Three Days in Afghanistan
John Wendle / Kabul
War is strange. It can give everything and it can take it all away. Life can do this too, but war has speed and ferocity to it – a speed that life only rarely mimics.
Just two months ago in Kunar – one of the most dangerous provinces in the country and bordering Pakistan – I hiked a thousand meters straight up a mountain for five and a half hours in the dark with the men of 3rd platoon, bravo company. We landed in Chinooks in a soggy rice paddy, expecting contact. With no night vision and no moon, I scrambled up and over massive boulders, across loose stone and through thorn trees to the small, embattled Shal Outpost. It was the hardest physical thing many of the soldiers – and I – had ever done in our lives.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
I soon realized I was proud of myself. This was something I had never felt. In the past I have said I stand on the shoulders of others and that any achievements I have had have been thanks only to the support of friends and the love of my family. This was different. This was something I had done on my own through my own strength and determination – though even that determination was bolstered by a persistent stubbornness picked up from my parents and sister and from the support of the soldiers around me.
And my pride came from not only reaching the top of that mountain with the guys, it also came from simply pulling my own weight and not complaining, in helping guys two-thirds my age up rock faces and in not hurting myself. And there was professional pride too – in trying to take pictures, even through physical exhaustion. I realized that this was an experience no one could take from me. It was mine and I could look back on it – and it would help strengthen me in difficult times to come.
Then, just a couple of days later, I was almost shot in the face. The sniper’s round missed me by a half meter. It was so close it showered sparks all over me and my camera as it ricocheted off a steel post it had hit, so close I picked up my camera and looked at the lens to see if it had been smashed. I dropped below the sandbags with PFC Cory Early, the soldier I had been chatting with. He had an astonished look on his face. Probably I had the same on mine.
In the space of a couple days I had ticked off two boxes I seemed to have had in my head that needed to be checked in order for me to prove to myself that I was a bona fide war reporter.
The first was doing something truly hard and seeing it through to the end. Conquering that mountain and reaching Outpost Shal ticked that box in a number of ways. I’ve lived in Afghanistan for two years, and have done a lot of hard things, from the hard physical labor of long foot patrols in Marjah and the Arghandab River Valley in 140F heat wearing full body armor and camera gear, to the challenge of overcoming the terror of facing the unseen dangers of foot patrols – the IEDs that have cost countless soldiers and photographers their legs – and the ambushes.
But up until I was just missed by that sniper, they had been just that, unseen. Now a conversation I had had a year ago with my dad had played out. I had been talking to him about what the work was like, but I told him that, though I had been scared before, I had never truly felt like I was a war reporter because I had never been the target of any of the shooting I had seen. My head had never been in anyone’s sites before. But that sniper shot had changed that.
I can’t even say I was scared. Surprised, yes. I hadn’t seen it coming. I continued to do my work, to take pictures, shoot video and talk to them – interviewing them for a story I was working for TIME. But now, weeks later, with those two boxes checked – physical exertion and achievement in a hostile environment and being specifically targeted to die in this war – I woke up feeling like a new man. I was confident in my job and in my personal life – feeling that I knew who I was and what I was doing in the face of all the uncertainty that this war – and this kind of life – brings.
The blast on Tuesday in central Kabul that killed 58 and wounded another 150 people, mostly Hazaras watching the observance of the Shiite holy day of Ashura, in which adherents whip their backs with chains and blades to mourn the martyrdom of Imam Husain and mark his sacrifice, has profoundly changed that pride and that confidence.
The explosion radiated out in a circle through a densely packed crowd in which I was filming shirtless men whip themselves bloody. My camera and I were dotted with blood that had flown in showers off the backs, chains and blades of the men beating themselves in a frenzy of religious fervor. The bomb left a closely packed semicircle of bodies in its wake, as if a giant scythe had reached out, cutting people down like wheat in its sweep. Women, children and babies behind the bomber had been blown against a wall, compressed into a piled and tangled line of blood and scorched clothing.
The dead were dead. The wounded were horrifying behold, moving or just breathing in unnatural ways, through shattering pain and shattered bodies, they writhed or simply jerked and shuttered on the ground, or simply gaped and blinked through bloody mouths and eyes, covered in dust and gore. I saw one little girl stand up, then collapse back onto the pile of her bloody brothers and sisters. A baby lay half on her mother’s chest with her torso and head lying face first on the ground, not moving. It was the Inferno. Hell. I ran around not knowing what to do or where to go. In the center of it, all I wanted to do was close my eyes and ears and not see anymore. Then I went back to work.
