other women and I clean and sweep our flat, wash clothes, cook dishes. But I study in my spare time.

Afghanistan is a country that has been full of war and full of problems, it has been hard even to the men. For a woman like me, who lost her husband at a very young age, and had no one to support

I am a master parachutist in the army of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. In early 1984, sport and the air force were my passions and

I joined the Afghanistan National Army, because parachute jumping was only available in the army. If women want to work outside of the house, then they should take on work that astonishes men.

When I jump out of a plane it gives me a special feeling, it feels like swimming. I concentrate on positioning myself in the sky and keeping my balance. When I get close to the ground, I am very careful about the landing, so that I don’t break any bones.

I was married, but unfortunately one year after I

I got the rank of General by endangering my life. Nobody gave it to me easily | David Gill


the Ghazi Stadium on National Day in 2001. I achieved all this by putting my life in danger.

Afghans love me very much, and they always respect me, even if they are younger or older than me, maybe because I worked hard for my people and served them honestly. I want to be remembered as a woman who worked hard, and battled to achieve women’s rights, in spite of all the gender problems for a woman. I didn’t have much money and no one to help and support me. But I kept going despite thousands of problems in my way.

I have performed more than 500 free jumps, in all provinces and in different ceremonies. I have lots of trophies and certificates for my achievements but there are not enough places to put them, as my apartment is a bit small, but I am grateful to god for it, so it is fine. I have always landed safely. I have carried the holy flag, peace flag, Air Force flag, pigeons and flowers down with me. I brought them down with me as a woman, as a mother, as a daughter. "

her, life is difficult – not only in Afghanistan, but in every part of the world.

I never want to see another Afghan woman become a widow. Even if they were to throw me out of the plane without a parachute I would accept it, but the life of an Afghan woman is very difficult. The people talk about her all the time, when she talks to someone, when she wears good clothes, when she eats something. Every day people put pressure on her about her morals. She is a hero, who can ignore people’s gossiping and bring up her children and carry on with her life.

I joined the army before my marriage, during the communist regime. After my marriage I left the army for a while, but after that I came back, and stayed until the Taliban regime. Then it was the same for me as all other women, I just stayed at home and did nothing.

When Taliban collapsed, I was the first woman who went to rejoin the army. I put my uniform on and came to MOD. I was made a general at

Kabul: A City At Work is a multi-media project, led by a joint international and Afghan crew collecting interviews, photographic portraits and video shorts of the people of Kabul in their working environments. You can find out more at www.kabulatwork.tv





Three people much taller than scene’s snapper | Matt, Melissa and Rima at Nick’s farewell

70s soiree Ariel and Jules at Altai

Be scene

Afghan Scene October 2011www.afghanscene.comwww.afghanscene.com Afghan Scene October 2011

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Chamber-made | Media man Chris enjoying a night out from ISAF Court Out | The Winners and the Runners-up at the Kabul Tennis Tournament

Northen Exposure | Kabul’s Leslie on a visit to the Alaskan wilderness

Road runner | Superfixer Noor on the road to Jam

The Hardcore British Press Pack | P*ssing off ISAF since 2008Dirty Diggers | Aussies Matt and JK talk Neighbours Snow-it-all | Lally at a Kabul soireeLow-down | Josh embraces gutter journalism




Afghan Scene October 2011scene scene









in mid-December, as Taj makes his journey he is aware that the country is in a state of flux. Kabul, the capital, had only been captured on 13 November; Kunduz, in the north, wasn’t taken until the end of November and Kandahar, the spiritual homeland of the Taliban, has only been wrested from Taliban control days before.

The Allied forces have a mission that, history tells us, no one has ever successfully carried out before – to try to bring peace and stability to Afghanistan. Taj Malik Alam has his own, and some would say equally futile, mission: he wants to assemble an Afghan cricket team and, because he doesn’t lack ambition or belief, take it to the Cricket World Cup. He’s dreamt of this day since he was a child. As an Afghan, who has been forced by war to live his life in exile, this return couldn’t come soon enough.

Taj is full of energy; he always seems to be moving. If he has to sit still he fidgets and talks incessantly. He laughs easily and when his laughter comes it is shrill and urgent. He has a charm and, despite being overweight and balding, when he smiles it reveals, creased with laughter lines, a handsome, kind and open face.

For this journey he has grown a scraggly beard and swapped his usual tracksuit for traditional robes. As he crosses the border, as well as feeling nervous he feels a surge of positive energy. He is home. And finally he feels; if the Allied invasion is successful, Afghanistan might see peace – something that Taj, who was born in 1975, has never known.

The border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, December 2001

It is an encounter unlike any other. Thousands of Taliban fighters are fleeing the unlikely alliance of US bombers, Special Forces and ragtag Afghan militia that is thundering down through Afghanistan from the north. The fighters slip away on dirt trails and mountain passes pausing, perhaps, to gaze at Taj Malik Alam, who is travelling in the other direction towards the chaos.

As Taj – carrying only a spare change of clothes, a cricket bat and ball – crosses into Afghanistan from Pakistan, he contemplates the scene: distant bombs shake the earth, the Taliban, ousted from power less than three months before, are scattered throughout the countryside and Al-Qaeda, which funded the Taliban regime, though broken and in retreat, are still a present danger. Many of the Taliban’s feared Arab and foreign fighters are roaming the hills, seeking revenge. Taj is terrified of coming across them and those fears only intensify as the jagged, snow-capped peaks of the White Mountains loom into view. He will have to pass underneath their shadow on his way to Kabul. Below them lie the Tora Bora caves, a complex underground labyrinth, under the control of Islamists. Despite dropping tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of pounds of bombs, the Americans have been unable to flush out the fighters.

It is rumoured that Osama bin Laden is hiding there. Most of the country is still lawless and,

On 11 September 2001, 19 suicide bombers flew planes, loaded with civilians, into targets across the east coast of America. As the Twin Towers fell and thousands lost their lives, Afghanistan’s history took another unlikely and bloody turn. George W Bush, the American president, declared war on international terrorists and the country that housed them: that country was Afghanistan.

He announced – on 7 October, the day that the American Air Force launched their bombing raids – that America would not falter in its quest for peace and freedom. The Taliban had been issued with a list of demands – close

For the past 16 years he has been forced to live as a refugee in Pakistan. His earliest memories are of Soviet helicopters scouring the skies, of brave men with nothing but Kalashnikovs taking on one of the strongest armies in the world, of victory celebrations in Peshawar when the Red Army pulled out and of disappointment when the country was consumed by civil war. He pauses to look up at the towering, snow-capped mountains that mark the eastern border of his homeland and his mind flashes to an event three months earlier that shook the world and changed his destiny and that of his country forever.

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Taj (centre) with members of the team at the T20 Cricket World Cup. Reaching the tournament was the culmination of more than a decade of dreaming | Leslie Knott





the camp was incredibly tough.

Even today, the family home is little more than a mud hut with a tin roof and had only three rooms; it had no electricity or water. After a year the water and electricity came but as his family increased (by 2001 he had eight brothers and three sisters), the rooms became more cramped. Taj’s parents have one room, all the boys share one and all the girls the other. There is very little privacy.

The family has no kitchen to speak of, and is forced to cook on a small gas cooker, often in the dark as the electricity supply, when it comes, is unreliable. The water supply is not clean enough to drink: they have to boil it and drink it as tea, which, like all Afghans, they drink by the gallon.

There is no sewerage system, and human waste, as well as rubbish, collects in puddles and piles in the dirt tracks that pass for roads. Unsurprisingly, disease is rife. As a child Taj had malaria several times as well as typhoid. Like many of the children who grew up in the refugee camps, Taj’s father was a fighter who made trips into Afghanistan to battle the Soviets. He rose to the rank of commander, which eventually brought Taj’s family a level of privilege and relative wealth. He was considered a freedom fighter. The family ate well, never went hungry and had enough money to live. However, after the Soviet withdrawal and the subsequent civil war, the family struggled.

