26 November 2001 05:33 GMT
Blood, tears, terror and tragedy behind the lines
By Robert Fisk, the only Western journalist in
Taliban-held Kandahar province
26 November 2001
"You'll never get through,'' the Taliban man shouted at me. "The
Northern Alliance are shooting into Takhta-Pul and the
Americans are bombing the centre of the town.''
"Impossible," I said. Takhta-Pul is only 24 miles away, a few
minutes ride from the Afghan border town of Spin Boldak. But
then a refugee with a cracked face and white hair matting the
brow below his brown turban he looked 70 but said he was
only 36 stumbled up to us. "The Americans just destroyed
our homes,'' he cried. "I saw my house disappear. It was a big
plane that spat smoke and soaked the ground with fire.''
For a man who couldn't read and had never left Kandahar
province in all his life, it was a chilling enough description of the
Spectre, the American "bumble bee'' aircraft that picks off
militiamen and civilians with equal ferocity. And down the
tree-lined road came hundreds more refugees old women with
dark faces and babies carried in the arms of young women in
burqas and boys with tears on their faces all telling the same
stories.
Mullah Abdul Rahman slumped down beside me, passed his
hand over the sweat on his face and told me how his brother a
fighter in the same town had just escaped. "There was a
plane that shot rockets out of its side,'' he said, shaking his
head. "It almost killed my brother today. It hit many people.''
So this is what it's like to be on the losing side in the
American-Afghan bloodbath. Everywhere it was the same story
of desperation and terror and courage. An American F-18
soared above us as a middle-aged man approached me with
angry eyes. "This is what you wanted, isn't it?'' he screamed.
"Sheikh Osama is an excuse to do this to the Islamic people.''
I pleaded with yet another Taliban fighter a 35-year-old man
with five children called Jamaldan to honour his government's
promise to get me to Kandahar. He looked at me pityingly.
"How can I get you there,'' he asked, "when we can hardly
protect ourselves?''
The implications are astonishing. The road from the Iranian
border town of Zabul to Kandahar has been cut by Afghan
gunmen and US special forces. The Americans were bombing
civilian traffic and the Taliban on the road to Spin Boldak, and
Northern Alliance troops were firing across the highway.
Takhta-Pul was under fire from American guns and besieged by
the Alliance. Kandahar was being surrounded.
No wonder I found the local Taliban commander, the thoughtful
and intelligent Mullah Haqqani, preparing to cross the Pakistani
border to Quetta for "medical reasons''.
Kandahar may not be the Taliban Stalingrad not yet but
tragedy was the word that came to mind. Out of a dust-storm
came a woman in a grey shawl. "I lost my daughter two days
ago,'' she wailed. "The Americans bombed our home in
Kandahar and the roof fell on her.'' Amid the chaos and
shouting, I did what reporters do. Out came my notebook and
pen. Name? "Muzlifa.'' Age? "She was two.'' I turn away. "Then
there was my other daughter.'' She nods when I ask if this girl
died too. "At the same moment. Her name was Farigha. She
was three.'' I turn away. "There wasn't much left of my son.''
Notebook out for the third time. "When the roof hit him, he was
turned to meat and all I could see were bones. His name was
Sherif. He was a year and a half old.''
They came out of a blizzard of sand, these people, each with
their story of blood. Shukria Gul told her story more calmly.
Beneath her burqa, she sounded like a teenager. "My husband
Mazjid was a labourer. We have two children, our daughter
Rahima and our son Talib. Five days ago, the Americans hit a
munitions dump in Kandahar and the bullets came through our
house. My husband was killed. He was 25.''
At the Akhtar Trust refugee camp, I found Dr Ismael Moussa,
just up from Karachi, a doctor of theology dispensing religion
along with money for widows. "The Americans have created an
evil for themselves," he said. "And it will pay for this. The
Almighty Lord allows a respite to an oppressor, enough rope to
hang itself, until He seizes him and never lets go.''