I have covered numerous bombings and attacks in Kabul. You hear the boom, grab your cameras, you jump on your bicycle – easier to get past police checkpoints and to move quickly through traffic jams – and you cover the aftermath. The slicks of blood and intestines. The heads emptied and collapsed like a deflated soccer ball. Being inside the horror of that day, the second bloodiest in years, was different.
I am not proud of my work on Tuesday. I almost do not even remember taking the pictures or video that aired on CNN. I know I had to keep working though. It is my job and there were only two other photographers there during the blast. The Afghans deserved to have their story told. And there were others there to help the wounded and carry the dead. I didn’t have my tourniquet with me – I usually carry one to bombings – and one tourniquet would not have been enough. But, though I had been only 15 meters from the blast, had nearly been trampled, then decided to not to run and to get to work, to then look for the body of my colleague and friend Joel van Houdt, a Dutch photographer, who I was covering the event with, to seeing him standing, physically unharmed and working, I did not feel the same way I felt after being nearly shot by a sniper, I did not feel anything.
And now all I feel is sadness for all the little babies and children that were senselessly killed. I do not feel like I have checked a box – though bombings have been a major part of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past 10 years – I do not feel like this makes me a war photographer, videographer or journalist. I do not have any pride in this work. Just sadness and anger that people, Lashkar-e Jhangvi al-Alami as is being claimed now – or otherwise, could do this to others, particularly innocent civilians. Children.
I used to lie to myself and my friends. When asked why I cover this war, why I’m interested, why I take risks and do what I do, I would tell them that I have close Afghan friends in Helmand that I don’t want to have to see run away, die or hide when the civil war starts after the planned American withdrawal in 2014. I felt like the only way I could do this was by showing what is going on here and helping bring it to an end – an end that does not engender a civil war. After Tuesday’s bombing I realized I am here not for my friends, but for all Afghans and everyone fighting here. As Joel observed, for the two of us, this is no longer only their war, that war over there, between the Afghans, it is ours too now, and we are here to try to give them a voice against this incomprehensible violence and brutal rage.
Another photographer, my friend Pieter ten Hoopen, told me yesterday that he is afraid of what is to come here in Afghanistan. US troops, a stabilizing force, are withdrawing and the violence will only increase. Most of us journalists and photographers predict a civil war – there is no real doubt among Afghans and foreigners who are not lying to themselves. But in the near future, Pieter is afraid that the viciousness of this attack will only make even more brutal attacks imaginable – and that they will be carried out. I, too, am afraid.
…
A version of this story can be found on TIME at: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2101935,00.html
The Rush
Suddenly the air is glowing with energy. Guys start huffing adrenaline out of their gaping mouths in neon bubbles.
The shooting keeps going and these young soldiers start bursting from nowhere. Like electrons released from the pull of a nucleus.
Flashing out of their rooms, into the command center in all kinds of battle-rattle – and out again.
Flashing into a beam of sunlight – climbing up a ladder, through a hole and onto the roof.
Bursting into the sun on the porch.
One runs out dressed only in shorts, black wraparound shades, a grease-stained flak vest and a belt of bulbous, gold-tipped M-203 grenade rounds bouncing on his skinny hips.
Others come out in helmets rimmed in white crusts of sweat like a shot of tequila you’d never want to drink – the residue of 12 months of long haul foot patrols in 110 degree heat.
Flip-flops snap and crack as guys run over the dirty concrete floor, shouting questions and orders in breathless inhales. Eyes wide like they can’t get enough air fast enough.
Sprinting over the yard of crushed gravel and dented, dirt colored armored vehicles – they are frozen in my pictures – suspended inches above the ground, toes pointed, calves flexed for the next stride, mouths open shouting for friends, or to fuck off and find your own spot.
The .50 cal up on the roof of the old Japanese school we’ve infested starts jack-hammering – pounding heavy rounds out into Afghanistan. They shatter branches, leaves – and maybe even bodies out in the shaggy rows of the pomegranate orchards.
Up on a shooting platform the young kids in their ruined body armor and Army Strong tee-shirts smile and grimace all at the same time while, slack mouthed, they stare down the scopes of their rifles, through hoops of sun-hot barbwire, in search of targets to engage in the dark green shade of the bush.
All around the roof and platform monologues and dialogues whisper and shout like the rounds passing overhead as stories of close calls and an end to boredom are passed around like cigarettes.