Although Taj’s father had no hesitation in

down terrorist cells and return all foreign hostages – neither of these demands was met and now, in response to 9/11 and for the security of the Western world, Bush was launching war. As well as the fighter planes, Bush and Britain sent in Special Forces, soldiers who linked up with the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance to attack Taliban positions.

Before 9/11 Afghanistan largely survived on the largesse of terrorists. Without Al-Qaeda, Taliban Afghanistan couldn’t have existed: they were the main funders of the regime. How it had got to that stage reads like a thriller: it is a story steeped in intrigue, betrayal, religious fundamentalism and blood. Afghanistan’s history had rarely been peaceful but the last 30 years leading up to 2001 had been particularly bloody.

Until this point Taj’s life has been a tough one marked by exile, war and poverty, but he wouldn’t change it for anything. All these factors have combined to bring him an unexpected gift – cricket.

He has spent over half his life in the vast Kacha Gari refugee camp in Pakistan. Here, along with tens of thousands of other Afghans, he sheltered from the war that was ravaging his country. The camp, on the edge of the sprawling western Pakistani city of Peshawar, was, at its height in the 1980s and 1990s, a mini-city. More than that, it was a state in exile. Beside the mud huts, where the poor lived, stood the palatial houses of Afghan tribal chiefs and the elite. For most, including Taj, daily life was a struggle. His first year in

sport with him. He wanted to see children playing cricket in Afghanistan like he had done as a boy in Pakistan; he wanted to take the game to his homeland.

Taj had fallen in love with cricket early in his stay in Pakistan. In 1987, two years after he had arrived in the country on the back of a donkey with his family and all the possessions they could carry, the cricket World Cup was held in India and Pakistan. He was 12 years old, and in the way of boys that age the world over he fell in love deeply and quickly with the sport. His family was too poor to own a TV but he couldn’t fail to notice the game.

fighting the Soviets, he believed it was his moral and religious duty, he had no inclination to kill his fellow Afghans. As a result the family’s income and prestige was dissipated, and they once more struggled for money and food.

Although they continued to live a life of poverty, for his family and thousands like them, the camp allowed a freedom Afghanistan didn’t: people could walk around without having to worry about bombs and violence, the children could go to school and, of great importance to Taj, they could also play cricket. It was his hope that with the American invasion he could return home and take the

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Fans traveled across the world to support their team | Leslie Knott




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without problems. As he couldn’t afford any equipment, he started playing with a stick and plastic bags wrapped up to make a ball. There was no flat ground on which to play as the refugee camp was on rutted, dusty scrubland, and to make matters worse, his father, who dreamed of Taj getting the education war and poverty had denied him, forbade him from playing the game. Taj would have to wait until his father was away fighting in Afghanistan, then he could play cricket to his heart’s content.

Taj was not alone in his love for the bat and ball. His elder brother, Sayed, head of the family during their father’s lengthy absences, and younger brothers Karim and Hasti were also keen cricketers. Together, the four brothers would skip school to go out and play the game.

It didn’t do them much good. When their father returned from fighting and heard tales of their cricket playing he beat the brothers. He was uneducated and illiterate and wanted more for his boys than the life he had. Neighbours called the boys wasters and gangsters and, as they grew older, said it would be hard for them to find brides if all they did was play cricket.

The brothers were poor but canny, and soon found ways, through cricket, to make money. One day, like many others, Taj had skived off school to play and had persuaded his brothers and friends to do the same. They only had one old bat and it broke. As they were despairing they saw a funeral procession go by – the

Pakistan was cricket crazy before the tournament, but in 1987 it reached endemic proportions. Every teahouse and every shop was showing live games on TV, every radio was switched to the commentary, and on every patch of land kids were re-enacting catches, wickets and sixes from games they had seen. In Peshawar the excitement hit fever pitch when on 17 October, England and Sri Lanka came to town, the only World Cup game to be staged in the city. Across the border in Afghanistan, the Mujahideen were waging war. They used Peshawar as a staging post for attacks and came to the city to recuperate, raise funds and spend time with their families. The city was less than 70 miles from the nearest Soviet base inside Afghanistan and it was here that England were playing.

It is not difficult for Taj to explain why he loves cricket. It is, he says, the game of kings. For a young Afghan refugee, with no television, very little education and isolated from the world at large, cricket is a window. Although he had heard about England before cricket, and England soon became his favourite team, countries like New Zealand and Zimbabwe were new to him. Other places were even more obscure and it took him a while to figure out what and where the West Indies were. But Taj immersed himself in the subject, showing the type of commitment and doggedness that would serve him well later in life. Pretty soon he had learnt about all the grounds and players from the ten Test nations.

Almost as soon as Taj started watching cricket he started playing it, though this was not

would take the best Afghan players from the camps and challenge other teams from across Peshawar to games of tennis-ball cricket. And they would play for money. Often the bets would be for 3,000 rupees (just over £20 today, but then a fortune to the boys). More often than not, the team only had a few hundred rupees between them, but they were certain they would win so they would bet high. With their winnings they would buy bats and more tennis balls (wrapping them in gaffer tape to add extra weight and dull the bounce). Eventually they could even afford to lay a concrete pitch in a graveyard outside their house, and this became the first home of the Afghan Cricket Club.

pitch was next to a graveyard. Taj came up with a plan: he persuaded the players to join the mourning, aware that often those that attended funerals were given a small financial gift. Taj and the players did their part, crying and sobbing when needed and when the funeral came to an end each of them was given 20 rupees (about 15 pence). It wasn’t much, but when they combined their money it was enough to buy two brand new bats.

It wasn’t long before Taj had set up a team in the refugee camp. He named it the Afghan Cricket Club. Made up exclusively of Afghan refugees, they became very good. The club

Fans traveled across the world to support their team | Leslie Knott




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Performing on the big stage | Leslie Knott




Afghan Scene October 2011 scene

Out of the Ashes: the extraordinary rise and rise of the Afghan cricket team by Tim Albone is published by Virgin Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing, a Random House Group Company. This excerpt is reprinted with the kind permission of the publishers

They had given up their education for a sport. Not only that but a foreign sport. Although the brothers weren’t educated – Taj claims to have done one year of university, but Hasti could barely write and Karim happily confessed to having very few interests outside of cricket – they were street smart. Hasti had a natural flair for business: he was often the one who organised the games and the betting syndicates. Taj would organise the brothers – he would hold training sessions, sort out the kit and equipment and very early took on the role of coach. Karim was always the most talented – he could hit the hardest, bowl the best and would combine this with some kamikaze wicketkeeping, diving across hard earth to take spectacular catches. Between them the three brothers formed the backbone of the Afghan Cricket Club, a team of refugees, playing with tennis balls or plastic bags in a refugee camp in Pakistan.

Throughout their childhood they had only one dream: it seemed an impossible one but it was to represent their country in an international cricket match. Taj was determined to make it happen. This book tells the story of Taj and his team’s incredible journey from refugees to international cricketing stars. "

From the start the team showed an amazing passion and zeal for the game; they also showed they hated to lose. During one local competition they had bought a big cup to give to the winners, which they assumed would be their team, but things didn’t go according to plan and they lost in the final. The brothers swapped the large cup for a smaller cup they found at home and presented it to the winning team, keeping the big trophy for themselves.

Inevitably a fight broke out, but they never gave up the bigger cup. By way of justification the brothers laughed; they were the better team and they had deserved to win, they just got unlucky. Taj likes to say that lose is not a word in his dictionary; it is something unknown to him.

