The Circuit (21 page)

The dust that accumulates inside vehicles is incredible in Afghanistan and if you don’t clean under the bonnet you’re asking for trouble. That’s why every petrol station in the country is equipped with generators to power high-pressure air hoses for pumping up tyres and blasting engine filters.

While the drivers tended their vehicles and the guards stretched their legs, I had a look around. The first thing that struck me was the faces of the locals at the petrol station. They appeared far more ferocious than the average Afghan on the street in Kabul. In the Afghan capital, many of the local men wear western clothing, keep their faces clean shaven and style their hair like westerners. The only thing western about these men was their obvious dislike for them. It was a useful reminder to all of us that we were now well and truly outside the ‘security bubble’ of the capital.

We settled our bill quickly and got on our way. The hours passed uneventfully, which was absolutely fine by me. It looked as if our schedule would hold until we ran into a suspicious roadblock forty miles north-east of Kandahar city. It was classic ambush territory; a roadblock flanked by two pieces of high, broken ground. We had already encountered several detours along the A1 but in those instances the road had obviously washed away. This one wasn’t so straightforward. The road stretched out in a straight line for at least ten miles, most of it level ground with desert scrub on both sides, which is great for observation. Around the roadblock, however, the ground broke, obstructing the view. It was entirely possible that the road had washed away at the only point for ten miles where bandits or insurgents could ambush vehicles. Then again, it could be a trap.

I radioed the drivers to pull over six hundred metres short of the roadblock. I wanted to see how other traffic fared through the detour before attempting it ourselves. After a couple of minutes, a small truck driven by an Afghan approached. The driver turned right at the detour, disappeared into the broken ground and reappeared on the main road three hundred metres beyond.

I still wasn’t satisfied it was completely safe. If the detour was an insurgent trap, they’d be waiting for a westerner or those obviously connected to the coalition, like the Afghan National Army (ANA), to drive by. I decided to send the lead vehicle to test the route. I reminded the driver to follow in the truck’s tyre marks in case there were mines.

I watched the lead vehicle turn off the highway, drop into a dry river bed and disappear. Three minutes later it reappeared on the other side of the road block. The driver radioed to say everything was fine. Satisfied, I sent the rest of the convoy through at thirty-second intervals, reminding the drivers once again to follow in each other’s tracks. The entire exercise put us ten minutes behind schedule; a minor concession for ensuring our safety.

The city of Kandahar exudes a charm that if it were located in almost any other country would be called quaint. Founded by Alexander the Great in the fourth century
BC
, it’s been luring conquerors ever since: Genghis Khan and Tamerlane in the thirteenth century, the British in the nineteenth century, the Soviets and Taliban in the twentieth century, the US and NATO-led ISAF in the twenty-first. There are no tall buildings in the city and many of its 300,000 inhabitants travel by horse and carriage or three-wheeled tricycle taxis powered by small motorbike engines. The air quality is much cleaner than Kabul and the streets, even at rush hour, are sedate by comparison.

Peel away the pleasant exterior, however, and you’ll find a place teaming with radical sentiment. Kandahar was the first major Afghan city to fall to the Taliban in the mid-1990s. The movement’s spiritual leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, made his base there until he was ousted from power in 2001. The city has been a hotbed of drugs trafficking and insurgent activity ever since.

Kandahar sits on the edge of the Spin Boldak road, which runs from Kandahar down to Spin Boldak and across the border to the Pakistani city of Quetta. The route from Quetta on up is used by the Taliban and al-Qaeda to run their suicide bombing missions into Kandahar. From Kandahar on down it’s used for ferrying drugs into Pakistan.

Kandahar’s first defence against drugs-runners and insurgents is the city’s gate, which is guarded round the clock by heavily armed Afghan police. As we learned first hand, the show of force is purely cosmetic. When our convoy drove past, the police didn’t seem to be the least bit aware of potential suicide bombers. We got through with little more than a wave.

Our first stop in Kandahar was the city’s counter-narcotics unit. Located on an unassuming backstreet well away from the city’s main roads, it was a single-storey building surrounded by a perimeter wall. The inconspicuous set-up was probably deliberate. The men inside were very unpopular with some very powerful people.