“…I was racked out, laying in my cot, listening to music, thinking about masturbating, then r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-rrrrraaaatat tat tat tat a tat tat….fuck you, mother fuckers…”
“…Fuck. Adrenaline rush. Best fucking drug ever…”
“…Can only keep our fingers crossed that it keeps up like this till we go home…”
“…Just like the good old days.”
“I couldn’t count how many rounds. Somebody just let loose. Fucking pussies. I swear to fucking God I hate it when they fucking run. This country has nothing but bitches in it…”
“…It was from the northeast. I want to say September. I was, fucking, behind the Mark-19 and, fucking, I’m like this, and all of a sudden I hear whmmm…duh! and it hits the sandbag right next to the Mark-19 and the dirt from inside the sandbag hits my face. I’m like, oh, hell no. And then, the second shot was from a little further away but it was closer to me. Hits the sandbag. And I was like, ‘yo, I don’t want to be on this fucker anymore.’ I had to get out. I’d had enough. I couldn’t focus after that. I was just smoking cigarette after cigarette in a corner on the roof…”
Afghan Army Faces Attrition Crisis – By John Wendle/Kabul
Fighting The Taliban: Afghan Army Faces Attrition Crisis
The expansion of Afghanistan’s government forces, both military and police, has been a much-touted goal of both Washington and Kabul. It is the key program in the run-up to the gradual U.S. handover of security responsibilites to the Karzai regime scheduled to begin in July. The goal of 305,000-member Afghan National Security Force (ANSF) by October 2011, however, has to overcome a huge obstacle. Even though the U.S. claims that 79,000 men have joined the police and army since December 2009, swelling its numbers to 270,000, the Afghan army loses 32% and the police lose 23% of their personnel to attrition each year.
According to U.S. Lieut. Gen. William Caldwell, commander of NATO’s training mission in Afghanistan. though 110,000 men had been recruited in 2010, the high attrition rates meant that the total increase in manpower was only 70,000. At that rate, said one media calculation, NATO will need to recruit and train 86,000 men in order to add just 35,000. (See pictures of the Afghan National Army.)
The high attrition rate is not the only problem. “We can build a soldier, train, develop and equip a soldier fairly rapidly, …. but to produce a leader takes longer,” Caldwell said at a press conference last week, touching on the lack of non-commissioned officers in the security forces. Along with low pay, poor living conditions and shoddy equipment, poor leadership leads to more soldiers going AWOL as well as to higher casualty rates. Caldwell said that 98% of those going AWOL are from field units, especially those in areas of intense fighting. From January 2007 to November 2010, 3,595 police and soldiers were killed in action and 7,339 were wounded, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service. Also, a wave of suicide bombings across the country have targeted police and soldiers.
Understandably, there is a lot of fear. “My father said he did not want me to die,” says Zemarai Marai, a 20-year-old taxi driver in Kabul, after completing only a portion of his police training. “He would not allow me to finish. He told me that if I continue to train for the police, I should not come home. He said I would not be his son. So I went home.”
Police are “fleeing their battalions because they don’t have any idea of what the future is,” says an Afghan National Police field commander, speaking on condition of anonymity because he did not have permission to talk to TIME. He says that, with no advance warning, soldiers from the north are sent south to violent provinces like Helmand and Kandahar where northerners are viewed with suspicion. “They see that it is very dangerous and they escape,” he says. (Watch TIME’s video “The Afghan Army in Action.”)
At the same time that there is an effort to tout increasing recruitment numbers, there was talk last week in Washington about capping spending on security. “The international community and Afghanistan cannot afford a force of 375,000 ANSF indefinitely,” said Defense Secretary Robert Gates at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Feb. 17, referring to a proposed plan by the Afghan government to expand the final number of security forces by a quarter. “We have to think of this, I think, more as a surge for the Afghans. And with the political settlement and with the degrading of the Taliban, perhaps the size of the ANSF can come down to a point where it’s more affordable for us.” Congress has budgeted $12.8 billion to support the ANSF for 2012. “We can’t sustain that for many years. And so a lot depends on being successful by 2014 in — in getting the transition to the Afghans,” Gates said. Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak , who was in the US last week, said the Afghanization of security would be “cost effective.”