Their obsession with the game grew, and soon they did little else but play. Their father eventually tired of breaking their equipment and beating them and eased up on them, tolerating their endless games. They no longer had to hide their cricket equipment on the roof of the house, lie about their whereabouts or sneak out behind his back. But he and those around them still thought they were crazy.





NAtIVE:GONE

educated fighters. They welcomed me and I joined them.”

It was 1984 and Russia was in the midst of a bitter guerilla war against Islamist insurgents.

More than a quarter of a century later, Private Krosnaperov is better known as Noor Mohammad. He learned the local language, converted to Islam, married an Afghan wife, and he still lives in Chagcharan, in Afghanistan’s remote central highlands, just a few miles from his old base.

Facing prison, beatings and the wrath of a Soviet colonel, Sergei Krasnoperov said he had no choice but to abandon

his post and surrender to the enemy. It was the second time in a year that the young Russian conscript had been caught selling army supplies to the Afghans and he knew the punishment would be severe.

“If I hadn’t escaped they would have put me and about six other people in prison,” he said. “I had to escape and join the mujahideen, then all the blame was on me. I climbed into the hills and found some


Originally from Kurgan, 1100 miles east of Moscow, Krasnoperov served as a driver in

Shindand and then a storeman in Chagcharan, the capital of Ghor. He defected when an

officer caught him selling military supplies to the locals | Jerome Starkey







Gennady Tseuma, now Nik Mohammed, was born in what is now Ukraine, and came to Afghanistan in 1983. He was captured less than a year later after wandering away from a bridge he was guarding. The Mujahideen gave him an ultimatum: convert or die. He now has a wife and four children and works as a driver in Kunduz.

Nikolai was an officer in an elite parachute regiment, and claimed he deserted in disgust at Soviet atrocities. His Mujahideen captors said he was the sole survivor of an ambush in Baghlan province, in 1981. Born in Kharkiv in the Ukraine, he converted to Islam and took the name Nasratullah.

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“When I joined the mujahideen I wanted to show them what I could do,” he said. “Tanks and helicopters were harassing us a lot, so I fixed their machine guns when they jammed and I repaired the artillery as well. We hit many helicopters and scared the pilots, so after a while they stopped coming.”

Apart from his eyes, the 45-year-old looked Afghan. He wore a plain white skull cap and a fistful of beard; his face was tanned and weathered. Even the salopettes he wore in the height of summer - grubby blue with a bright pink waistband and a sewn-in belt – were appropriate attire for an Afghan metalworker.

Originally from Korgan, 1000miles east of Moscow, Mr Mohammad has seen his mother once since he defected. She visited him in Afghanistan in 1994, but he said he speaks to her and his only brother regularly by telephone.

Under the Taliban regime, Mr Mohammad said he was well treated, because the regime’s leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, admired the Russians who had converted to Islam.

However, since 2001, he said security had deteriorated and he predicted the government would fall when Nato leaves.

“Security has got a lot worse because Nato has put dishonest people in power,” he said. “They are only thinking about about how to line their own pockets. The warlords control this area, and they have made deals with the Taliban.” "

They have six children, aged three to 16, and Mr Mohammad works part time for the local electricity department, repairs lorry parts on a metal lathe and he owns a 30% share in a local tractor.

“Life is not good in Afghanistan, but I have to stay here because I have a wife and children,” he said.

General Boris Gromov, the commander of the Russian Army, claimed there was “not a single Soviet officer or soldier left behind,” when he completed the Soviet withdrawal by walking over a bridge to Turkmenistan in 1989. “Our nine-year stay ends with this,” he said.

But Alexander Lavrentyev, the vice-chairman of Russia’s War Veterans Committee, revealed there are still 270 soldiers missing in action in Afghanistan.

“Since 1991 we found 29 alive, 22 of that number returned home to the republics of the former Soviet Union,” he said. “Seven decided to stay in Afghanistan.”

One of the men who stayed behind, Kasymjon Ermatov, had a secondary school named in his honour, after he was presumed killed in 1986. He turned up 18 years later on a visit to Pakistan, where he was arrested on suspicion of terrorism, rendered to Bagram airbase and eventually flown to Uzbekistan to stand trial.

In Chagcharan, Mr Mohammad said he fought with the insurgents against his old Russian comrades.

Kasymjon Ermatov, originally from the Uzbekistan, was a Soviet truck driver captured in an ambush in 1986. The army presumed he was killed and built a school in his honour. However, he was arrested in Karachi, where his Afghan wife had had an operation, in 2004, transferred to the American prison at Bagram and flown back to Uzbekistan charged with membership of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

Private Alexander Levenets, now known as Ahmad, from Melovadka in Ukraine, fled beatings and ritual abuse of his superior officers in October 1984. He was given shelter and eventually introduced to members of the Mujahideen who accepted him into their ranks. After the war he worked as a taxi driver.





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fact that the country is currently still being ‘occupied’ by the U.S.-led coalition of forces, or ISAF (laughingly referred to by those who live there as “I Saw Americans Fighting), there is no way of knowing how much longer the wars will continue. (And I say this despite the current 2014 deadline for withdrawal, which I will believe when it happens.)

When I read a book like KtC, I tend to turn down page corners to mark passages I want to remember or cite. This book is in pretty sad, dog-eared shape now, and I have since despaired of actually using all of the passages I’ve marked. Suffice it to say that it is simply chock-full of quotable, memorable stuff, so I’ll just give a couple of examples.

First of all, why in the hell can’t a supposedly modern, forward-thinking government like ours ever seem to learn anything from history? We certainly followed closely the ill-fated Soviet venture in Afghanistan which lasted nearly ten years. Indeed the CIA was giving financial and materiel support to the muhahideen

After more than thirty years of reporting on the nearly-continuous wars that have torn Afghanistan apart, Girardet has

developed a deep respect and even affection for its proud people. He has no personal political agenda to promote here, other than a fervent wish for an end to the wars that have left the country’s economy in ruins and millions of people uprooted and destitute.

I read Girardet’s earlier book, AFGHANISTAN: THE SOVIET WAR, over twenty years ago, and was most impressed with his encyclopedic knowledge of Afghanistan as a country, as well as the overview that book offered of the various warlords and rival mujahideen factions who were at the time resisting the Soviet occupation forces. Girardet, a reporter who has trekked over the mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan countless times, built on those experiences and the contacts he made then and in the years since to write KILLING THE CRANES. I would like to call the current book the ‘culmination’ of his years of experience in the Afghan wars, but, given the

handling of the Afghan issue.”

Current officials of the corrupt Karzai regime continue to line their pockets and buy expensively lavish homes in places like the UAE and Dubai, grabbing whatever they can get while the getting is good, knowing the foreign aid dollars will not last forever.

In regard to the notorious Osama bin Laden, Girardet has his own stories to tell, like his first meeting with that supposedly charismatic leader back in the mid-80s. He describes him as talking with a “slight American accent as if learned at school,” and speaking “with the confidence of someone who enjoyed an affluent background, but who also sounded like a spoiled brat who always got his own way.” The meeting ended badly, with bin Laden shouting after Girardet, “If I see you again, I’ll kill you. Don’t ever come back.” Girardet was not impressed with bin Laden as a person. In fact in the Epiloge, he notes: “The killing, or as some say, the assassination of bin Laden on May 2, 2011 is unlikely to affect the war. He was never that popular, even among the Taliban, and resentment toward Arabs remains deep.” In the current issue of HARPER’S there is an open letter from former Senator (and presidential candidate) George McGovern to President Obama. In it he offers several suggestions - advice, actually. Chief among his proposals is that the U.S. withdraw its troops - all of them - immediately from Afghanistan and Iraq. I hope the president has read this letter and is seriously considering the advice therein. McGovern has nothing to gain or lose by making what seems to many

forces from the earliest days of that war, from even before the actual Soviet invasion at the end of 1979. Girardet cites current Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s book, FROM THE SHADOWS, in which Gates “maintained ... that the United States had begun providing financial aid to the mujahideen six months prior to the invasion. It was one way of undermining the Afghan communists and their Soviet backers.”

