by Andy McNab
Eventually the Russians had had enough. We'd helped make Afghanistan their Vietnam. One day they just got back into their tanks and few remaining Hinds and crept out of town.
We withdrew, only for the muj to start fighting among themselves all over again – as they do. If there's no enemy, they kick the shit out of each other. They're even worse than Jocks. Fifty thousand people were killed in Kabul alone during the civil war that followed.
The Taliban finally won in 1996, and they ran the shop until late 2001. That was when, after 9/11, the USA came calling with a few thousand tonnes of bombs so the Northern Alliance could enter the city and take over for the US forces that were 'liberating' the country. And so the show goes on.
Even today, the US are still shitting themselves at the prospect of Stingers being used against them, and rightly so. Pallet loads of the things are unaccounted for. They could be lying in somebody's shed, still waiting for that rainy day, or in Iran, being busily reverse-engineered.
42
'This your first time in Afghanistan, mate?'
The Australian in the aisle seat to my left was in his late fifties, with grey, well-groomed hair. He'd been dressed from head to toe by Brooks Brothers. The hand that took a gin and tonic from the permanently smiling attendant was manicured. He had 'diplomat' written all over him.
One look at my T-shirt and unbooted feet should have been enough to tell him how I fitted into the picture. There would be thousands of guys like me in-country, and our two lives wouldn't overlap. No invitations to the ambassador's party would be heading in my direction.
Nonetheless, he held up his glass. 'Cheers.'
I nodded. 'Yes, first time.'
He took another sip, then dipped into our bowl of cashews. 'So what do you do? What brings you here?'
'Travel writer. I do guidebooks. We call them "Outside the Comfort Zone".'
He laughed, then threw a few more nuts down his neck. 'You really think people will want to come here?'
'Dunno. That's what I've come to find out.'
I sat back in my very comfortable seat, reclined it a bit more and picked up one of the Indian business magazines to fuck him off as nicely as possible.
The alias cover address and alias business cover linked me with Outside the Comfort Zone, a small independent publisher in the East End whose niche was extreme travel. The Firm had probably set it up donkey's years ago. The books it brought out featured all sorts of places the Firm was interested in. I was now one of their freelance employees. My passport had had to go through all the normal channels. The visa application had been handled by a commercial company in London, and still had their sticker on the back.
The laptop told me I had a girlfriend, Kirsty. I could never remember her new number, which was why it was right there for me. If anyone called it, she would back me up as part of the ACA. No wonder I loved her.
I flicked through the mag. Uncle Sam wasn't exactly flavour of the month. Nor was Uncle Tony, come to that.
I flicked through some more and saw a picture of Dom alongside a piece about 'Veiled Threats'. He was sitting with the woman I'd seen on screen in Dublin, on the bonnet of a 4x4. He was dressed in a safari vest and had an earnest expression. She was wearing the same gear as in the documentary, a white headscarf and long black dress. Her name was Basma Al-Sulaiman. Basma. Baz . . . A few blue pepper-pots stood around in the background to give the shot some depth. Well done, Pete.
The article was about the plight of Afghan women and the safe-house Basma ran in Kabul. She was talking about the promises made after the Taliban were kicked out. Their lives were supposed to get better once they were 'liberated'. Local women were supposed to be running multinationals by now, yet they were still third-rate citizens. Some of the girls in her refuge had been shot up with heroin at an early age to make them dependent, then used as mules by dealers to move drugs from around the country. It was perfect cover. Nobody paid any attention to them, and there was a lot of spare room under a burqa.
It sounded as if nothing much had changed since my last time there.
When the girl Farah died, I'd carried her body a short way from the village that night and buried her. I found out from Ahmad a couple of weeks later that her husband had managed to get over his loss. He'd gone out the next day and bought himself a replacement.
43
'We've started our approach, sir.'
The attendant was giving me a gentle shake. I hadn't even realized I'd fallen asleep.
I looked down at the vast mountain plain, six thousand feet above sea level, which held the capital. I'd never set foot there. Last time round, it was full of guys with red stars on their hats goose-stepping about with vodka bottles in their hands. We'd stayed in the mountains that hemmed them in.
The Australian didn't waste a second. 'Kabul has swollen from less than a million to nearly three million since the Russians left, and now the Taliban are back in the mountains, refugees from there are pouring in.'
To dodge any more waffle, I studied the parched landscape ten thousand feet below. The city was a giant mosaic of low-level, grey-brown buildings, not more than a couple of storeys high.
He didn't get the hint. 'Do you know what the Australian government advice is about this place? Don't go. And if you're there, get out.' He smiled to himself as he leant forward to share the view.