The recent fielding of the controversial Afghan Local Police (ALP) force could be seen as a way for both sides to get what they want. The force, which critics fear will simply legitimatize existing militias, is stabilization on the cheap. “A shield of meat” was how an interior ministry official characterized the ALP to Human Rights Watch’s Afghanistan analyst Rachel Reid, because they only get three weeks of training, a small salary and shoddy equipment. Also, the ALP will serve in places where there is little coalition or ANSF presence, NATO said on its website. These are “some of the most dangerous places in the country,” said Reid. “This is high speed security. You can’t rush it,” she said. (See pictures of the battle against the Taliban.)
The Taliban has already taken notice. In a possible sign of the carnage to come, a suicide bomber last week tried to get into a meeting of local ALP militia commanders in Kunduz, a formerly peaceful northern province. When he couldn’t get in, the bomber blew himself up outside, killing 30 civilians and wounding 40.
In the end, the move may be counter-productive. Although the government will be able to field a bigger force and the U.S. can claim higher numbers, the ALP militias’ lack of training will lead to higher casualty rates. This could cause increased attrition among the security forces as more fear spreads — as well as making it harder for the U.S. and the Afghan government to claim that the security forces are ready for the start of the handover in July — an essential step in the 2014 exit strategy.
Read “The Afghan National Army in Combat: Dazed and Confused?”
See pictures of Afghanistan’s dangerous Korengal Valley.
- Find this article at: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2056450,00.html
Suicide bombing photos
My photos from the February 14 suicide bombing can be found posted with my photo agency at: http://www.atlaspressphoto.com/_ATLASPRESS_/ga_multi_list.asp?adSearch=&searchtype=0&searchtext=john+wendle&ssSearchtype=2&ga_category=&within=0&ga_country=&x=0&y=0&cType=1&fDate=1900-01-01&tDate=2009-05-28&orient=0&color=0&photographer=
Some of the pictures are graphic, so please be aware.
Valentine’s Day bombing in Kabul – the backstory
I heard a boom through my window. Loud enough to be big and without the echo that usually accompanies a training exercise or the military blowing up arms caches. I ran down stairs to my housemate Joel’s room, and we almost ran smack into each other as he was running out, pulling on his jeans and grabbing his cameras.
I said, “Are we going?” And he said “yeah.”
So, I ran back upstairs threw on my jeans, grabbed my cameras, took a piss and we were off, my hands shaking. He’s been to one of these before and – at 28 – has taken pix for 10 years. He said we needed to be at the bombing 10 minutes ago.
So we’re running down the street and he’s talking in Dutch on his mobile to his friend Bette who writes for a big Dutch paper – trying to get the details of the bombing – and I’m just running along behind him. He is totally mindless of mud and 6in deep puddles covering the street – running at full speed right through them. I’m a little more careful.
We turn down a mud alley and he finally stops at a muddy lake blocking our path – but we run around it and a car comes skidding up in the dirt and mud at the end of the street and we jump in and Bette introduces me to her fixer.
So we’re waiting for her housemate to get in the car – the reporter from the Christian Science Monitor. I’m all jittery and don’t really know what’s going on. Joel starts honking the car horn to get the guy to hurry up. He’s got to tie his boots and then he forgets his camera. Joel wants him to hurry since the police block off bombings pretty quickly and you have to get there fast to beat the wire snappers.
Finally we’re off driving faster than I’ve ever driven in downtown Kabul – straight into oncoming traffic and honking and blindly cutting around busses. Then we hit a traffic jam and Joel says, “I’m out! I’m going to run.” And I say, “Ach. OK.”
So I get out too and I’m trying to keep up. He’s been living here straight for 7 months at a mile altitude and I’m left chugging and slurping along after him out of breath.
The Afghans on the street see us running together with our big cameras, boots and bags covered in mud and are laughing and pointing. They’re just sitting there.
They know there’s been a bombing, but they’re used to violence and this sort of thing – so they think its funny that two foreign guys with big cameras are running at high speed, covered in mud, to get to the site of a bombing. It really shows the absurdity of the long war right there.
So we finally slow down and I’m coughing and spitting and we finally get up to the cross street where the bombing is and the police have already set up a cordon. We got there about 10 or 15 minutes after it happened.
And the press corps slowly filters in behind us. The Afghan press, as usual, were on the scene first. There’s a bit of pride with being some of the first foreigners there. Then the foreign press starts to trickle in – snappers and hacks and video guys. My first introduction to everyone is as a sweat-covered, shaking, spitting mess coughing up half a lung. We’re passing around a few jokes with some cigarettes and then there’s shooting. Like an idiot I go hug a wall instead of getting behind a tree. So I walk over and get behind a car, mindful to stand by a wheel so I don’t get shot in the feet – nervous about getting shot by a stray round through the glass.