Girardet also points out how our CIA often worked together with Pakistan’s intelligence agency (ISI), since proven to be notoriously corrupt and unreliable, in supporting the most radical extremist groups during the Soviet war. The Peshawar-based warlord Hekmatyar Gulbuddin profited the most from this support. This decision to work closely with “the most fanatical Islamic factions ... was fatal. It led to the destruction of Kabul, and provided the insurgeny leadership that is now fighting NATO troops in Afghanstan. Simply put, it was the US backing of the Islamic extremists in the 1980s that helped produce the current military quagmire in Afghanistan.”

Girardet also pulls no punches in describing the rampant graft and corruption that existed in the 1980s in the Paki and Afghan government circles, and still does, as America continues to throw billions of dollars down the bottomless pit of the Afghan problem. He notes: “As more American diplomats and agents from this period are entering retirement and willing to speak openly, more information is becoming available as to the utter incompetence of the CIA and other intelligence organizations in their





such a radical proposal. He is, after all, an old man. The president’s current advisors on the wars on the other hand are all professional careerists - not just politicians, but military men whose careers are advanced by war. President Obama would do well to seriously consider Senator McGovern’s suggestions. He would also be well-served by reading this new book, Girardet’s KILLING THE CRANES. There is so much hard-won wisdom here from a man who has spent most of his adult life trying to present a clear and accurate picture of what is happening in this beautiful country, Afghanistan.

But the economy, natural disasters, other wars, upcoming elections - all of these things press in upon our president, clamoring for his time and attention. It seems unlikely he’ll stop and read a 400-plus page book. But I guess I can always hope. In the meantime I will recommend KILLING THE CRANES highly. "

- Tim Bazzett, author of the Cold War memoir, SOLDIER BOY: AT PLAY IN THE ASA






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A caravan of Kuchi nomads on the move in Ghor province, in central Afghanistan | Jerome Starkey

I am hurtling down a glorified goat track on a motorbike with dodgy brakes when I spot them: a group of bearded, turbaned

men standing next to some yurts holding two-way radios and Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders.

We’d been warned about bandits – and the Taliban – who treat passing traffic as their daily meal ticket. A car is “taxed” $2, a truck maybe $10. The price for a foreigner on a motorbike could be expected to have a few extra zeros on the end of it and an extended stay in the bottom of a well.

I have a split-second second decision to make: Do I break my golden rule of motor biking in Afghanistan and stop for a man with a gun but without a uniform?

One of my colleagues, Travis, a fellow Australian yet far more reckless, roars past them but I crunch the anchors, stomp down the gears, come to a halt and thrust out for a handshake.

“Salaam aleikum,” I offer nervously.

Best be killed after trying to talk my way out of trouble than shot in the back. Or at least convince them that the absconding Travis would be a better fit for their Thursday night fun.

Five days earlier, four of us had set off from Kabul on another attempt at riding half way across Afghanistan to the world heritage-listed Minaret of Jam – a 63m monolith in the country’s west built some 900 years ago.





Passing ancient Buddhist stupas that have long collapsed from natural elements we come into Bamiyan city, the site of perhaps the world’s most heinous act of vandalism. Still, the niches are still looking pretty damn cool.

We bed down for the night, our last for the next seven days with running water, but not before a courtesy visit to the province’s head of security. He tells us that three days earlier a truck driver had been kidnapped by the Taliban on the road we’d taken.

known for perpetrating than preventing crime - that we were coming.

We burn through the Shomali plains north of Kabul before ascending toward Salang and what has been called the world’s most dangerous tunnel. We spend a night in an avalanche shelter at 2900m and take on the tunnel the next morning.

Fighting against over-burdened lorries whose drivers who could do with some lessons in

look left, look right, look bike, we get through the 2.6km Soviet-built tunnel without falling victim to one of the wheel-sized potholes. Crash in the tunnel and you’re in a race for your life trying to avoid being entombed by carbon monoxide poisoning.

We’re taking the supposedly safe route to Bamiyan province through a Star Wars-like landscape of red ochre with swathes of green hugging the river that follows the dirt track.

Two previous attempts had ended in police detention, including once under suspicion of being “foreign intelligentsia” or “Australian Taliban” plotting to blow up a series of lakes. (In fairness to the Afghans, the latter accusation was made by their foreign mentors, who happened to be New Zealanders).

This time we were doing it differently by breaking another rule of travel in the wilds outside of Kabul and telling the police – more

Journalists Travis Beard (R) and Jeremy Kelly (L) on a motorbike roadtrip across Afghanistan, from Kabul to the Minaret of Jam in Ghor province | Jerome Starkey

Journalist Nooruddin Bakhshi on a 35000m pass, on the road from Yakolang to Chagcharan in Afghanistan’s central highlands | Jerome Starkey





leprosy and have been shunned by society and their families. Even for Afghanistan, it’s a grim scene but they are cheered by our presence and – unlike their medically ignorant community – we’re happy to indulge them by holding their scaly, deformed hands.

The next morning we depart at 4am as we’ve got about 230km ahead of us, over two 3400m passes including at Kirmu, where as the mist clears we enter Ghor – one of Afghanistan’s biggest and poorest

We get to the gate of a small house, signposted as a Scandinavian charity, where a barking, chained-up dog prevents us going inside. An affable Afghan man comes to the gate and tells us that the caretaker is no longer there – he died three months earlier after self-immolating. We never find out why but the man lets us in to see Zahra and Fatima.

In their 60s, both are near blind, their hands have turned claw-like and their noses shrunken and missing parts. They have been disfigured by

Jerome Starkey (L), Travis Beard (C) and Jeremy Kelly (R) on a 3500m pass at dawn en route from Yakolang to Chagcharan by motorbike | Jerome Starkey

“Why didn’t you tell us?” we ask him. He responds: “Because you wouldn’t have come.”

We head off early the next morning climbing again over 3000m to Band-e Amir. Even after several visits, the six azure lakes still strike me with awe. There’s no danger in these parts, unless you believe the New Zealand police who thought the lakes –the country’s first national park - were in peril from a ginger jihadi from Australia.

It’s a photographer’s paradise yet we are on a clock and heading further west to Yakawlang and a short pit-stop to see two women craving human contact.

Chagcharan at dusk | Jerome Starkey







Afghan Scene October 2011www.afghanscene.com Afghan Scene October 2011 www.afghanscene.com


Ghor, a mountainous province in central Afghanistan, is one of the poorestand most remote places on earth | Jerome Starkey

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53





55

We’ve been going for more than eight hours, mostly without food due to it being the fasting month of Ramadan, when I get a mouthful of powdery red dirt. I’ve crashed face-first, lacerated my hand and ended up pinned under my bike.

I elect to take a stint in our support vehicle, handing over my keys to our Afghan companion Nooruddin, who, in turn, soon ends up splayed on the ground. It’s back on the bike for me, my hand bandaged under my torn glove and

provinces, almost ignored by NATO where the government’s writ is minimal and banditry thrives. This is what the future of Afghanistan may be like when the international military ceases combat roles in 2014.

Officials estimate there are up to 200 illegally-armed militias in Ghor and it’s why the police chief has instructed us to rendezvous with a police escort for the final seven hours to the provincial capital, Chagcharan. Yet I’m more worried about crashing.

