Reporter's Diary

OTHER REPORTER'S DIARY STORIES Indo-Pak Summit Royal Massacre Coke Tales India Fashion Week 11 September The War In Afghanistan Kumbha Mela To Sri Ravi Shankar The No Ministers Gujarat Earthquake Ball Tampering

Nothing seems to work according to a plan in Afghanistan. Schedules have no meaning. Time is of little consequence. You just wait for things to move. They usually don't. It had been like that from the day photographer Dilip Banerjee and I left Delhi to reach Afghanistan via Tajikistan and then spent three extraordinary weeks in the war zone.

The US bombings were just two days away when we drove down from Dushanbe, the Tajik capital, to the Afghan border. A barge took us across the Amu Dariya, the famed Oxus river, which acts as a natural boundary between the two countries. We were greeted on the other side by Afghan immigration officers with Kalishnakovs slung across their shoulders like scarves. They stamped our passports while squatting on the floor in a hut lit by a kerosene lamp. We hired a Soviet-built jeep, the Zil, to take us to Khwaja Bahawuddin, the dusty military headquarters of the Northern Alliance.

DUSTY HORIZON: The years of war have left Afghanistan more backward than many Rajasthan villages the war in Afghanistan

After an hour the vehicle groaned to a halt in the middle of nowhere. The driver disappeared into the darkness to get help. We were startled to find a burly, bearded Afghan carrying a Kalishnakov peering at us through the window. It turned out he was a local commander and was only trying to help. He invited us to stay at his house. We gratefully accepted. He spread out dhurries on the ground and gave us warm quilts. To make us feel at home, he searched for an Indian music station on his transistor. We were touched by the hospitality. Everywhere we went, the Afghans went out of the way to help us, especially when they learnt we were from India.

Our first glimpse of Afghanistan in daylight made us feel like we had just got out of a time machine that had taken us backwards by a thousand years. The houses were predominantly mud fortresses of Indus Valley vintage. Afghans bestride donkeys wended their way lazily to the bazaar. Hawkers used stones from the Oxus to measure the weight of vegetables they were selling.

MODEL THOUGHT: Five-year-old Mallika with her Hero

The only time I saw smiles was when I rode a donkey and it bolted.

Khwaja Bahawuddin has no electricity, no water supply, no sewerage system. It is more backward than most Rajasthan villages. Where we stayed, the windows were covered with plastic sheets. We slept in our sleeping bags on the floor. The toilet was a hole in the ground. A bath with hot water is an unheard of luxury. The town shows how years of war have left much of Afghanistan in Stone Age conditions. Most people live in abject poverty. As in India, children and the old beg. It is sad to see a once proud race reduced to such a sorry state.

As the bombing continued, refugees poured in. They were huddled into rows of huts in the outskirts or on the banks of the Amu. In Kashlok Camp No. 1, as these temporary hutments are numbered, at sun down elders offer namaaz. Waiting patiently on a wall nearby for her father to finish is five-year-old Mallika Abdul Rashid. In her hand she clutched a schoolbook titled Hero. I wondered what future awaited her.

As I waited for the namaaz to get over, one of refugees leading a donkey asked if I wanted a ride. With some trepidation I agreed. A crowd gathered to watch me try in vain to mount it. The owner of the donkey then lifted me and put me on its back. Possibly stung by the laughter all around (I did look ridiculous), the donkey bolted till someone reined it in. When I got off, everyone was laughing. It was good to see the smiles.

We decided to move to the Panjshir Valley so as to be within 40 km of Kabul. It is a perilous four-day journey that goes through the spine of the Hindu Kush. We set out on my birthday and I think there is no better way to spend it than by driving through the desolate, rocky range. The road is just a dirt track carved into the mountain slopes. The landscape is much like Leh, though much bleaker.

As we approached, the mountains got steeper and crowded around us protectively. By evening it was hazardous to drive so we decided to spend the night at a village called Madaan. Abdul Salaam, a mujahideen fighter, offered to rent us his place for $6 a night. We accepted with alacrity, though it was next to a cowshed. Dinner was just a naan. But under a star-spangled sky, it was a wonderful birthday meal. I slept like a baby that night.

At Panjshir, we took the old way to Kabul. The Taliban had not yet been vanquished. Two containers placed across the road 30 km from Kabul acted as the line of control between the Alliance and the Taliban. The capital is hidden by low-lying hills that act as natural fortifications. Sabghatullah, 18, a mujahideen who accompanied us, prattled on about Hindi films.

We reached the frontline. The battlefield was an anticlimax. No big guns or tanks. Instead it was a scene out of the Wild West. On a rooftop, three Alliance fighters hiding behind sandbag trenches let loose a volley of gunfire. Taliban infantry sitting atop another house just 200 metres away returned the fire. Even as bullets whizzed around, Sabghatullah was more interested in talking about Amitabh Bachchan. For him, like most Afghanis, war is just another day in his life.