Up the road some police Hilux pick-up trucks have started to pull up and police in helmets, body armor, knee and elbow pads with assault rifles are piling out and running in the building after reports of two more suicide bombers.
But we can’t really see anything from where we are – we’re down the street about a hundred meters and slightly around the corner from the bombing. We’ve all come from behind our trees and cars and are chatting again and the police continue to push as back little by little – accompanied by ineffectual joking from some of the photogs about trying to stay closer to the action.
Eventually Misha, a new friend of mine, says “enough” and asks if I want to go get some kebabs – meaning he wants to walk around and see if we can get closer on another street. So we walk about 20 paces and there’s a big open pit construction site and we see two other photogs going down through the pit and climbing up a mud and stone cliff on the other side.
So Misha, Joel and I, plus two other photogs go down – Joel starts running again – and we pull each other with the help of some laughing Afghan bystanders up the wall of mud. We’re now covered in Kabul’s dirt.
I’ve just run 3k and am beat and I haven’t eaten anything but a big bowl of oatmeal at 9am. Its now 2pm.
So, we cross an empty lot – right next to the guesthouses that were blown up last year that caused so much damage to the nearby Safi Landmark – the building that has just been attacked.
We come out on the street and there is a big police presence, but here we can get right up onto the sidewalk where the bombing took place. Security guards at the shopping center stopped the bomber at the entrance and he blew himself up there – almost on the sidewalk.
There’s blood, glass, metal, police, dirt, snow, water, sterile gloves, investigators, soldiers, photographers, journalists, foreign security guys and ISAF bomb disposal guys everywhere.
We’re all straddling the open drainage sewer that divides all streets from sidewalks in Afghanistan trying to get pictures. There’s a white and red painted guardrail we’re all pressed up against. We’re all pressing in, trying to get closer.
As we get there there’s already dozens of Afghan journalists and photographers and videographers and lots of their foreigners already snapping away. We’ve missed the first 20 minutes, but now we’re in the thick of it.
Police continually try to push everyone away – but besides being a bit rough, aren’t violent. The photographers are all pressing in and their luck, trying to get closer. Trying to get into the debris. No luck.
An investigator, not wearing any gloves, picks up the head of one of the victims – maybe the bomber – with two ginger fingers. I assume its that of one of the security guards since its laying near a lower leg that disappears into a beaten up military style boot.
The head is like a deflated soccer ball with scorched, burnt hair. Or – more – like a pinata made of terracotta and wrapped in paper – that has now been beaten, soaked in water and broken into shards that are still held together by the paper. I see an ear. I take pictures.
Later I bump into Lynsey Addario. I’m speechless – and finally get out a lame, “Wow. Cool.” I think I get in one of her shots as I step into a fresh juice shop that has been turned upside down by the blast – only 25ft away.
Afghans love fresh juice and these shops are all over the city. There are bright, skinned carrots all over the floor and pomegranates and bananas are smashed all over the place.
After shooting through a blown out window – a perfect “frame” – I look down and see a viscous goo and skin hanging from my foot covered in blood – I get out, “oh, fuck” – but Linsey says, “don’t worry, its bananas and pomegranate juice.” Infinite wisdom. Probably just practice and common sense and a cooler head. She’s been to lots of these. Slowly, the scene quiets down. I meticulously scrape off the banana and pomegranate with the toe of my other boot.
Incredibly the police open up the previously blocked road and start letting traffic through. Joel and I – and another guy we’ve just met – a very nice French snapper named Philip – voice incredulity and a bit of concern that they would allow cars though with so many police around.
If the Taliban wanted to use a secondary bomber to wipe out a lot of police and cops, it’d be easy. A fat British sergeant who has arrived with a UXO bomb team tells an Afghan cop to close the road. The sergeant’s body armor presses down, leaving a bulging loaf of gut exposed to bullets – protected only by a straining green tee-shirt. The cop says “yes,” then wanders away and does nothing.
Finally I convince Joel to leave. He’s got a Dari lesson in 15 minutes. Philip catches up with us. As we’re walking away down the paved main road we came up on, ever mindful of security, one of us, Philip I think, asks if we want to walk down an unpaved side street, covered in mud. It is blocked by a big open hole between it and the main street. We all veer off through the mud and water.
I say, “Well, I’m glad that happened today.” Then realized how messed up that sounds – to anyone but a photographer or a journalist. Joel jumps all over it. Making fun of me. But teasingly. He understands.
I feel I have to explain though. “Its good that that happened now, just a couple weeks after I got here. You know, to give me a taste of what’s going on. What is like. How to operate.”
I almost add, “it was good that it was an easy one,” – because the cops didn’t beat us and there was no secondary attack, there was only a little shooting and the blast was right on the street and there weren’t dead bodies scattered everywhere – but then I realize that this will sound even more messed up than the first statement – just an hour after three people lost their lives and I’ve seen a human leg torn off at the knee – the inside of the knee exposed, bloody and broken, looking like a dark, hairy, ripped off chicken hip – and a head crushed, bloody scorched and gutted on the sidewalk.
I say it anyways. They agree. We walk home through the streets of Kabul. On the way back we buy some bread.
The photo at the top is mine.
Joel’s photos can be found at http://www.joelvanhoudt.nl/
Philip’s photos can be found at http://www.philip-photos.com/
Linsey’s photos can be found at http://www.lynseyaddario.com/
My photos from Russia can be found at http://www.lightstalkers.org/john_wendle
Shauket
Shauket
I was told this story an hour ago. I just wanted to get it down before I forgot – and tell it as simply and honestly as I was told it.
Shauket has the high cheekbones of the Hazara people and narrow, yellow eyes like a wolf. His face is striking rather than handsome. The Hazara, the third most powerful ethnic group in Afghanistan, are based in the Hazarajat – a mountain fastness that is home to the great destroyed Buddhas of Bamyan and this Shiite minority. They are said to descend from Genghis Khan’s hordes, but probably descend from peaceful settlers from Central Asia.
I was watching the Travel Channel when Shauket came into the dining room in Kilo 3, the “guest house” in Kabul where a number of expats for AVIPA Plus live as well as the home of the kitchen and dining room.
He asked where it was that the show was being filmed. I told him Cyprus, but he didn’t know where that was. Then a map came up showing the Mediterranean and I showed him. Recognized Turkey. Then he started telling me his story. At first I was annoyed. Then I started to listen. Then I stopped laying down in my shalwar kameez pants and town hiking vest and untied boots and sat up. Then I help a choke in my throat and had to hold back from crying.
“You know, it is good that the American military is here. There are no terrorists now,” he said, as I commented on how beautiful the commentator was on the TV show in her white bikini top with her bubbly personality. “We couldn’t even dance. We had to grow our beards long. We couldn’t shave. We could even grow our hair long. But it is good now. The Americans are here and there are no terrorists.”
“I left Afghanistan when I was 13, in 2000. I went to Pakistan. It was too difficult for me. I couldn’t find a job,” he said. He went alone to the city of Karachi. “It is the biggest city in Asia. There are 18 million people living there.” He has thin, weak looking arms and short, thin fingers, like a girls. He is small for his age.
Eventually he got a job at a bakery. Today he works as one of three cooks serving meatballs, bread, broccoli, fried fish sticks, apple pie, salad, steak, hamburgers and spaghetti to the international staff – a mix of Americans, Brits, Swedes, Spaniards, Peruvians, Colombians and Ghurkhas.
“I worked at the bakery. I made 1,000 Pakistani Rupees a month. That is about $12,” he said. He has lived in Karachi, Islamabad and a half dozen other cities between Kabul and the other side of Pakistan. He worked and lived in a room on the premises of the bakery. “I worked every day. There were only three holidays a year. I never stopped working.”
He supported his family back in Ghazni, southwest of Kabul, on the main road to Kandahar. Anytime anyone was going back to Afghanistan, he would send a letter. He had learned to write in Dari. “My parents are illiterate, but one of my sisters can read and she read the letters to them. I would write, ‘Hello. How are you? I am fine. Life is good here. I hope you are well.’ Then I would take all of the Rupees I had saved and put them in the envelope and I would seal it, like this,” he says, spitting on his finger and running it over the imaginary glue strip of an envelope. He said he would give some money to the person taking it back, to make sure it got to his family. He was the only one supporting his family.
At that time, as far as communications were concerned it may as well have been 1801 as 2001. “I would send a letter and then I would wait for three months before I would get a reply from my father.”