Militia commander Haji Abdul Rahman (C) and his deputy, Rasul Dad (L) examining a UNESCO map of World Heritage Sites. Their men patrol the road which leads to the Minaret of Jam | Jerome Starkey

The Minaret of Jam, 63m tall and leaning precariously to one side, at the confluence of the Haririd and the Jam Rud rivers | Jerome Starkey





fade we leave Chagcharan with our destination an estimated four hours away. We’re travelling with a police ranger carrying nine armed men and a mounted machine gun on top. We fight for road space with nomadic kuchis and their camel caravans and dodge wild dogs.

After nearly five hours we come across Haji Abdul Rahman and his band of armed men. My decision to stop has been a wise one. Our police escort quickly pulls up behind us and the police warmly greet him and his band of men. This is his patch and he and his men are going to guide us down the gorge to the minaret.

We’ve passed through six provinces, endured nine crashes between us and our support vehicle has experienced two flat tyres, one from a live Kalashnikov bullet. We don’t know how far we’ve travelled as none of our odometers work but we know it’s at least three hard days riding back to Kabul and the bikes – and us – are not up to it. Instead, we hitch a ride on a UN helicopter to the relative opulence in the city of Herat and then fly back to Kabul. Before which we’ve loaded the bikes in a van and sent the driver on his way.

He gets to Kabul and tells us that after passing through Bamiyan he was stopped by the Taliban and robbed. Three days later, on a motorbike jolly up TV Hill, a knife-wielding bandit tries to stab me. After reporting the incident to the police, I am chided for going up there without an escort. "

a stinging chest pain from slamming into my handlebars.

We’re racing against the approaching darkness, egged on by our escorts, whom I suspect are more worried about their empty stomachs than they are our heads.

Reaching Chagcharan after dark, 15 hours after we set off, we get to one of the city’s two restaurants, but the only one with food. It’s also full of sketchy looking dudes who claim they are nomads from Helmand’s Musa Qala district. The men seem convinced my tinted $20 bike goggles are capable of night-vision. My colleague Jerome seeks to disprove this by, much to my chagrin, gifting them.

The two-room restaurant is also the only “hotel” and we think it prudent to lean on the police chief for some more appropriate accommodation. He kindly allows us a room at his guesthouse. It’s simple but at least it’s safe, of sorts, save for the mice and the chef who keeps saying “I love you” to us.

The commander of the tiny 160-man NATO force in the province, Lithuanian Colonel Nerijus Stankevicius says of the Ghor police: “They need to learn the law and behave like policemen, not like bandits with rifles.”

The police chief tells us we can proceed to the Minaret of Jam, but again it would require an escort. So with our bikes and bodies starting to

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Afghan Scene October 2011scene scene

is taking me somewhere. He has a plan for me. With this thought, hope rose. He almost giggled, intoxicated with it. If he were going to kill me, he would have done it by now. Wouldn’t he? Yes. Alhamdulillah. Thanks be to God. He grasped this hope and hugged it to him, a lifebelt thought. Yes. If he –

A sharp rock at his toes and he was tripping, his feet splayed. The cord closed its teeth more sharply round his wrists, biting into the skin. The rope jerked. Pain through his hands, a sudden white heat in his shoulder sockets, his arms. A rush of air on his face as he fell forward, crashing, bouncing hard against the ground. Air struck out of his chest, leaving him gasping. Fine sand rose in a cloud, filling his mouth, his nose, making him choke. The stink of grit close to his face, a smell of dead sand and desiccated dirt.

A pause. He was alive, breathing noisily, in, out. His nostrils ran wet with mucus or blood. He tried to lift his head and opened his mouth a crack to speak. His eyes, encrusted with sand, were trying to force themselves open beneath the cloth. His tongue was thick. He held his breath to listen. He heard the man, close to him, exhale.

His head was held down, his face pressed into the sand. A weight on the back of his head. A foot. The hard sole of a boot. He bucked and twisted, trying to flip over, to turn his covered face to the man, to beg. The boot held him firm, standing on his skull, grinding his nose

Prologue

The line was taut. The cord circles tightened into handcuffs, burning his wrists. He was propelled forward, dragged on the rope, stumbling over sand and stones on the leash. His neck craned backwards, his face towards the sky and the glare of the sun fired the cloth of his blindfold. His tongue flickered to his lips, tasted their dryness. Sweat blossomed on his scalp, trickled down his temples, stung chapped skin.

He was sick with shock, his limbs convulsing. The man had jumped him from behind, from nowhere, and knocked him to the ground. He had pinioned him, his knee hard in his back, and bound his eyes before he could twist his face to see. Who was he? He caught the stink of male sweat; his own, bitter with adrenalin, and, overlaying it, the thick meaty smell of the man.

He stretched the tendons of his neck and managed to move the cloth a fraction. The material was wound tightly round his head, pressing into his eyes, and as he lifted it, he created a narrow slit of light at the bottom. Light, there, below, just beyond his vision. His eyes bulged, forcing themselves downwards, straining towards his chin, to focus on the paper-thin line of brightness. Was that a blur of sand he could see, dancing with pin-pricks of colour? His head was bursting with effort and fear.

He tried to take control of his body, to steady his breathing and, with it, his mind. This man





Her scarf was pulled forward, screening her face, although the only male present was her young son. He was squatting on his haunches beside her, pressed against her body for comfort. He was a thin boy of ten or eleven with protruding ears and a scab on his chin. He was too young to understand he’d become the man of the house.

The daughter, embarrassed by her mother’s silence, tried to take control. She leaned forward to Ellen to whisper. “You understand,” she said. “A very big shock.”

“Of course.”

The daughter pushed a dish of greasy long-grained rice towards Ellen. It was laced with flakes of nut and plump stock-rich raisins. Ellen added another spoonful to her plate. She broke off a piece of fresh ridged bread, warm and spongy, and wiped it round, pinching a piece of lamb and rice together with her forefingers. She leaned forward over the plastic cloth. It was spread out between them on the floor, dominating the room, covered with cheap glass dishes of home-cooked food, a litre bottle of Coca-Cola and a smatter of shot glasses.

She brought her hand to her mouth, pushed the food between her lips, even though she had no appetite. The lamb had been marinated in a pungent sauce and she chewed slowly. She knew the rules. They must press food on her even after she was sated, to show respect, and she, to show thanks, must eat it.

into the dirt, causing a hundred minute sharp stones to embed in his forehead, his chin. A wave of nausea brought bile into his throat, riding a swell of panic.

A metallic click. A gun being cocked. He opened his mouth to shout but no word came. The sharp stink of piss, hot and steamy. The sudden wetness in his groin. A searing flash of white light. Cleansing and bleaching everything in an instant. The halo of the gunshot Jalil didn’t live to hear.

1.

The room was shabby and hot. Ellen, sitting cross-legged on the threadbare carpet, tried to shift her weight and ease herself into another position without attracting attention. Her knees were aching.

Dust hung heavy in the air, suspended in the shafts of early evening light which were pressing in through open windows. The furniture was sparse. Just an old-fashioned television on a stand, a vast dark-wood dresser, scraped and scuffed by several generations, and worn cushions scattered across the carpet and against the walls.

Jalil’s mother was kneading her hands, rhythmically squeezing one through the other, back and forth. Her head was bent, watching her fingers as if their restlessness surprised her. The skin was papery. The veins along the backs of her hands stood full and thick with purple blood, part of the map of her new shrinking self.

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work. She looked round now at the faces that mirrored his.

Jalil’s mother lifted her fleshless hands and ran them through the boy’s hair and along the contours of his face, as if she were a blind woman, learning him. He wriggled, sighed, scratched himself around the ribs, then settled against her again and submitted to the hands without protest.

