Worlds Apart

Another Perspective 

Fri 3rd Aug 

Fred catching up on gardening mag

It is five months to the day since we arrived in Canada on Apr 3rd. The time has gone so quickly. The sticky heat of summer mornings has given way to cool autumnal early morning air, gin clear blue skies to cloudier days; days that are getting noticeably shorter and weather more variable, though still no significant rainfall. 

Whilst we miss family and friends and our favourite haunts in the UK, we’re feeling very settled in BC. Canadians we have met have been friendly and welcoming and we are beginning to count a handful of people we have met as friends, including a few Brits! 

The highlight of the day was the morning walk on Hopkins Landing Beach and watching three. Young otters playing on the rocks. 

Whilst enjoying BC, I have been absorbed by events several continents away. The unfolding story in Afghanistan has been part of my daily reading. I still have fond and vivid memories of my trip to Central Asia and the four days spent travelling across Afghanistan from Kabul to Mazar-i-Sharif with a BBC World Service colleague in 2004. So today I will digress from our BC story to a BBC one. 

The World Service had agreed a deal with the Afghan Government, then led by Hamid Karzai to build and install twenty-two FM relay stations for the BBC’s Persian and Pashto Services across Afghanistan. For every station the BBC built, a second would be installed for Afghan national radio, enabling the Government to reach more remote parts of the country that had not been possible before. A huge barrier to a government trying to build a national consensus. 

I was there to sign the Agreement and open the first station in Mazar-i-Sharif with the Minister of Information, Dr Sayed Makhdoom Raheen. 

I arrived in Kabul from Dubai where I'd purchased my hand-written plane ticket with handfuls of dollars for the Ariana Afghan Airlines flight, Afghanistan’s national airline, at a coffee table in the café of Dubai’s Terminal 2. At the time the terminal boasted a single café, very different to the glitzy Terminal 1 I’d flown in to from the UK. 

This was the terminal where travellers from South Asia, predominantly India and Pakistan who make up much of Dubai’s blue-collar workers, transit through between family and work. The branding of an aging, former Air India Airbus A320 was still evident on the inside of the Ariana aircraft. 

The first night we stayed at the BBC News correspondent’s house in Kabul. Simple but clean and comfortable. We were well looked after by local Afghans who cooked our evening meal and serviced the house. I still have a picture somewhere of the bullet holes in the glass balcony and an old air-raid shelter in the garden, which itself was more like a bomb crater! Not that I needed a reminder I was in Kabul. 

The next two days were a bit of a blur. A formal signing of the transmitter agreement with the Minister of Information; a visit to the hilltop in Kabul that hosted the BBC’s FM transmitter as well as Afghan national broadcaster TV and Radio facilities. A visit to the World Service Pashto office and lunch with the team there. A visit to the WS Trust offices where the daily radio soap ‘New Home, New Life’ was produced  which enjoyed a huge following across the country. We also had a bit of time for some sightseeing and visited former King Nadir Shah’s war-destroyed mausoleum in Kabul. 

Although a time had been agreed for the signing there was a lot of waiting around while the Minister was tracked down and paperwork organized. The meeting was brief, Agreement signed, tea drunk and arrangements for the following day’s visit to Mazar-i-Sharif finalised. 

It was an early start but late departure for the armed convey to assemble and get underway to Mazar. 

Breakfast was flat-breads and boiled eggs in Bagram before we ascended the Western extremes of the Hindu Kush and the Salang Pass. It was slightly unnerving when one of the army guards escorting us dropped his Kalashnikov on the ground while we walked around the stalls selling food. 

The roads were not great, bridges often non-existent, mine-fields and abandoned armaments from the Soviet occupation appeared frequently at the side of the road as we drove on.  The scenery was stunning.  

Signs of recycling were evident where Afghans had used tank tracks as sleeping-policemen to slow traffic through their villages. Some parts of the Kabul plateau were just desert, others verdant green, growing grapes to eat and other market garden produce. 

Courtesy - Michael Vanpool (US Armed Services)
South entrance to the Northbound tunnels

The Salang Pass is a collection of tunnels and avalanche shelters built by the Soviet Union in 1964 and connects northern Afghanistan with Kabul and the south. At nearly 3200m high, snow is often present and was banked several metres high when our convey was ushered through to the front of the queue waiting to transit the pass. Years of no maintenance and war had left considerable damage. The tunnels were full of rutted ice and fallen rocks which resulted in a alternating three-hour one-way system for tunnel traffic. 