Seizing, it seems, was also on the mind of the Foreign Office,
earnestly warning reporters that Taliban invitations to Kandahar
were a trap to kidnap foreign journalists. Given the politeness of
even the most desperate Taliban yesterday, this may fit into
the "interesting-if-true" file. Dr Moussa suggested a more
disturbing reason: the desire to prevent foreign correspondents
witnessing in Kandahar the kind of war crimes committed by
Britain's friends in the Northern Alliance at the fall of
Mazar-i-Sharif.
As for Mullah Najibullah, the Taliban's only foreign ministry
representative this side of Kandahar, he looked tired and
deeply depressed, admitting he had left Spin Boldak the
previous night and had not slept since. But Kandahar was
calm, he claimed. The Taliban's Islamic elders continued to
stay there. Later, he admitted that all Taliban men had been
ordered to leave Spin Boldak on Saturday night for fear that
Alliance gunmen would invade the camps disguised as
refugees.
"Only God Almighty has allowed the Muslims to continue to
fight the great armed might of the United States,'' he added. If
he had looked out the window, he would have seen the
contrails of the bomber streams heading for Kandahar.
It was an eerie phenomenon. Taliban men rifles over their
shoulders stared into the sun, up high into the burning light
through which four white columns of smoke burnt from jet
engines across the sky. I stood behind them and wondered at
the battle I had watched for 20 years: a swaying host of
eighth-century black turbans and, just behind them, the
contrails of a B-52 heading in from Diego Garcia. God against
technology.
--------------------------------------------------
>"Philosophy appears to some people as a homogenous
>milieu: there thoughts are born and die, there
>systems are built, and there, in turn, they collapse.
>Others take Philosophy for a specific attitude which
>we can freely adopt at will. Still others see it as a
>determined segment of culture. In our view Philosophy
>does not exist."
>
>
> Sartre, Search for a Method (1960)
>
>
>____________________________________________________________
> *NEW* over 2200 active jobs at Yahoo! Careers *NEW*
> Visit http://in.careers.yahoo.com/
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Blood, tears, terror and tragedy behind the lines
By Robert Fisk, the only Western journalist in
Taliban-held Kandahar province
26 November 2001
"You'll never get through,'' the Taliban man shouted at me. "The
Northern Alliance are shooting into Takhta-Pul and the
Americans are bombing the centre of the town.''
"Impossible," I said. Takhta-Pul is only 24 miles away, a few
minutes ride from the Afghan border town of Spin Boldak. But
then a refugee with a cracked face and white hair matting the
brow below his brown turban he looked 70 but said he was
only 36 stumbled up to us. "The Americans just destroyed
our homes,'' he cried. "I saw my house disappear. It was a big
plane that spat smoke and soaked the ground with fire.''
For a man who couldn't read and had never left Kandahar
province in all his life, it was a chilling enough description of the
Spectre, the American "bumble bee'' aircraft that picks off
militiamen and civilians with equal ferocity. And down the
tree-lined road came hundreds more refugees old women with
dark faces and babies carried in the arms of young women in
burqas and boys with tears on their faces all telling the same
stories.
Mullah Abdul Rahman slumped down beside me, passed his
hand over the sweat on his face and told me how his brother a
fighter in the same town had just escaped. "There was a
plane that shot rockets out of its side,'' he said, shaking his
head. "It almost killed my brother today. It hit many people.''
So this is what it's like to be on the losing side in the
American-Afghan bloodbath. Everywhere it was the same story
of desperation and terror and courage. An American F-18
soared above us as a middle-aged man approached me with
angry eyes. "This is what you wanted, isn't it?'' he screamed.
"Sheikh Osama is an excuse to do this to the Islamic people.''
I pleaded with yet another Taliban fighter a 35-year-old man
with five children called Jamaldan to honour his government's
promise to get me to Kandahar. He looked at me pityingly.
"How can I get you there,'' he asked, "when we can hardly
protect ourselves?''