After a year in Pakistan, having fled the repressive rule of the Taliban at 13, he decided to learn English. “I saw that the American military forces had invaded Afghanistan. I thought they would be victorious. And I thought, if I learn English, maybe I can go back home. Maybe I will find a good job there.” So, out of the 1,000 Pakistani Rupees he was making, he spent 200 a month on English classes.
His English, though flawed, is understandable and actually quite good for a young boy who worked all day, saved all of his money to send home and for English classes and had nothing to eat and no family in a massive foreign city. “It was hard at first. I didn’t speak the language. They speak Urdu. Now I speak English, Urdu, Bengali, Hindi, Dari and Pashto. I learned four languages in nine years.”
Then, one day in 2004, someone called the bakery. “Shauket? Shauket?” the voice kept repeating over the phone. In the noisy bakery, the person who had picked up the phone couldn’t hear. He thought he recognized the name, though and handed the phone to the 18 year old man. “It was my father. He said, ‘Shauket, is that you? Is that you?’ I said, ‘yes father, it is me.’” It was the first time he’d heard his father’s voice in four years. “I cried. It was too much.”
They talked about the basics wanting to know how his health was, was he happy, was he safe, did he have a good job. “The Americans have destroyed the Taliban,” his father said. As Shauket said this, a dark shade passed over his face as he said the word “destroyed” – a wrinkle wrecking the smoothness of his forehead. “It is safe now. It is safe for you to come home. You can come home now. Come home,” his father said. But Shauket was determined to learn English. He told his father he would stay for another four years. His father told him that it was his decision, since he did not know the situation in Pakistan.
He asked his father how he had gotten the phone number of where he lived and worked. His father said someone who had come back to the village had given it to him. Shauket asked his father if he had a phone number. Hi father said yes. Recently a man in the village had bought a big portable phone, “like the ones the military uses or a satellite phone” and he would charge people to use it.
His father gave him a number, and Shauket noticed that it was not an Afghan extension. His father said the phone was registered in Dubai. “To call for one minute, it cost 100 Pakistani Rupees. That means I could talk to my family for ten minutes for my entire monthly salary. He saved up. “I didn’t eat. At the bakery, I took a little bit for myself – a small piece of bread. I would have some of that for breakfast. I would have some of that for lunch. The same piece of bread!” he said, showing me how he would cup his hand and slide crumbs off a counter into his hand and how he would pinch the crumbs out with his fingers and put them in his mouth. “I would have the rest of it for dinner. I lived at the bakery, so I didn’t have to pay rent.”
He eventually paid his entire month’s salary to talk to his family for ten minutes. “I called and the man answered and I told him who I wanted to talk to. He hung up and went through the village and took the phone to my family, then I called back. I spoke to my mother and my father and my sisters and brothers. You have no idea how hard it was,” he said with a shy smile that was direct at the same time.
Now his brother lives in France. “He is 20. He went there illegally. He does not send money to the family. He went through Pakistan, Turkey, Italy and now finally France. He says it is very dangerous and expensive there. He said, ‘even if you want to buy just one piece of bread, you have to pay a tax. You have to pay a tax for everything.’”
Tonight, before I had learned any of this, before I had sat up on the couch, as I finished a dinner of spaghetti, meatballs and sauce, I paused as I handed my plate to Shauket. There was a strip of bread and half eaten meatball on the plate. For some reason I felt bad about leaving that on the plate and handing it to an Afghan. Partly, maybe, it’s from the two books I’ve been reading. Maybe some part of me knew that I was handing a plate with as much food as he’d had for a day just five years ago.
“Now I don’t know. I don’t know what will happen. No one trusts our president. You know Hamid Karzai? He is our president and no one trusts him,” Shauket said. The Travel Channel show on Crete and Cyprus had just ended, but it had been on mute for a long time now. “No one trusts him and when the Americans leave, what will happen? No one knows. Maybe there will be war again. Maybe I will have to leave. This is an awful place. There is no future here.”
Links -
The Lost Boys of Afghanistan – Photo Essay
UN High Commission for Refugees – Afghanistan country profile
Kandahar 1
The evening call to prayer in Kandahar, Afghanistan – This is a link to a video I shot from the roof of our compound in Kandahar. Its the evening call to prayer, the azan, from the Red Mosque. The mosque is the biggest in the city.
The city itself is the town from which the Taliban was born. The area has been continuously inhabited for more than 5,000 years and the city is the second largest in Afghanistan. Though only the second largest, it is the first in smuggling, being large and only a couple hours from the Pakistan border. Across the border is the Pakistani city of Quetta where many of the Taliban leadership now reside.