“It was Najib who told us.” The corners of the daughter’s mouth were tight with tension. All this was just a week old and they were still in shock.

The daughter leaned forward automatically to press on Ellen the dish of meat and rice. Ellen forced herself to take a little more. The lamb split easily into pieces on her plate, releasing aromatic steam. It was good meat. They must have paid a lot of afghanis for it. Without Jalil, money would be tight. She was very conscious that she was the only one eating. The family sat round her, dull-eyed, and watched. This evening, she knew, they would pick at her leftovers.

The daughter was educated. Some course in management or teaching, Ellen couldn’t recall what exactly. Her neat gold earrings, her shoulder-length bob and the tailoring of her Afghan kameez gave her a hint of Western stylishness.

“What will you do now?” The daughter shrugged. “Find work.” Her tone was lifeless.

“He has a friend there.” The daughter’s voice faltered as she corrected herself. She was fiddling with the fabric of her headscarf, playing it between her long fingers, shading her eyes. “Had a friend.”

Ellen looked up. The daughter was nineteen or twenty, a little younger than Jalil. Her nose was broad and prominent, as his had been. Sitting so close to her mother, she looked a younger, less broken version of her, with clear olive skin and expressive eyes, ringed with kohl. She’d already lost her father. Now she’d also lost her older brother, any uncle or cousin could push her into a hasty marriage.

“His friend,” Ellen asked her, “is he also a translator?” The daughter nodded. “His name is Najib,” she said. “An old classmate of his, also from Kabul.”

“And he’s still in Helmand?”

“Yes. Maybe now he can help you instead of Jalil.” She breathed heavily. “With your reports.”

The girl attempted a smile but looked away and it crumpled. Ellen pushed a piece of lamb round her plate with her bunched fingers, struggling to find the will to eat. In four years of coming back and forth to Kabul to cover Afghanistan for NewsWorld, this was the first time she would work without Jalil. He’d been full of life, of talent, exactly the sort of man his country needed. His death sickened her. He should never have turned to the military for





portrait that looked several years out of date. Jalil was wearing a pale kameez with a stiff collar. His hair, usually so unruly, was combed severely to one side, glossy and fixed in place, perhaps with gel. His expression, straight into the camera, was serious and subdued. She bet he hated that picture. It wasn’t at all how she wanted to remember him.

When she looked away, she saw him as he used to be, sitting opposite her, stooped over his food, his long legs crossed, his back pressed against a cushion and the wall, his hair flopping forward over his forehead. His mother, shyly triumphant, would have fussed over their meal, pressing too much rich food on them both. She and her daughter would have cooked all day in readiness. His little brother, adoring, would be horsing around, over-excited. Climbing on him until he was pushed aside and told to behave. She looked over at the boy now. He had Jalil’s delicate features, the same long black eye-lashes and large eyes that would break hearts. Now, though, they were red-rimmed and anxious as he pressed his cheek against his mother’s side for comfort, like a much younger child.

She turned to the daughter. “On the phone,” she said in a low voice, “you said something. About the way he died.”

The daughter tutted under her breath, gave her mother a quick glance, then lowered her eyes to her lap. Her fingers plucked again at the hem of her headscarf.

Ellen persisted. “What did you mean? What

“I could ask around,” Ellen said. “The aid agencies might need someone. Or the embassies.”

The daughter kept her eyes on the plastic cloth between them. It was dotted now with stray grains of rice and wet circles of water and Coke where glasses had stood.

Jalil should be here. Their visits to this small family room, with its bare walls and peeling white plaster, had become a ritual whenever she’d worked with him. He’d always invited her home for a special evening meal, planned for the end of her stay once their work was done, and hosted by his mother. It was an honour to be welcomed into an Afghan home. His family had been proud that Jalil had an important English friend who paid him well in dollars. Without him, the air in the room was stale. She had done the right thing in making the effort to come, dashing from the chaos of Kabul Airport to these hushed rooms, but their grief was drowning her. She tore off a final piece of bread, ran it round the congealing sauce on her plate. Another few minutes and she’d have to head back to the airport to report for the military flight south to Helmand Province.

The daughter had lifted her eyes to the television and was staring at it sightlessly. The sound was muted but the images flickered on, splashing colour and light into the room. From the heavy dresser, Jalil’s face stared out. It was a black and white photograph which Ellen had never seen before, framed in black. A spray of plastic flowers sat in a small glass vase beside it. It was an old-fashioned studio

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longer. It is not honourable.’ This is what he says.” She looked up again and Ellen saw her hesitate before she decided to speak. “I think he sounds afraid.”

Ellen let her eyes fall to her own hands, limp in her lap. She forced herself to face this new thought of Jalil’s fear. It sat heavy in her gut. Was it fear for his life that had made him decide to leave? A wave of nausea took her. She clenched her hands into fists, resisting it, and saw her knuckles whiten. It is not honourable for me to stay, he’d written. Honour. A cornerstone for him, she knew that.

It’s my fault, she thought. His death. I could have stopped it. She closed her eyes, screening it all out, digging her nails into her palms. Her breaths were coming in short bursts in the quietness and she tried consciously to slow and lengthen them. The family mustn’t see her distress.

A splutter of static and microphone squeal broke into the room from outside as the dusk call to prayer began. It filled the silence, shimmering in through the open windows and across the room, a young male voice of sad sweetness. Ellen sat, rigid, feeling the blessing of prayer wash over them, low and melodious in its devotion. She concentrated on breathing. The room was soft with memories.

The first time she worked with Jalil, they’d embarked on an intense ten day road trip, interviewing dozens of Afghans about the forthcoming elections. What did they expect from their politicians? Who did they support?

makes you think you weren’t told the truth?”

“They said he was killed by the Taliban when they were out on patrol. An ambush. That’s what they said.”

The daughter unfolded her legs and brought herself to her feet, crossed to the dresser and opened a drawer. It was crammed with yellowing papers. She picked out an envelope near the top, withdrew a single sheet of thin paper and spread it out on the floor between them, smoothing it with her fingertips. The writing was neat, covered in the ink squiggles of Pashto.

“From him?”

Across the room, her mother had lifted her head to watch. Ellen felt the weight of the silence, of the room’s holding its breath.

“This is the last letter we received from him.” the daughter said. She traced the writing gently with her finger. “He says he is leaving Helmand, leaving the job with the military. We should expect him home.” She paused, blinked, continued. “But he sounds upset. “Things are not as I thought,” he says. “Not at all’.” He writes to Mama not to worry. He’ll find work in Kabul.” She glanced up at Ellen. “He means some work for foreign journalists, like he did with you. Translating.” She paused. “He liked to work with you. Always when you came here. He looked forward to it.”

Ellen nodded, holding her gaze. “I did too.” The daughter sighed, turned back to the letter. “Don’t be angry. I cannot stay here any





them warmly. They sat cross-legged on cushions in his bare front room and drank green tea from tall glasses. Jalil translated back and forth. Yes, the schoolteacher told them, his voice measured, everyone in the village knew about the elections. He was encouraging them all to vote. But would the politicians help them? He had his doubts. Would they bring electricity to the village? And then, there was the school. He shook his head, his eyes pleading. He hadn’t been paid his salary for so long now, for four, five months. How could he - ?

The throb of an approaching truck interrupted him. He looked towards the window, nodded to Jalil and, in the doorway, pushed his bare feet back into the sandals waiting there. Ellen sipped her scalding tea and listened to the slam of a truck door outside, then low voices.

The man who entered with him smiled round. He had a short beard and a brown Afghan hat and greeted them with easy confidence. Ellen sat up, interested, to watch. My cousin, said the schoolteacher, and clicked his fingers to his son to run for a fresh chai glass. Just a few minutes later, before the conversation had really resumed, Jalil got to his feet, thanked the schoolteacher and ushered Ellen hastily out of the house.

