The crash reverberating across the mountains as I arrived with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto to tour front-line bases at 18,000 feet made us jump.
We could see the Indian troops less than a mile away on a peak just opposite. Had they seen us? The commander of the 56th Baluch Battalion smiled wryly. It was not artillery fire but an avalanche, in which more men probably perished.
For the bravest men of the Indian and Pakistani armies have another, more deadly enemy than shelling – the weather, the killer behind eight out of every ten victims. Though neither side will release figures, officials admit there have been hundreds of deaths and thousands of casualties. Colonel Cheema, Pakistan’s Junior Defence Minister, says: ‘This is 95 per cent a war against nature.’
No army has ever fought in such conditions. For five years around 4,000 troops on each side have faced temperatures dropping to minus 80°C, and kept up an intermittent war while the real fight continues against the piercing cold, freezing weapons and fierce blizzards.
We were lucky, arriving on a rare clear day, the sky a brilliant blue backdrop to the dazzling peaks. It was a hazardous trip.
We left the capital Islamabad early, unnerved to be travelling in a Hercules C-130 of the type which killed Ms Bhutto’s great adversary President Zia in a mysterious crash last August.
After an hour’s flight, during which Bhutto caught up on paperwork with her Law Minister, we plunged between the mountains to land at Skardu.
Skardu is a conservative town where women are never seen and many crowds of men had gathered for the rare visit of a prime minister. Bhutto can never resist a crowd and had to be dragged away into the Puma helicopter to fly to Gyari, a military base at the foot of the Bilafond Glacier which connects with Siachen.
There we donned huge white padded American snowsuits and boots; only two hours earlier we had been sweating in the heat of Islamabad, which was already sizzling at dawn.
Around us huge boulders were painted with alarming slogans such as ‘Kill Them All’ and ‘Never Surrender’.
We clambered into fragile-looking glass-bottomed helicopters. Roads have been built to the edge of the glaciers, but from that point on stores must be moved by air.
The pilot muttered his prayers and a few Allahu Akbars and we were off, skimming over glaciers and skirting the side of the jagged mountains, coasting on air currents to conserve precious fuel. Lieutenant Colonel Farooq, our pilot, told us we were flying over the largest concentration of glaciers outside the polar region.
It looked like a magical Narnia world of snow and jagged ice. But the glaciers are extremely treacherous, constantly moving, pushing up rocks and boulders and creating crevasses into which men often fall, freezing to death within a minute.
Finally we touched down at Ali Brangsa. Immediately our movements became heavy. At 17,000 feet, simply talking makes one’s head spin and induces nausea.
Gratefully we sucked coconut sweets proffered to keep up sugar levels. The air is so thin, with less than half normal oxygen content, that
even the fittest men must stop for three minutes’ rest after every few steps. Above 14,000 feet, foot movement is so slow that to travel fifteen miles takes six days, while on the 19,000-foot glacier it takes twenty minutes to cover a hundred yards.
Before we left, Bhutto echoed all our sentiments, writing in the battalion’s barely used visitors’ book: ‘I shall always remember this dizzying experience.’
The men of Ali Brangsa, living in bunkers decorated with nothing but religious slogans, are luckier than some of their colleagues who are alone on distant peaks, in at least having some companionship.
In their brilliant white padded suits and mirror shades, contrasting with sun-blackened skin (even the strongest sun cream gives little protection against the high levels of ultraviolet rays), the men present a strange sight, particularly when they prostrate themselves in the snow to pray.
The suits are essential – the cold can be so piercing that frostbite sets in within minutes of flesh being exposed, often resulting in amputation. For those alone on the peaks, such as the men manning Pakistan’s two highest posts at more than 22,000 feet, the long isolation and confinement cause acute depression.
Says one major: ‘There is nothing to do but fire and after days alone you begin to imagine targets. You need to fire to reassure yourself you are still alive.’
There are greater hazards than boredom. According to Dr Mohbashir, the battalion medic, the lack of oxygen can cause lungs almost literally to explode, filling with blood and fluid so the victim suffocates. No one stays up there for long.
