BBC report from Kabul.
news.bbc.co.uk
Saturday, 10 November, 2001, 17:22 GMT
Return to Kabul
Journalists were only recently allowed back into Kabul
By the BBC's William Reeve in Kabul
I can hear the thump of American bombs landing on Taleban positions about 30 kilometres north of here.
I'm in the BBC office in Kabul, which has just been reopened.
We witnessed the twisted remains of military posts along the road up to Kabul that were direct targets of American cruise missiles
I came up by road from Pakistan with a team of four other BBC colleagues. There's Ismael Saadat, an Afghan journalist who worked with me when I was here as a correspondent up to a couple of years ago; Fred Scott, an excellent cameraman who knows Afghanistan well; Phil Goodwin, who has a more diverse range of broadcasting skills than anyone else I know; and Rageh Omaar, a fellow BBC correspondent.
We only arrived on Thursday, but already that seems an age ago. Just getting to Kabul has been an exhilarating experience.
One great treat was arriving at the BBC house-cum-office and meeting up again with the five Afghans who work here, and have kept an eye on things while there's been no correspondent in Kabul.
They were all here at the front gate to greet us warmly as we arrived in an old bus we had hired at the Pakistani border.
There's Hajji the driver, with his white beard, turban and wicked sense of humour.
Sar Feroz, the cook, who is preparing lunch at the moment next door. There are two watchmen here all the time. And there is also a gardener, Bagwan, who faces difficulty in the garden at the moment because the well for the BBC house has completely dried up after three years of severe drought.
Home coming
But I was delighted to see the garden again, along with it's fish-shaped swimming pool and 20 different varieties of fruit trees.
I chose the house nearly eight years ago, when I was here at a time when mujahedin forces were fighting ferociously against each other in their bid to seize power.
Half the city was literally flattened in this futile fighting, and tens of thousands of civilians killed.
The groups who were here then are now united against the Taleban in the Northern Alliance.
The house has a flat roof, which is very useful as a vantage point to see what is happening across the city whenever rockets or bombs land or whatever.
There is a spectacular view from the roof of all the mountains that surround the city.
I am very fond of the house and all the people who work here, many of whom I have now known for nearly a decade.
The house is in an area of Kabul where expatriates working for aid agencies used to live until recently.
The area is called Wazir Akbar Khan, named ironically after an Afghan wazir - or prime minister - who was responsible for slaughtering thousands of British soldiers as they fled from Kabul 160 ago during the first Anglo-Afghan War.
London calling
I was in London on that fateful day in mid-September of the aerial suicide attacks on the twin towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.
And it wasn't long before a friend phoned up and asked what might happen now in Afghanistan. I wasn't sure. And I'm still not sure.
Until two weeks ago I was following all the latest news with frustration from London.
The Taleban had closed the BBC office eight months ago soon after they had destroyed the ancient stone Buddhas in the central highlands of the country. And no BBC correspondent had been allowed into Taleban areas since then.
So I thought I would phone up the Taleban, and suggest they allow in a BBC correspondent to Kabul. A day later, I had been given permission by the Taleban to come to Kabul along with a camera crew.
We reached the Afghan border just near the Khyber Pass, and before long we were into Afghanistan at last.
I have always found this just about the best part of any trip into the country. Suddenly everything is much more laid back.
There were smiles and greetings for their new and unexpected foreign guests from ordinary Afghans selling bread and fruit at the frontier.
Before we arrived in Afghanistan we had asked for a Taleban guard to escort us up to Kabul, and he duly turned up, jumped into the bus we had just hired and piled high with all our kit and off we went.
Along the way, we spoke to several other Taleban.
One young soldier said he was looking forward to the arrival of American ground forces. Then, he said, he would really start enjoying the conflict.
Destruction
Another more senior Taleb said Afghans are used to facing bombardment after more than 20 years of warfare in the country.
He said that the threat of the American bombardment before it started was to him greater than the actual bombing itself.
But we witnessed the twisted remains of military posts along the road up to Kabul that were direct targets of American cruise missiles. Surprisingly, we saw very few Taleban soldiers on the road up or indeed in the capital. Presumably they are all busy at frontlines.
In Kabul, ordinary people around the city have told me how frightened they were when the bombing started. It was heavier and so much louder than anything they had ever experienced.
But the bombing of Kabul has died down in recent days and people looked more relaxed.
What worries them most is their economic plight after so many years of conflict. And they wonder where all this is heading, and what will happen not just to Kabul, but to the rest of the country as well over the coming months and years.
Ordinary people just want to be left in peace to get on with their lives.
They don't feel there is any immediate prospect of that at the moment. |
