Afghanistan - Just Another Day

The shockwaves first wake me from a slumbering sleep. Fractionally later the sound reaches me, a dull sounding bduuumf. Scrambling off my mattress I lurch towards the window, just in time to see a gray mushroom cloud reaching towards a clear blue sky.

It is an early morning wakeup call from the Taliban. They have just bombed Taloqan for the umpteenth time that week. I had arrived in northern Afghanistan a week earlier. It is the last part of the country held by Ahmed Shah Massoud, the legendary Tajik commander. He is now the last serious opposition to the Taliban goal of conquering the whole of Afghanistan by force.

The Taliban have not taken too kindly to this. In fact, their displeasure had been fairly obvious for most of the week as they had rained down bombs on the town.

It is a matter of seconds to grab my equipment and head for the direction of the dissipating smoke. A crowd had gathered around bomb site. Rushing down a narrow alleyway I can already hear female shrieks of grief. A young boy runs past me crying. Emerging at the place which would have been the courtyard of the house, I see only rubble, desolation and a very large crater. Turban-clad men are digging into the rubble in an attempt to find survivors; or failing that, the bodies at least. The family had just been making breakfast when the bomb brought their home crashing down on top of them. A two-year-old girl, her mother and her grandmother have all been killed. The father is still under the rubble somewhere. Sudden cries from the excavators amid rubble being flung aside indicate that the father has been found. His unconscious body is quickly loaded onto a stretcher and rushed to what passes for the hospital. There is no electricity, no running water and the normal transport is a horse and cart for the rich, a donkey for the lucky and foot for everyone else.

Civilian casualties, though, are by no means the sole casualties in Afghanistan's most recent war. The following day as I drive back from an afternoon of filming at the front line my car passes a donkey carrying a stretcher. I stop to see what's happening. Loaded on the stretcher is a young majahedin, or to be more precise, a bloody lump of flesh. He has been blown up by a mine. Amazingly, he is still alive, though his body appears to be irredeemably shattered and his bones are protruding from his legs. His father is weeping uncontrollably with grief beside the stretcher.

We put him in our car and drive as fast as possible for the hospital. It will make little difference, though. He will die some hours later. A few days later I am at Bangi, a small village near the front line. I meet Pir Muhammad, the commander for the area. The village is typical in its mud-built walls and houses. People, though, are few and far between. Young children stand at doorways watching the mujahedin. Uniformly they are barefoot and shy. The bolder ones are soon helping the mujahedin unload weapons from the Russian-made jeeps. Soon all the children are stumbling under the weight of ammunition boxes as they carry the boxes down dusty alleyways to various houses in the village. One child is carrying RPG warheads. He cannot be more than five years old and the warhead is not much smaller than he.

Later I am driving towards the front with some of the mujahedin. There isn't much in the way of a road as we bump our way across the potholes. The discussion, over the sound of Indian music, revolves around my camera and whether they can have the pictures I take of them. I promise to bring the pictures back when I return. A Taliban tank spots our vehicle. The first intimation that I have of this, though, is the feeling that some invisible hand has reached out and rocked the entire car. Fractionally later, a messy cloud of smoke billows up about six meters behind the car and there is a dull crashing sound. "Fast," the mujahedin in the passenger seat screams to the driver. Suddenly we are speeding down the track, past deserted houses and fighters crouched in small orchards, as if we were in the last lap of the Camel Trophy race.

We reach the house where the local commander is billeted. he has watched our manic drive with amusement. We are invited in for tea. There are about 30 fighters billeted in the building and we all troop upstairs. There are mattresses on the floor around the edge of the room. An assortment of weapons are heaped casually in a corner. We have a perfect view of the sprawling orchards and fields that make up this part of the front line. It is still beautiful, despite the war. Conversation is interrupted only by the occasional squawk of a field radio. After tea it is time for the drive back.The end of another day in Afghanistan.