The implications are astonishing. The road from the Iranian
border town of Zabul to Kandahar has been cut by Afghan
gunmen and US special forces. The Americans were bombing
civilian traffic and the Taliban on the road to Spin Boldak, and
Northern Alliance troops were firing across the highway.
Takhta-Pul was under fire from American guns and besieged by
the Alliance. Kandahar was being surrounded.
No wonder I found the local Taliban commander, the thoughtful
and intelligent Mullah Haqqani, preparing to cross the Pakistani
border to Quetta for "medical reasons''.
Kandahar may not be the Taliban Stalingrad not yet but
tragedy was the word that came to mind. Out of a dust-storm
came a woman in a grey shawl. "I lost my daughter two days
ago,'' she wailed. "The Americans bombed our home in
Kandahar and the roof fell on her.'' Amid the chaos and
shouting, I did what reporters do. Out came my notebook and
pen. Name? "Muzlifa.'' Age? "She was two.'' I turn away. "Then
there was my other daughter.'' She nods when I ask if this girl
died too. "At the same moment. Her name was Farigha. She
was three.'' I turn away. "There wasn't much left of my son.''
Notebook out for the third time. "When the roof hit him, he was
turned to meat and all I could see were bones. His name was
Sherif. He was a year and a half old.''
They came out of a blizzard of sand, these people, each with
their story of blood. Shukria Gul told her story more calmly.
Beneath her burqa, she sounded like a teenager. "My husband
Mazjid was a labourer. We have two children, our daughter
Rahima and our son Talib. Five days ago, the Americans hit a
munitions dump in Kandahar and the bullets came through our
house. My husband was killed. He was 25.''
At the Akhtar Trust refugee camp, I found Dr Ismael Moussa,
just up from Karachi, a doctor of theology dispensing religion
along with money for widows. "The Americans have created an
evil for themselves," he said. "And it will pay for this. The
Almighty Lord allows a respite to an oppressor, enough rope to
hang itself, until He seizes him and never lets go.''
Seizing, it seems, was also on the mind of the Foreign Office,
earnestly warning reporters that Taliban invitations to Kandahar
were a trap to kidnap foreign journalists. Given the politeness of
even the most desperate Taliban yesterday, this may fit into
the "interesting-if-true" file. Dr Moussa suggested a more
disturbing reason: the desire to prevent foreign correspondents
witnessing in Kandahar the kind of war crimes committed by
Britain's friends in the Northern Alliance at the fall of
Mazar-i-Sharif.
As for Mullah Najibullah, the Taliban's only foreign ministry
representative this side of Kandahar, he looked tired and
deeply depressed, admitting he had left Spin Boldak the
previous night and had not slept since. But Kandahar was
calm, he claimed. The Taliban's Islamic elders continued to
stay there. Later, he admitted that all Taliban men had been
ordered to leave Spin Boldak on Saturday night for fear that
Alliance gunmen would invade the camps disguised as
refugees.
"Only God Almighty has allowed the Muslims to continue to
fight the great armed might of the United States,'' he added. If
he had looked out the window, he would have seen the
contrails of the bomber streams heading for Kandahar.
It was an eerie phenomenon. Taliban men rifles over their
shoulders stared into the sun, up high into the burning light
through which four white columns of smoke burnt from jet
engines across the sky. I stood behind them and wondered at
the battle I had watched for 20 years: a swaying host of
eighth-century black turbans and, just behind them, the
contrails of a B-52 heading in from Diego Garcia. God against
technology.
--------------------------------------------------
>"Philosophy appears to some people as a homogenous
>milieu: there thoughts are born and die, there
>systems are built, and there, in turn, they collapse.
>Others take Philosophy for a specific attitude which
>we can freely adopt at will. Still others see it as a
>determined segment of culture. In our view Philosophy
>does not exist."
>
>
> Sartre, Search for a Method (1960)
>
>
>____________________________________________________________
> *NEW* over 2200 active jobs at Yahoo! Careers *NEW*
> Visit http://in.careers.yahoo.com/
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp