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OUR reporter, Miles Amoore, is in northern Afghanistan with Sarah Fane, of Aldworth-based charity Afghan Connection.
The charity aims to provide training to Afghan doctors, as well as build classrooms and aid schools.
Under its twin schools project, Share-Koona school in the province of Kunduz is linked with Downe House in Cold Ash. Miles and Dr Fane are visiting the Share-Koona to deliver gifts made by pupils at the West Berkshire school.
Here’s the second instalment of Miles’ diary.
The green flags of martyrs line the edge of the road as you make your ascent northwards from Kabul.
Heading up into the mountains towards the Salang tunnel, we passed the Shawali plain, once described as the bread basket of the east.
Now only the discarded husk of its former glory, the plain’s green floor is littered with the rusted carcasses of Soviet, Taliban and Mujahaddin tanks.
A stronghold of the latter, the plains took a pounding from Taliban rockets during the civil war that ravaged the country between 1989-1996, leading ultimately to the fall of Kabul and the rise of the militant Islamists and their notorious 'Vice and Virtue Police'.
To cross the Hindu Kush north from Kabul, you must first enter the 6km long Salang tunnel. At 3,363m above sea level, this soviet tunnel – designed to facilitate the movement of communist troops during the Russian invasion of Afghanistan almost three decades ago – lays claim to the title “highest tunnel in the world”.
“Good night,” our driver Nadeez said with a grin on his face as we dipped into the semi-circular void and into total darkness.
For a moment, even Nadeez seemed disorientated as the land-cruiser’s headlamps failed in the thickly polluted, unventilated air, causing Jane Karlsson - the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan’s advisor on the twin schools project – to squeal out in claustrophobic agony.
Coming out at the other end of the tunnel in a whirlwind of fumes and blinding light is like coming up for air and having your eyes burnt by a high intensity laser at the same time. The relief on Jane’s face was clearly visible.
We drove the rest of the morning until reaching Pol-I-Khomri, a small market town nestled among the foothills of the Hindu Kush.
Nadeez pulled over at a chaikana (tea house-cum-kebab restaurant). A short, unusually flabby Afghan came and sat next to us at our table.
“So, let me introduce myself," he said. "I am Jan and I have MB in economic development and an MA in psychology in Pakistan. So now I am working with ISAF [an amalgamation of nations involved militarily inside the country] and I am constructing roads, building schools and providing uniforms to US soldiers.
"I was a refugee during the Soviet invasion and now I return to my country to help build
nation.”
Jan had needed no encouragement: his opening gambit was evidently well-rehearsed as it flowed off his tongue in a torrent of terrible grammar and bad syntax.
The conversation moved inevitably – as it always does – to the security situation. Jan had been kidnapped by Taliban fighters in Paktika, a tribal region bordering Pakistan.
The fighters had followed him home from the school he was building there and then seized him, snatched all forms of identification, held him captive for three days and demanded $15,000 for his life, which he duly paid. “Life is more important – it is worth more than money,” he said.
Having set out at 6am, our land-cruisers finally bumped and jumped through the gates of Share-Koona school in the province of Kunduz. The Afghan school is twinned with Downe House, Cold Ash as part of Afghan Connection’s twin school programme, which aims to connect children in the UK with Afghan pupils.
We were there to deliver gifts made by girls at the West Berkshire school. In a whirlwind of excited faces that peered from underneath brightly coloured chadores (headscarves), the Afghan girls scrabbled to reach the gifts.
Their expressions were priceless. Hand held over their mouths in total astonishment, the girls found it hard to lock down their delight.
We raced back to our base at Taloqan with an hour to spare before night fell and the security situation deteriorated.
We took one of the compound’s guards with us into the bazaar. As usual, hoards of Afghans followed, amazed by our power to capture their image on a handheld screen.
With the Afghans returning our photographic interest with equal fascination, it was hard not to feel like exotic beasts.
Our guard began to get more nervous as the sun lowered. We were ordered onto the nearest moving object – a horse and carriage decorated with roses – and whisked away from the growing crowd.
A white land-cruiser raced up alongside us. The flash of metal in the window betrayed the presence of an AK 47, wielded by a fearsome looking man who stared expressionless at the carriage’s cargo.
To everyone’s relief, one raised hand, the mouthed words salaam, and the customary hand held over the heart managed to diffuse the situation.
As the gunmen lurched away, you were left with a number of questions. The answer to the most pertinent one was probably: “just checking”.
I went to sleep thinking about what it must have been like in the city when it was partially evacuated in 2000 after Taliban forces poured over the surrounding hills to attack Mujahaddin encampments inside its walls.
Although times have moved on from then, I still have to crouch behind a wall to smoke at night, nagged by the thought of pot-shots aimed at the glowing ember of my cigarette. |
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