Despite the extreme conditions, war is definitely going on. The difficulty of walking, let alone carrying weapons, rules out infantry campaigns, but artillery fire is frequent.
Before we arrived five shells landed and, the day before, the Indians had lobbed eleven artillery shells and five rockets which General Imran, the corps commander, says was ‘light’.
After just a few hours at this altitude we were flagging, but Bhutto was still going strong, addressing troops at Gomu.
For a country so long under military rule, it was a strange role reversal to see the Prime Minister addressing the army instead of the general instructing the politicians. ‘The generals and the people are one now,’ said Bhutto.
The glacier war began in 1984 when Pakistan grew alarmed at seeing Siachen, which they claimed as their territory, suddenly marked on maps of India. Men were dispatched to check and found the Indians had occupied peaks of the Saltoro Range and captured 1,000 square miles. Pakistan responded by creating a special alpine commando force led by a young artillery officer Pervez Musharraf who counter-attacked two years ago, taking the Indian position at Bilafond Pass, before being beaten back.
The roots of the dispute go back to 1947 when, as the British Empire was dismantled, both Pakistan and India claimed the Muslim-dominated state of Kashmir. Pakistan managed to grab a third of Kashmir, of which Siachen is the northernmost part, before a ceasefire line was drawn in 1949.
Pakistan’s attempts to take back the lost area have been unsuccessful. According to an officer, operations such as that led by Musharraf in 1987 ‘only proved the impossibility of conducting a war up here’.
Since Bhutto became Prime Minister in December, relations have warmed between the two traditionally hostile neighbours. Neither side can afford the glacier war and there was hope for an agreement on the issue, which Bhutto describes as a ‘flashpoint’ in relations. But despite the initial optimism, and a visit to Pakistan by Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, nothing has been signed.
While visiting Siachen, Bhutto admitted: ‘It seems it will be very difficult to find an agreement now before winter sets in. Everyone’s dug in for the winter.’
To outsiders it seems incredible that men should expose themselves to such harsh conditions, pushing the human body to extremes, over a stretch of land no one has ever inhabited or ever could, but the men of Siachen are resolute.
The commander of Ali Brangsa explained: ‘To you this may be wasteland, but to us it’s our motherland.’
For all Benazir’s assurances that the generals and the people were now one, it was quickly clear that the army did not feel the same way.
Most of their unease about what they referred to as the ‘democratic experiment’ came from the growing perception that Pakistan had never had such a corrupt government. The central figure was Benazir’s husband Asif, who went from being known as Mr 10 Percent to Mr 30 Percent. As the Financial Times correspondent, I often met foreign businessmen who told me they were being openly asked for kickbacks to secure government contracts. ‘They’re about as subtle as a train wreck,’ said one.
When I tried to bring this up with Benazir, her eyes narrowed angrily. I was angry with her too – how could she as a female prime minister do nothing about laws that meant in court a woman’s evidence was worth half that of a man and she could not open a bank account without her husband’s permi
ssion? Worst of all was the notorious Hudood Ordinance under which, if a woman was raped, she needed to produce four male witnesses to the penetration. If she failed she would be imprisoned for sex outside marriage. I had visited jails in Lahore and Rawalpindi and they were full of girls who had been raped.
In Benazir’s world you were either ‘with us or against us’ and my invitations to dinners at the Prime Minister’s house dried up. I began getting anonymous phone calls asking if I was being paid by the opposition.
It wasn’t long after our visit to Siachen that the army started plotting. One afternoon, one of Benazir’s key ministers stopped by at my apartment looking flustered. He told me that a group of army officers had been arrested to foil a coup plot. A few weeks earlier Benazir had clumsily tried to assert her authority over the army with an unsuccessful attempt to remove its most senior officer, Admiral Sirohey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
At the monthly meeting of the nine corps commanders, four had openly spoken against her. Benazir cancelled all foreign trips for the next two months. It was clearly only a matter of time before she, like her father in 1977, woke up to be told ‘the troops have come’.