“That was abrupt.” Ellen watched the passing landscape with dismay from the backseat of the vehicle. They’d spent several hours driving out to find the schoolteacher and she’d left with barely half an interview. “What’s the hurry?”

They’d asked shopkeepers, housewives, farmers and traders, piecing together material for a four page spread on the general mood and how Afghans saw their future.

She’d been given Jalil’s number over lunch in Islamabad. A friend on The New York Times had just come out of Afghanistan. With so many journalists swarming through Kabul, decent translators were thin on the ground.

“Kinda young,” he’d said, scribbling down the mobile phone number on a paper napkin. “But good. Smart as a whip.”

For the first three days of the trip, she’d wondered. Jalil had been nervous, stumbling over his English. He seemed shy. He was little more than twenty and she was used to working with older men, canny operators who were usually ex-journalists themselves. They could be cocky and not always trustworthy but they brimmed with confidence and they knew a story when they saw one. By comparison, Jalil seemed naïve.

On the fourth day, they turned off the road and bumped along dirt to a cluster of mud-brick houses. A boy, herding goats, flattened himself against a wall to watch, turned to a ghost by the fine brown dust beaten up by the wheels. Beyond him a thin man was tugging at a donkey whose body was rendered invisible by a vast load of brushwood. A girl with a dirt-encrusted face ran to the man and clutched at his leg as they passed, her eyes round.

The schoolteacher, a contact of Jalil’s, greeted

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Jalil pointed to his own mouth. “So much of gold in his teeth. New gold.”

Ellen shrugged. So what? He had gold teeth.

“His watch?” Jalil ran his hand round his wrist. “Foreign watch. New.” Jalil paused, watching her reaction. “Who gave him all this money?”

He faced forward again. His hair was sticking together in clumps along the top of his neck.

Ellen thought about what he’d said. The teeth, the watch. She hadn’t noticed them. Jalil had. “He could be a businessman,” she said. “A trader.”

Jalil gave a dismissive grunt. “Business?” He gestured out of the window at the emptiness of the desert. “Here?”

She paused and considered. Maybe Jalil was smarter than he looked. He just wasn’t loud. “Blah, blah,” she said. She was used to Afghan men with big egos. Jalil was different. She lifted her own hand and opened and closed it like a mouth, as he had done. “Blah blah, blah blah.”

He turned back to see and she snapped her hand open and closed at him until they both started to laugh, saying “blah, blah” stupidly to each other as the driver swung back onto the road and they headed through the dry, swirling dust towards the next village.

Now, in this grieving house, the call to prayer gave a final burst of static and came to a

Jalil was sitting in the front passenger seat by the driver. He mumbled something she didn’t catch.

“He had more to say,” she went on. The late morning sun was intense. Her head, encased in a headscarf, was already hot. “We didn’t have to leave just because his cousin came.”

“That man he calls his cousin.” Jalil turned back to her and lowered his voice. “He is not a good man.”

Ellen shook her head. “Why do you say that?”

Jalil raised his hand and worked it open and closed like the mouth of a glove puppet. “Blah blah,” he said, snapping his thumb against his fingers. “He is a man to go blah blah blah to someone. To some powerful man. He came rushing to see us for a reason.” He stared at Ellen. His voice had dropped to a whisper. “Maybe he is going blah blah to some Taliban.”

Ellen glanced out of the window at the swirling dust, the blank brown landscape. They were in the middle of nowhere. “Oh, come on.”

When she looked back at Jalil, he was frowning.

“Maybe they’re just cousins.” She sighed to herself. She’d hurt his pride. “He seemed friendly enough.”

“You saw his smile?”

“What about it?”





blames me. The money was thick and greasy in her hands. Dirty. She pushed it back into her pocket. She and the girl stared at each other, unspeaking.

The moment was ended by Jalil’s mother who came out to them from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel. Her scarf had fallen back to her shoulders. Her hair, prematurely grey, was clipped into a bun, dripping strands.

She embraced Ellen, kissing her on both cheeks, then pressed herself against her body. She smelt of rose water and spices and her hair was dry and prickly against the soft skin of Ellen’s neck. She pulled back and took Ellen’s hands in her own. She clasped them, looking up into her eyes. Her palms were hot and firm. Her eyes looked so like his. Deep brown with fragments of light radiating outwards. As she spoke, Ellen read the concern there.

“Don’t go, she is saying.” The daughter was standing beside them, her voice cool as she translated her mother’s words. “It’s too dangerous. Don’t go to Helmand, she says. Go back to your own country and forget your work here. Be safe.”

His mother embraced her a second time. Ellen felt the hardness of the smaller woman’s ribs against her own flesh, the compact muscle of years of labour.

“I must go,” she said at last. She put her hands on Jalil’s mother’s shoulders and lifted her away. “I’ve got stories to file.”

close. Silence reached into the room. Ellen shifted her weight. It was already late.

“Manana.” Thank you. She placed her right hand on her heart in a gesture of thanks and bowed her head to Jalil’s mother. Ellen unravelled her legs and rubbed her ankles to bring them back to life. She reached forward to gather together the scattered dishes and help to clear them. Jalil’s sister protested, pushing Ellen’s hands away and scolding her softly, as Ellen knew she would.

In the dim hallway, she covered her head with a voluminous scarf, wound the ends round her neck to keep it in place and bent to lace up her boots. Jalil’s mother had retreated to the kitchen and only the daughter was hovering, adjusting her own scarf nervously in folds round her head and shoulders as she watched Ellen prepare to leave.

Ellen gestured the girl to come towards her. In a quick movement, she took a bundle of dollars from her pocket, folded the girl’s long fingers round the money and enclosed her hands for a moment in the mesh of her own. Behind them rose a clatter of dishes, shifting in the sink. A tap coughed and water splashed onto a hard surface. The girl hesitated and opened her mouth to protest.

“Balay,” said Ellen. Yes. Her voice was firm. “Please.”

The girl prised off Ellen’s fingers and thrust the money back at her. Her eyes were proud. She knows what Jalil asked me, Ellen thought. She

scene

His mother was reaching up to Ellen’s cheek, patting it with a cupped hand.

“I’ll find out,” Ellen said. “Tell her. I’ll find out what happened to Jalil.”

His mother spoke once more as her daughter unbolted the door and opened it. The family’s guard, standing outside in the shadows, rushed forward, his rifle glinting in the half-light. He escorted Ellen across the shabby courtyard to the high metal gate set in the compound wall. His mother had used one of the phrases Jalil had taught Ellen in the time they’d worked together. One she didn’t need anyone else to translate for her. May Allah bless you, she’d said. May Allah protect you. "

Jill McGivering is a senior BBC broadcaster, specialising in Asia. She’s covered foreign news for the past 19 years for the BBC’s main radio and television news outlets. Her posts as a BBC Correspondent include Hongkong, South Asiaand the US State Department. Since being based in London, she’s travelled on assignment worldwide but most often toAsia where she covers conflicts and pursues investigative journalism. Her first novel, THE LAST KESTREL (Harper Collins) comes out in paperback in August and is set in Afghanistan. It draws on many reporting trips to Afghanistan and two embeds with British forces in Helmand Province. Her second novel, FAR FROM MY FATHER’S HOUSE, set in North-West Pakistan, comes out later this year. Jill has an MA in Creative Writing and has also written short stories and plays.