Kandahar is a big town. A large valley stuffed with mud walled compounds, small houses, shops and mosques. Women wear burqas as a matter of course and the men wear beards. Afghan IRD staff say they get stared at if they don’t wear beards.
More on Kandahar later.
rain
Its raining today. It started around 4 a.m. when the sound of the fat drops dripping off the security grill over my window woke me up. Its fitting that its raining today since I’m driving down to Spin Boldak – leaving in 7 minutes. Spin Boldak is the border crossing between Kandahar and Quetta the twin cities of the Taliban. It is fitting because 10 years of drought in this dry land has pushed farmers to a more hardy crop – the opium poppy – and it is through Spin Boldak that a lot of the product passes. Maybe today will be the end of the dry spell?
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/03/04/Drought_grips_Afghanistan/UPI-75691236218844/
and
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=34262
and
http://desertification.wordpress.com/2009/02/27/afghanistans-drought-and-food-crisis-threatens-millions-google-ekklesia/
Legitimacy
Legitimacy – what does that mean? If you read David Sanger’s “With Karzai, U.S. Faces Weak Partner in Time of War” you would think it has something to do with the US getting out of Afghanistan – not about the people trusting in Hamid Karzai or Abdullah Abdullah – who pulled out of a run off election yesterday here in Kabul. Sanger spends most of his time talking about how Karzai has screwed up and what this means for US strategy:
It will not be easy. As the evidence mounted in late summer that Mr. Karzai’s forces had sought to win re-election through widespread fraud to defeat his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, administration officials made no secret of their disgust. How do you consider sending tens of thousands of additional American troops, they asked in meetings in the White House, to prop up an Afghan government regarded as illegitimate by many of its own people?
And what is the conclusion that the US government has reached from all of this, according to the New York Times?:
The answer was supposed to be a runoff election. Now, administration officials argue that Mr. Karzai will have to regain that legitimacy by changing the way he governs, at a moment when he is politically weaker than at any time since 2001.
“Changing the way he governs!?”
Mr. Obama’s decision last March to add 21,000 troops was justified in part by the need to assure a relatively peaceful, fair election. The idea was to bolster Mr. Karzai’s credibility so that his authority would reach beyond Kabul, the capital.
In fact, this is the only paragraph that matters to the Afghan people in the entire article – and only the second sentence at that. What the article says, in a roundabout way, is that no one in Afghanistan cares about Hamid Karzai, except for a couple of million people in Kabul and a few more million in Kandahar province, where he is originally from – and where his brother has made a killing in the drug industry. [For more on that read "Karzai in His Labyrinth" from the NYT Sunday Magazine.] Other than that, “weak partner” means that Karzai has no power outside of Kabul and to a lesser extent in Taliban-controlled Kandahar province.
This has been born out by repeated trips to the districts in Helmand province. Karzai appoints the governor of Helmand province, who in turn appoints the district governors – so, political scientifically, the district governors (who are the real face of the government in the rural areas of Afghanistan) are just two steps removed from the president. But in fact, i.e. NOT political scientifically, there is NO link between Karzai and the districts. NO services are passed down from the government in Kabul: no schools are built, no police are trained and sent, no health clinics are set up. And it works in the other direction as well as no taxes are passed up the chain to the national coffers.
The statement that “Mr. Karzai will have to regain that legitimacy by changing the way he governs” seems like a no-brainer. But the fact is, it may be too late. In the places I’ve been, no one cares who is president in Kabul – there is no infrastructure in place for Karzai to regain legitimacy. In the same way, in my opinion, in order for the media to regain its legitimacy here, it needs to stop fixating on Kabul’s presidential politics and start focusing on the districts – the places where those additional 44,000 soldiers will be sent.
As always, the opinion expressed here is solely my own, and does not represent the opinion of my employers.
Photo and video
This Man is Not a Photojournalist – Interesting profile of this photographer, but not a lot (ie no info) on HOW he shoots. Which makes the piece interesting, but crap for detail. I’d love to be able to do this kind of stuff, but I need to learn more. Still, worth a read. I’ll be posting some of my own video soon and I hope to make a short using iMovie soon. His photos can be found here:
http://www.timhetherington.com/
and here
http://www.worldpressphoto.org/index.php?option=com_contact&task=view&contact_id=508&type=gallery&Itemid=
