Unreported World

Reporters for Unreported World are hardened to austerity. We are used to battling through jungles, living with remote tribes, enduring the privations of  military camps. But this assignment was to be carried out in confort. We were put up in the Gandamack Lodge in central Kabul. Every day we returned home to a hot shower, a good dinner and a very efficient laundry service.

In the morning we would sally forth into Kabul. Here a range of different dangers awaited us – including the United States army.

One aspect of Kabul life we found very hard to convey was the powerful and menacing presence of the US military. Afghanistan is supposed to be a sovereign state, but in truth large tracts of Kabul – the capital city – is actually under US occupation. There’s the ‘US embassy’ – or that’s what it’s called. The ambassador is a general and his ‘embassy’ fails to discharge ordinary diplomatic functions such as issuing visas.

And there’s a US military base in the centre of town called Camp Eggars. On our first day in time we were innocently minding our own business when we were ordered onto the side of the road, taken inside the camp, interrogated and bollocked.

About a week later we were filming with the Afghan National Police when the same thing happened. The Afghan convoy was halted near the US base (we had no idea where we were and had been given permission to film) and we were taken, separated, searched and interrogated by a couple of characters from military intelligence who wouldn’t give us their full names or rank. Our film was removed, and the US military outrageously threatened our guide, telling him that they would remove his ISAF press pass – thus jeopardising his entire livelihood. They also treated the captain of the Afghan police with contempt.

I fully understand that the US are under threat in Kabul. But their arrogant and provocative demeanour surely explains some of the hostility they arouse in the population. Much of central Kabul is now very like the green zone in Baghdad, heavily fortified with blast walls and entirely cut off from the rest of the population by barbed wire, checkpoints, armed guards etc.

Imagine if you were a Londoner and foreign troops had cut off the area between Westminster and the City with barricades. That’s how Kabul is for ordinary Afghans. But it’s impossible to show this properly on film, because the US – alert to a very real security hazard - seizes your cameras if you try to do so.

Kidnappers were the next problem. It is very unamusing being kidnapped, and we quickly learnt that kidnapping is a massive business in Kabul. When we spoke to the Imam of a nearby mosque he told us that six of his congregation had been kidnapped just the day before. Some kidnap victims go through truly appalling ordeals. So we always travelled outside the hotel with discretely armed guards and a follow up car. Our guide Ahmed was extremely alert to the security situation, and would often move us on if he felt the situation was getting dangerous or if we had been in one location long enough.

I left with a much more realistic appreciation of what is happening in Afghanistan. The Taliban controls much of the countryside, including three of the four roads out of Kabul. Despite the checkpoints at every corner, it moves at ease inside the city. A process of ‘psychological talibanisation’ is taking place inside Kabul itself. That means that a new and menacing anti-foreigner message is being preached in the Mosques, and women are quietly beginning to put their Burkhas back on. It is a city full of desperate and frightened people. 

But the Afghans continue to show astonishing resilience and I will always be haunted by our interview with Mahammad Wahaaj, an Afghan doctor who was brutally kidnapped on his way home from work by bandits posing as intelligence officers. He told us how they  shot at him to force him off the road wounding him in the shoulder, hooded him, and then took him to an underground dungeon where  he was tortured for three weeks. Wahaaj said that always knew when another torture session was coming up because they didn’t bring lunch. He would vomit with pain during the beatings and they presumably didn’t want to clear up the mess.

While the beatings were going on the bandits would hold a mobile phone to his mouth so that family members could hear his cries of pain. He has since sent his family to live abroad to avoid the threat. Now he has hired armed guards to protect him, lives and sleeps in the hospital where he works, and keeps a loaded pistol besides his bed. It would be easy for him to leave too, but he is utterly determined to help create a decent Afghanistan. This is heroism on an incredible scale and Dr Wahaaj’s courage is truly inspirational.