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U S E D C A R S

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Nineteen bed house Wazir Akbar Khan Ref 3166Nineteen bathrooms, kitchen, basement: 70 sq m saloon, 40 sq m bar, split air conditions, central heating, refrigerators, TVs, carpets, beds, internet network and etc, parking for up to three cars. $14,999 a month, Call 0700334455

Twelve bed house Shar-e-Now Ref 2045 Eight bathrooms, two kitchens, two saloons, two sub basements Car parking for up to ten cars, refurbished to a high specification Out buildings: reception, kitchen, bathroom, laundry and guard room$16,999 a month, o n o. Call 0700334455

Ten bed house Shar-e-Now Ref 2093 Seven bathrooms, two kitchens, saloon and dining room, mature garden Car parking for up to ten cars. $7,999 a month, o n o. Call 0700334455

Six bed house Wazir Akbar khan Ref 3174 Three bathrooms, kitchen, saloon, dining room, sub basement, 4 rooms, out buildings: 2 rooms 1 bathroom, garden with swimming pool Car parking for up to three cars. $10,999 a month, o n o. Call 0700334455

JVC GY-HM100 ProHD CamcorderNative “ready to edit” .MOV & .MP4 formats.Fujinon optics with 3 prog. scan CCDs.Records to dual SDHC memory cards (2x8GB inc.)Uncompressed fully manual LPCM audio (2ch, inc. shot-gun mic). Second-hand (mint cond.)Contact [email protected] for full details and/or viewing.







Herat RestaurantShar-e Naw, main road,Diagonally opposite Cinema Park

Mixed/WesternLe Dizan (formerly L’Atmosphere)Street 4, Taimani Tel: 0798 840 071, 0700 209 397

Flower Street CaféStreet 2, Qala-e Fatullah. Tel: 0700 293 124, 0799 356 319

Kabul Coffeehouse & CaféStreet 6, on the left, Qale-e Fatullah Tel: 0779 020 202, 0786 226 223, 0785 192 421

Le BistroOne street up from Chicken Street, Behind the MOI, Shar-e Naw Tel: 0799-598852

Red Hot Sizzlin’ SteakhouseDistrict 16, Macroyan 1, Nader Hill Area Tel: 0799 733 468

Le Pelican Cafe du KabulDarulaman Road, almostopposite the Russian Embassy.Bright orange guard box.

IndianNamasteStreet 15, left Lane 4, (last house on right side) Wazir Akbar KhanTel: 0772 011 120

Delhi DarbarShare – Naw, Butcher St, Lane # 3.Tel: 0799 324 899

Anar RestaurantLane 3, Street 14,Wazir Akbar Khan Tel: 0799 567 291

LebaneseTaverne du LibanStreet 15, Lane 3, Wazir Akbar Khan Tel: 0799 828 376

Hotels and Guesthouses

Kabul Serena HotelFroshgah Streetwww.serenahotels.comTel: 0799 654 000

Safi Landmark Hotel & SuitesCharahi Ansariwww.safilandmarkhotelsuites.comTel: 0202 203 131

The Inter Continental HotelBaghe Bala Roadwww.intercontinentalkabul.comTel: 0202 201 321

Gandamack Lodge HotelSherpur [email protected]: 0700 276 937, 0798 511 111

Sanpo Guesthouse(formally Unica Guesthouse)Royal Mattress Haji Yaqoob Square

Golden Star HotelCharrhay Haji Yaqoob,Shar-e Naw. www.kabulgoldenstarhotel.comTel: 0799 557 281 , 0777 000 068

Roshan HotelCharaye Turabaz Khan,Shar-e Naw.Tel: 0799 335 424

RestaurantsAfghanRumiQala-e Fatullah Main Rd, between Streets 5 & 6Tel: 0799 557 021

SufiStreet 1, Qala-e Fatullahwww.sufi.com.af Tel: 0774 212 256, 0700 210 651

The GrillStreet 15, Wazir Akbar Khan.Tel: 0799 818 283, 0799 792 879

TurkishIstanbulMain road, on the left, between Mas-soud Circle Jalalabad Road Rounda-bout. Tel: 0799-407818

IranianShandizPakistan Embassy Street, off Street 14 Wazir Akbar Khan Tel: 0799-342928

Italian/PizzaEverest PizzaMain Road, near Street 12,Wazir Akbar Khan, www.everestpizza.comTel: 0700 263 636, 0799 317 979

Bella ItaliaStreet 14, Wazir Akbar KhanTel: 0799 600 666

ChineseGolden Key Seafood RestaurantLane 4, Street 13, Wazir Akbar Khan. Tel: 0799 002 800, 0799 343 319

ThaiMai ThaiHouse 38, Lane 2, Street 15, Wazir Akbar Khan Tel:0796 423 040

KoreanNew WorldKarte 3, in front of Abdul Ali Mostaghni High School. Tel: 0799 199 509

DeliveryEasyfoodDelivers from any restaurant to your home www.easyfood.af Tel: 0796 555 000, 0796 555 001

Room serviceFood. grocery, errand service [email protected] Tel: 0794952001

Want to get on the Afghan Essentials list of places to eat and sleep? Contact [email protected]

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With over 8,000 copies distributed free of charge, Afghan Scene keeps those working in Afghanistan and new comers to the country informed on recent developments with articles and reviewsfrom leading writers.

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www.afghanscene.com

Supermarkets, Grocers & Butchers

A-OneBottom of Shar-e Naw Park

ChelseaShar-e Naw main road. opp Kabul Bank

SpinneysWazir Akbar Khan, opposite British Embassy

FinestWazir Akbar Khan Roundabout

Fat Man ForestWazir Akbar Khan, main road.

Enyat Modern ButcherQala-e Fatullah main road,Near street four

ATMs

Afghan Spinneys Supermarket, Wazir Akbar Khan(AIB)

AIB Head Office, Shahr-e-Naw, Haji Yaqoob Square, Shahabudin Watt (AIB)

AIB Microrayan Branch, 2nd Micro-rayon

AIB Shahr-e-Naw Branch, Ansary Square, opposit of Kabul City Center, Shahr-e-Naw(AIB)

American Embassy, Massoud Square

Bearing Point Compound, Shahr-e-Naw, Ansary Square (AIB)

Camp Eggers Second ATM, Wazir Akbar Khan

Camp Eggers, Green Bean (AIB)

Camp Gibson -Mil Base, Qasaba Roadd (AIB)

Camp Phoenix, Jalalabad Road (AIB)

Faisal Business Center, Lycee Maryam Khair Khana (AIB)

Finest Food Superstore, Shahr-e-Naw Between Hajee Yahqoob Square, Hanzala Mosque (AIB)

Finest Superstore, Pul-e-Surkh, Kart-e-Se (AIB)

Finest Superstore, Street #.15, Wazir Akbar Khan(AIB)

Green Village, Stratex Hospitality Green Village, KAIA Gate-3, Off of Jalalabad Road (AIB)

ISAF HQ -Military Base, Shashdarak (AIB)

KAIA-Military Base, Beside Kabul International Airport (AIB)

New Kabul Compound, Massoud Square (AIB)

Pinnacle Hotel Services, 5 Industrial Parks, Bagram New Road (AIB)

Supreme Truck Park, New Bagram Road (AIB)

World Bank Guard Hut, Street 15 Wazir Akbar Khan (Standard Chartered)

Standard Chartered Branch, Street 10, Wazir Akbar Khan (Standard Chartered)

Hairdresser(Men & Women)Call Mustafa on 079 888 4403Salon in Sanpo Guesthouse





Produced by Kaboora Production, broadcast exclusively on TOLO [email protected] | [email protected]

INNOVATINGAn Afghan first, The Ministry is a

satirical comedy shot as a fly on the wall documentary in the “Ministry of Garbage”.

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!"#$%&'%$()%*+,-%.#&/0

ENTERTAININGHit gameshow Deal or No Deal creates a space for a fun and riveting program that invites all Afghans to join, whether in the studio or from home.

afghan scene magazine october 2011

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