'Welcome to sunny Kabul.' He laughed. 'Who in their right mind would want to come to this Godforsaken place?'
I kept looking out. 'Who knows? I file a first-person account exactly as I find it. It's more like a travelogue for their website, really.'
I sat back in my seat. He nodded, not believing a word. Private contractors wouldn't tell other private contractors what they were doing. Different bits of the military wouldn't tell each other either. In a place like this, everyone had op sec. Or bullshit.
We thumped the runway. Flashing past the window on our left were more fixed-wing aircraft than I'd ever seen parked in one place, military or civilian, then every size and shape of helicopter. HESCOed compound followed HESCOed compound, each flying a different national flag, but all part of the International Security Assistance Force. More than thirty countries supported ISAF, from Finland and Norway to Portugal and Hungary, but only four were doing the actual fighting: the Americans, Brits, Dutch and Canadians.
The Stars and Stripes fluttered over a collection of stadium-sized tents. I bet some of them were bowling alleys and movie houses with milkshake bars.
The British compound would be the one with the Portakabin, a small TV, the boxed set of Only Fools and Horses, and a couple of teabags for the kettle. It was probably on the other side of the runway, where the husks of bombed-out buildings sat alongside the occasional intact concrete block, like a row of old man's teeth. Beyond, it looked like dustbowl all the way to the mountains.
Flags everywhere flew at half-mast. These days, they were probably like that permanently.
As we taxied past acres of armoured vehicles and steel containers, economy passengers were already surging forward to disembark. They chattered away on their cellphones as the aircraft still rolled.
The Australian had a suit-carrier handed to him. When the aircraft stopped and the seat-belt lights were switched off, he stood up and held out his hand. 'Well, nice to have met you. I hope it goes well.'
'And you.' I pulled my Bergen from the overhead locker. All it contained was the laptop and a bit of washing kit.
I detached myself from him in the crowd and walked down the steps into the blistering heat and blinding sunlight.
A pair of helicopters lifted off and cleared our aircraft by no more than thirty feet. Two Humvees armed with .50 cals roared along the runway and pulled up at the bottom of the steps. I guessed they were just there to look mean and keep us from straying.
Razor-wired compounds flanked the terminal. It was a small, two-storey, regional-airport-type building, but with so much concrete involved it had to be a Russian legacy. Handpainted signs told m
e there was just about nothing I was allowed to do but stand in line and await instructions. To keep it that way, bearded men in thick grey serge uniforms and high-legged boots stood glowering at either side of the doors, AKs at the ready.
We filed inside. It was dark, and it took my eyes a while to adjust. The place was wrecked. I was just thinking it must have taken a major hammering at some stage when I spotted a poster. There was a major refurbishment under way, courtesy of the US and EU. Fluorescent lights dangled from the ceiling. Guys in overalls drilled away at the concrete floor. A guy in a blue suit and tie was having a go at a pillar with a hammer and chisel.
An Indian passenger at the front handed out immigration forms to the rest of the queue. They were poor-quality photocopies. Two forms had been reproduced on the same sheet of A4, then torn in half. I didn't have a pen.
Another bearded man in grey serge sat in a box at Passport Control, surrounded by handpainted signs saying No photography and No smoking. He didn't even look at the form I hadn't filled in, just glanced at the visa in my passport, stamped it and waved me through.
I had to put my day sack through another X-ray machine. Once I was clear, I dug out my sunglasses, slipped the string round my neck, and exited the building.
This time I really did find a bombsite. We must have been on the fucked-up side of the runway. All I could see was rubble and dust, and the shells of buildings. There was a strike mark in every square inch of rendering.
Traders had set up shop in the back of old Russian trucks without wheels. They sold the two essentials: cigarettes and tea.
Beyond them, on a dustbowl the size of a football pitch, were scores of cars, trucks and 4x4s. A couple of boys in UK desert DPM, Osprey and sunglasses stood next to a filthy Toyota 4x4. Six or seven clean and shiny ones were parked nearby. Their drivers were also sunglassed-up and had all the party gear on, trying to out-cool the military.
44
I'd called the hotel from a phone box in Delhi to organize a car. I didn't know the score on taxis. Would there even be any? And, if so, would I be driven off to some quiet little corner of town and persuaded to hand everything over?
It had been a nightmare trying to get through. I'd had to dial the number so many times it was etched into my brain. Then it was even more of a nightmare trying to communicate what I wanted, because the notion was so alien to them. But in the end they laid one on especially for me, the mad Brit who didn't have his own vehicle and protection.