I checked with a couple of other sources, who confirmed what the minister had said, then filed my story. A few evenings later my doorbell rang. Two men in grey shalwar kameez and dark glasses were standing there. ‘The chief wants to see you,’ they said.
I was driven to a house in the military cantonment of Rawalpindi. I thought it was going to be another briefing with General Gul. Instead, I was interrogated about my activities and questioned about my ‘links with British and Soviet intelligence’ and a supposed plot to bring back the King of Afghanistan. I could not believe they were serious. I imagined what my mum would say.
Then they presented me with a file headed ‘Activities of Christina Lamb’. It contained many of the things I had done since arriving in the country, such as my journey to Kandahar, and some things I hadn’t. I knew that ISI obtains lists of all foreigners who board flights and check in to hotels but there was some information that clearly could only have been passed on by a good friend. There were also photocopies of personal letters, which explained why my mail usually arrived opened and taped back down.
I was questioned all night and warned that it would be ‘in my interests’ to leave the country. Early the next morning, I was driven back to Islamabad and left dazed on a main road a short walk from my house.
When I returned to my flat it had been ransacked, and two cars and a red motorbike had appeared on the corner. These followed me most unsubtly everywhere I went. The kind Reuters correspondent Oliver Wates and his wife Rosie invited me to stay, but then he started to be trailed too and their phones tapped. Even when the commercial attaché from the embassy gave me a lift in his diplomatic car to a wedding in Peshawar, we were followed. I was determined not to be driven out of the land of mangoes and buffaloes I had so grown to love. But I had acquired some powerful enemies.
Pakistan asks FT journalist to leave
Financial Times, 21 September 1989
MS CHRISTINA LAMB, the Financial Times correspondent in Islamabad, was asked to leave Pakistan following the Interior Ministry’s refusal to renew her visa.
The move follows objections by the Interior Ministry to the publication in the Financial Times of a report by Ms Lamb saying that a plot by some army officers to overthrow the government of Ms Benazir Bhutto had been foiled.
The local newspapers described me either as an Indian spy or as ‘the Pamella Bordes of Pakistan,’ referring to a former Miss India who had hit the headlines in the UK for simultaneous affairs with the editors of both the Sunday Times and the Observer, as well as MPs who had arranged a security pass for her for the House of Commons. One of the articles claimed I had rented room 306 of the Holiday Inn to ‘entertain’. I was horrified. Not only did I always dress conservatively in shalwar kameez with a dupatta (long scarf) covering my hair, but I had been so careful of my behaviour as the only female foreign correspondent in Islamabad that I had never even let Mark visit me in my apartment.
My only consolation was that no one I knew would believe it. After all, apart from a few excellent columnists, the local papers were full of what I called ‘statement journalism’, reprinting press releases from politicians or army officers that they had been paid to run. But then Pakistani friends started calling me. ‘We had no idea you were doing all that!’ they said.
As I drove to Islamabad airport, stunned that my life as a foreign correspondent was coming to an end, I noticed freshly painted graffiti on the wall outside. ‘We apologise for this democratic interruption,’ it read. ‘Normal martial law will be resumed shortly.’
A few months later, Benazir woke to the news that troops had surrounded ministries, TV and radio stations. That evening the President, standing flanked by the three service chiefs, announced that the government had been dismissed for ‘corruption, mismanagement, and violation of the Constitution’.
The Last Happy Nation
Brazil 1990–1993
Carnival – a dance to the music of crime
Financial Times, 13 March 1993
THE ILLUMINATED CLOCK tower of Rio Central railway station told me it was 4.15 a.m. On my head I was balancing three plastic peacocks, each a metre high, and a pair of sequin-encrusted plasterboard wings sprang from my shoulders. My torso was contorted by a body stocking several sizes too small, my legs tottered on silver boots and my smile was sphincter-tight.