While the drivers and guards kept an eye on the vehicles the two counter-narcotics escorts from Kabul took the rest of us inside. Afghans are very hospitable and the local Commander of the counter-narcotics unit had lunch waiting for us. While we ate, the Commander briefed Nic on the drugs and security situations in Kandahar and Helmund. He spoke in very measured terms. Nic’s report could influence the flow of aid money to his unit and the Commander was trying to get the message across that his teams were making progress.

To be fair, though, he didn’t just feed Nic a load of lies to justify his unit’s existence. He told Nic that his officers’ jobs were complicated by the fact that they all lived in the same provinces where they worked. That meant that the agents and their families (and in Afghanistan, an extended family can have hundreds of members) were easy targets for disgruntled drugs lords. Most tellingly, the Commander conceded – off camera – that the corruption spawned by the illegal drugs trade had reached the highest levels of government. There were persistent, though denied, allegations that the Afghan President’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, was profiting handsomely from the nation’s opium trade, so much so that the locals had nicknamed him the ‘King of Kandahar’.

That night I reflected on the first phase of our journey. Experiencing Afghanistan outside the bubble of Kabul was proving to be quite an eye-opener. The country’s security was as bad if not worse than I’d imagined. It was difficult to see how the coalition could be making any progress towards eradicating Afghanistan’s drugs trade if the President’s own brother was being accused of profiting from it. I wondered what surprises awaited us in Helmund.

CHAPTER 20

I walked towards the group of young men not knowing at all what to expect. I could have observed them more safely from a distance but not more effectively; a trade-off which in this case wouldn’t be wise. They knew we were there and I had no idea what they thought about that. I needed to even things up; to see for myself how they reacted to a westerner. Judging from the black turbans on their heads, I doubted they’d be thrilled to see me. The best I could hope for would be indifference. I stretched out my hand to greet them. They didn’t respond in kind. They just stood there arms at their sides, staring at me, not a hint of a smile amongst them.

I got the sinking feeling that I may have misjudged the situation. Then again, I hadn’t imagined anything quite like this in any of my Helmund scenarios. When Nic said he wanted to ‘take the pulse’ of Afghanistan I thought he was speaking figuratively. I never thought for a second that I’d find myself literally trying to shake hands with the Taliban.

We left Kandahar at 6.30 a.m. for the final drive to Lashkar Gah, Helmund – the most dangerous leg of our five-day journey. The A1 would take us only a third of the way there, leaving us with two equally undesirable options for the rest of the trip. We could either travel dirt tracks infested with Taliban and bandits or drive through the desert and risk running into a minefield. I decided to wait until we reached the end of the A1 before making any final decisions.

The drive through western Kandahar province offered a sneak preview of what lay ahead in Helmund: poppy fields. We must have passed about half a dozen, all the size of football pitches. In an effort to conceal them, some of the fields had been planted between acres of wheat or other legitimate crops. But the poppies were in full bloom. There was no mistaking the blankets of deep red, pink and rose-tinged white.

When we reached the turn-off for the A1, I radioed the drivers to pull over. There was a small petrol station and it would be our last chance to refuel, blow out the air filters and check the tyres and lubricants before heading onto rough terrain. I had the vehicles serviced in groups of two so we could speed away quickly should trouble strike. We were now on the outer edges of Helmund province, a very dangerous place for westerners.

During the stop I surveyed the landscape to weigh up whether to take our convoy along the dirt roads or through the desert. Decision time had come. The dirt road was prime ambush territory; it dipped into dead ground at regular intervals, creating ideal hiding places for troublemakers. The desert by comparison was far more appealing. I couldn’t rule out the possibility of landmines completely but I was fairly confident we’d be OK. Anti-tank and anti-personnel mines are usually planted in areas where people are restricted in their movements, such as bottlenecks. This was a vast, open expanse of desert.