Armed ministerial convey may have got us to the front of the queue but we still had to wait while tunnel traffic cleared from the north. While we waited, we talked to local Afghans waiting to go through the tunnel. Actually, I listened while my BBC colleague and guide for this part of the trip, Baqer Moin chatted and translated. Baqer, well known in Afghanistan from his radio journalism was rather feted during our chilly wait at the entrance of the tunnel. There were students returning to Pakistan to study, traders moving between provinces and families visiting family. They all appeared to be going about their normal everyday life. My view of Afghanistan was rapidly changing.

The ride through the pass was something of a roller-coaster. Deeply rutted ice tracks, no lighting apart from occasional shell holes in the tunnel sides, fallen rocks, poor headlights and a driver keen to get to the other end of the tunnels made for an interesting twenty minutes or so. At the top of the pass, it was -10C and back down on the desert floor an hour later it was around +30c. 

Early evening there was an audience between the Minister and Abdul Rashid Dostum’s commander in Mazar-i-Sharif, to be followed by a formal dinner. Dostum, often described as the warlord who controlled the northern Balkh Province, is a former Vice President of Afghanistan. It was a tense affair. The old Mazar Hotel had the feel of faded Victorian glory. A room the size of a tennis court, hosted the meeting. Worn sofas edged the room with local dignitaries and guests filling the seating. Hurricane lamps on the coffee tables provided lighting when the electrical power dropped out; a frequent occurrence during the evening. I could not follow the full discussion and Baqer could not impose on the conversation by translating everything for my benefit. I do recall the meeting hitting a particular ‘frisson’ when the Minister suggested not much had improved in Mazar-i-Sharif since he’d last been there. The local commander suggested that they had achieved a great deal and perhaps the Minister should return to Kabul and sort out the problems there. The meeting finished soon after. Only the ministerial party stayed for the meal such were the tensions between government and regional powers. It was symptomatic of the challenge of governing Afghanistan. 

Space was short at the hotel and the ministerial party had the pick of the rooms. We were allocated one room, one double bed and one towel. Although Baqer tried to find another room we ended up sharing. Not the most comfortable night, but I don’t think either of us snored. A wander round the hotel the next morning, showed broken statues and stone borders in the grounds, overgrown with shrubs and weeds, and suggested no maintenance had been carried out or could be afforded. 

The morning was for the formal opening of the transmitter site, a visit to the magnificent Blue Mosque and a visit to the local BBC office. 

The opening ceremony and ribbon cutting went ahead smoothly and the visit to the mosque with hundreds of locals in tow was interesting. As the only white, blond westerner I felt very out of place and for the first time in the trip, uncomfortable. Locals were inquisitive rather than welcoming, noisy rather than hostile. 

Official business over, we declined the offer of an 8hr ride back to Kabul, opting to cross the Friendship Bridge between Afghanistan and Termez in Uzbekistan, a shortcut to get to Dushanbe in Tajikistan, our next stop. Or so we thought. 

So why, you might reasonably ask, am I wittering on about Afghanistan rather than British Columbia. 

There are a couple of reasons. Firstly, I’m reminded that when I arrived in Kabul I had an ill-informed perspective of what to expect despite working for the world’s leading international broadcaster. My views had been influenced by western media, that highlighted the conflict and instability of a tribal country which seemed to have been in turmoil since the British were there before! Talking to travellers at the top of the Salang Pass and other locals during the trip reminded me that most Afghans wanted peace and stability and to be able to get on with their lives without the constant threat of violence. 

When we got to the Friendship Bridge we were not allowed across to Uzbekistan, even though we had Uzbek visas for the last leg of the trip. We hadn’t arrived in Afghanistan that way and certainly weren’t leaving it that way. 

While Baqer made calls, the head of the border guard got his fire-pit going and provided us with barbecued food and soft drinks while we waited to be allowed across. We were there a couple of hours, and his hospitality, generosity and kindness were beyond words. It is a theme that runs through Rory Stewart’s book, The Places in Between, that tells of his journey on foot across Afghanistan and the importance in the Muslim faith of providing food and shelter to travellers, however little you may have yourself. It is a book worth reading. The vast majority of Afghans want peace but have been the caught in successive wars for years. The media is now focusing on the humanitarian impact of the last few weeks rather than the chaos, and rightly so. That night we were back in another hotel in Mazar, wondering if and when we’d get across the bridge. But that is another story! 

The second reason is prompted by an article in today’s FT about how US civilian aircraft and aircrew have been drafted in by the US government to assist in the evacuation of Afghan civilians deemed at risk from the Taliban; many of those who have worked with foreign forces and agencies over the last twenty years. “Inside the huge effort to fly Afghans to the US on commercial jets“. Reading how aircrew have gone above and beyond to help disenfranchised, frightened Afghans is a timely reminder that there is good in America, despite some of the negative press in recent months, as well as in Afghanistan.