With my centre of gravity somewhere behind my neck, if I moved my legs an arm-piece fell off. If I waggled my arms, the headdress started to slide. As if to accentuate my discomfort, a group of wayward birds started a jarring rendition of the dawn chorus. An audience of 60,000 people awaited and the dull thud of a hangover was already pounding my temples.
I was about to compete in Rio’s yearly carnival parade as one of the 4,500 dancers defending the reputation of the Mangueira samba school. And still I had not mastered the samba despite the ever more desperate efforts of Carlinhos de Jesus, my fleet-footed teacher, to make my pelvis mais líquida, literally ‘more liquid’.
The shout went up. It was our turn. Fireworks exploded and drums thundered until the whole road shook and the air quivered with
excitement and anticipation. Our feet pawed the ground like racehorses. A man with a stick pushed us into lines and yelled, ‘Move it! Open your mouth! Sing!’ Then we were off, running into the glare of a thousand lights. All around in the stands was a blur of faces, people waving pink and green flags – the school’s colours – and cheering ‘Mangueira!’
The digital clock marking our progress moved slowly. We had seventy minutes to pass along the 540-metre-long avenue. For the first ten of them, I thought I would never make it. My throat rasped like sandpaper as, over and over, I croaked out the words of our song: ‘Dessa fruta eu como até o caroço’ – ‘I’ll devour this mango, even the core.’ Sweat poured down my face, glitter in my eyes. Suddenly, though, propelled by the energy surging from the crowd, my feet began skipping in an extraordinary way. I became part of an enormous magical opera, a wealth of feathers and glitter, of floats bearing giant golden elephants, painted zebras and fearsome warrior heads. Carlinhos had told me that samba moves people because its rhythm is like the beat of the heart – and he was right. It was addictive; I never wanted to stop.
The parade, which stretches from dusk to dawn on two nights, is the glittering centrepiece of Carnival, the biggest, most lavish party on earth. A week-long jamboree, it involves hundreds of thousands of people and brings the whole of Brazil to a stop. But, unknown to the bedazzled tourists, the glamour and glitz hides the fact that it is funded largely by organised crime.
The sponsors of the party are the bicheiros, the men who run the jogo do bicho, or animals’ game – an illegal gambling racket, whose tentacles spread through the underworld of Rio. ‘Beneath the parade’s beautiful face of light and art lurks a dark underside of crime
, killing and urban violence,’ says Maria Laura Cavalcanti, an expert on Carnival from Rio’s Institute of Folklore.
It was not always so. Carnival has religious origins: the date marks the start of Lent and the name derives from the Italian carne vale (goodbye to meat). It began last century with European costume balls and parades for royalty, based on the Italian commedia dell’arte. At the same time, the African slaves on the sugar plantations in Brazil’s northeast had their own far humbler carnival when one man would dress up as king for the day. The two fused late in the nineteenth century after abolition of the slave trade and a searing drought in the north-east sent many former slaves to Rio. The pounding samba beat was the result of a suggestion by a Portuguese named Zé Pereira that all the members of his carnival club should play their drums at the same time.
Founded in the 1920s, the first samba schools got their name because they used school grounds for their rehearsals. Today, there are sixty schools in Rio, mostly in the poorest areas after which they are named, and they have become the heart of their local communities. The fourteen top clubs, or Premier League, compete annually in the main parade. This used to be in Avenida Rio Branco, the city’s main commercial thoroughfare, but in 1984 it was transferred to the Sambódromo, a purpose-built stadium designed by Oscar Niemeyer and consisting of a long cement corridor lined with tiered rows of boxes and stands.
What transformed Carnival from a somewhat ramshackle affair, with the poor scraping together their own costumes and floats, into the grandiose spectacle of today was the bicheiros.
The jogo do bicho is as old as the republic, having been launched by a nobleman called Baron João Batista Drummond to raise funds for his private zoo after the end of the Portuguese empire in 1889. The lottery – in which different animals represent different numbers – was such a success that it was copied and multiplied, going underground when gambling was declared illegal in 1946.
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