I squinted into the sun. They'd said a driver would pick me up in Car Park C. That was a joke. There wasn't any Car Park C, just a big dustbowl.
Three locals hit on me with baggage trolleys. They rattled over the rubble and the first guy to arrive tried to grab my Bergen. I shook my head. He tried again. 'Yes – it is law.' In conflict zones most speak at least a little English. It's the language of war.
No way was I letting it out of my hands. I gave him a dollar as baksheesh and carried on walking. You couldn't blame them for trying. There was fuck-all else going on for them.
Crowds of people milled round the area, being regularly checked by AK-toting men in grey serge. I carried on past the contract guys in wraparound sunglasses and thigh holsters, and finally spotted 79 9654 000 in shaky letters on a sheet of A4. I'd asked for just the hotel number to be shown, and on a clear board.
Even in places far less dodgy than this I'd never have my name in full display. It's too easy for someone either to run it through their BlackBerry or recite down the phone for a mate to Google, looking for multinational heavy hitters and other good kidnap fodder. All they have to do then is fuck over the driver, take his place and drive you to a world of shit. It would have been madness to advertise myself on a Serena Hotel board, even with a cover name. I had no idea how many big-shot Stevenses there were on the planet, and I didn't want to be mistaken for one.
The young guy holding up my board was skin and bone. His shiny jet-black hair was parted on the left. Apart from a bum-fluff moustache, he was clean-shaven. His shirt was untucked over brown trousers and buttoned all the way up to a collar that was two sizes too big.
I gave him a smile and offered my hand. 'Hello, mate – you taking me to the Serena?' It never hurts. Let them have a nice day. Chances are they're treated like shit the rest of the time.
'Yes,' he said. 'Maybe.' He went to shake my hand but caught himself in time. He touched his chest in greeting first, then gave me a semi-toothless grin as we finally treated ourselves to a couple of shakes. 'Come, Mr Stevens. Come.'
I followed his dusty black plastic shoes through the maze of vehicles. Most were white and yellow taxis of all makes, sizes and stages of dilapidation. Among them were dusty 4x4s, a mixture of clapped-out Fords from the eighties and brand-new Mazda saloons.
He told me his name but I didn't quite catch it first time; his voice was like gravel and his English very accented.
'Magrid?'
'Magreb.' He beamed. 'Magreb.'
I nodded. 'Nice to meet you, Magreb.'
His ten-year-old Hiace people-carrier was coming to the end of its days. It looked like the blacked-out side windows were only held to the bodywork by layers of dust, so it was hard to hide my amazement when the door was slid open for me by a smartly uniformed escort. No grey serge for this boy: his black ball cap coordinated with his trousers, high-leg boots and heavy body armour. Only the brown wooden stock of his AK was off-message.
I climbed into the back, next to a torn and food-encrusted baby seat. The escort closed my door and sat up front with Magreb. The air-conditioning was going full blast.
We only got a few yards before we hit the end of a queue. A couple of old guys in suits, polo-neck jumpers and Afghan pancake hats manned a homemade checkpoint. The drop-bar was two branches roped together and painted red and white.
Magreb pulled a dollar bill from his pocket.
I leant forward. 'Police?'
Magreb gave an Italian-style shrug. 'No, no – police come here later, Mr Stevens. They come to collect the money, maybe.'
We drew level and he handed over his bribe. The old men lifted the barrier. We drove out past the empty shells of bombed-out buildings.
The wrecks of Russian vehicles rusted at the roadside. Only one bit of Eastern hardware had stayed the distance. A MiG jet fighter sat at a forty-five-degree angle in the middle of the exit roundabout, as if it was about to take off. Its freshly painted camouflage gleamed in the sunlight.
We hit an official checkpoint, manned by guys in khaki serge. They waved us through for free.
We turned south on to a dead straight road. The sun was on my right. 'How long to the city, mate?'
'Twenty minutes, Mr Stevens. Maybe.'
'Please call me Nick.'
'OK, Mr Nick.'
His breath stank from too many cigarettes.
Even from this distance, Kabul was clearly dominated by the mountain at its centre. It was like London with Ben Nevis instead of Hyde Park.
Magreb followed my line of sight. 'TV Hill, Mr Nick.'
It had two peaks of roughly the same height, with a saddle in between. Two colossal antennae farms capped the summits. It might be a hill to the locals, alongside the snow-capped mountains that surrounded us, but in the UK it would have been a national park.
I gave him a smile. 'Let's see if this works.'
I waved my mobile, sat back and powered it up.
The buildings either side of us looked like they'd been out in the sun too long. Even the advertising hoardings were like bleached skeletons.