I had made up my mind. I’d take the convoy off track through the desert for the final leg of our journey to Lashkar Gah. I gathered everyone together for a final brief on how we would undertake the drive. My plan was to travel in an extended line. I told the drivers to follow me in a single file into the desert until I stopped and then line up their vehicles side by side with mine in the centre. From that point, all they had to do was maintain a distance of approximately fifty to one hundred metres between vehicles. I’d take care of navigation and look out for signs of landmines.

We travelled on a straight bearing through the desert for more than two hours. Since the dirt road meandered through the desert, from time to time we’d see vehicles travelling the road to our right. I was encouraged by the flow of traffic as it signalled that no one was being attacked. As we hit the outskirts of Lashkar Gah, the traffic on the road grew heavier. At that point I decided it was safe enough to divert the convoy back onto the regular road and adopt our usual tactic of one vehicle scouting ahead.

Lashkar Gah offered a taste of what life must have been like in Afghanistan hundreds of years ago; dirt tracks cutting through neighbourhoods of ancient-looking mud-brick buildings. The men were hearty and had deeply lined faces, even the young. I couldn’t see a woman anywhere.

The city would be frozen in time were it not for the engineered waterways shooting out from the river running through the centre of it. Back in the 1960s, American companies constructed the irrigation canals to aid agricultural development. I wondered how the American engineers would feel if they knew their goodwill project had been hijacked by poppy growers.

The moment we entered the town, I got a very strange feeling in my gut – one that only grew stronger as we pulled up to our hotel. Located next to the Governor’s mansion, the hotel was one of several modern-looking two-storey buildings and bungalows built along a tree-lined street. I later found out that the area had also been built by Americans in the 1960s and that the locals refer to it as ‘little America’. Despite the name, there were no internationals in sight other than myself and my clients.

Security in the area was dreadful. There was no vehicle checkpoint at the top of the street, no barriers to control traffic and no blast walls surrounding the buildings to protect against vehicle-born bombs.

The situation was no better inside our hotel. The staff gave us a very dry, emotionless reception. The strange feeling I had grew more intense. I couldn’t put my finger on it exactly. Was I feeling this way because the security was so abysmal or was it something more? I went around to the rear of the building to check for areas of vulnerability. The hotel backed directly onto the river; a positive from a security standpoint. What I saw on the other side of the river, however, left me speechless: a poppy field in full bloom.

The Governor of Helmund lived right next door. If he were serious about poppy eradication, you’d think he had got around to destroying the field growing in his own backyard. It made me wonder how he really felt about a bunch of foreign journalists checking on his progress.

I assigned a group of guards to keep an eye on our vehicles and the exterior grounds of our hotel, and arranged for food to be taken to them. In the meantime, a group of local counter-narcotics officers and Governor’s aides came to the hotel to discuss Nic’s story over lunch. The local officials had arranged for CNN to travel the following day to an area thirty kilometres south of Lashkar Gah to film the poppy-eradication programme in progress. After that, the plan was to return to Lashkar Gah city for interviews with the Governor of Helmund province.

It seemed like a lot to pack into one day, especially as Afghans aren’t exactly known for their punctuality. I took Nic to one side to remind him that interview or no interview, we needed to leave Lashkar Gah no later than 3 p.m. I didn’t want to cross the desert at night. Nic agreed.

After lunch, I went out to the car park to check on the guards and see if they had anything suspicious to report. I found them observing a group of men about one hundred and fifty yards up the river. The men were playing around, wrestling and pushing one another. Most of them were dressed in dark clothing and black turbans. I asked the guards what they thought of the group. They responded without a hint of embarrassment that they were very afraid as they were certain the young men were Taliban. I radioed Hamid to come outside. I wanted his opinion before deciding my next move.

One look at the men and Hamid agreed with the guards. He reminded me that the Taliban were known to operate freely in Lashkar Gah and that we’d have to be careful of them. I knew right then I’d have to meet the Taliban face to face. The men had probably seen us arrive at the hotel. If not, it wouldn’t take them long to figure out we were staying there. I couldn’t go through the night wondering if they would attack our location. I needed to assess how great a threat they were to us, if any – something I could only do up close.