I told him I was sweaty and smelly and really needed a shower. Being a totally relaxed and thoughtful soul, he told me I had loads of time and asked if I would file a two-page spread, around a thousand words – before 3 p.m. That was about three hours away. Talk about hitting the ground running. Aaaaargh!
I began to unpack my Louis Vuitton holdall and noticed that some bastard had cut through the stitching between the zip and the lining. As I took everything out, I could see that only three items were missing: two pairs of my dad’s socks (now he’ll know why he can never find any, because all the Ridley women raid his sock drawer!) and a half-squeezed tube of toothpaste. The mind boggles.
Anyway, apart from having dog’s breath, I took a refreshing shower and emerged wondering what the hell I was going to do. Time was ticking away and the Sunday Express was expecting me to file a thousand words in what was now less than two hours.
Great! I was in a strange country. I didn’t know anyone other than three hotel receptionists – and wasn’t on first-name terms with them. I had nothing appropriate to wear for downtown Islamabad and I was having an exceptionally bad hair day. I should have got my roots done before I left, but when did I have the time? Why, I found myself moaning, don’t hairdressers work on Mondays, my only weekday off? It is one of life’s great mysteries – that and why men have nipples.
All these inanities were swirling round my head, but I checked them and forced myself to concentrate on the job in hand.
2
THE VIEW FROM JALOZAI
The first thing I needed to do was to get a taxi driver who spoke English. I went back to the receptionist in the Crown Plaza and asked him. A driver was immediately produced and off we went. It rapidly emerged the man could say only ‘OK’ and thought that this would get him through our journey – blimey, and I thought I was a chancer!
Within five minutes we were back at the hotel and I made another polite request for an English-speaking driver. I love Pakistani people because they are so keen to be helpful and, rather than tell you something cannot be done, they try to make things work.
However, the man at the Crown Plaza did deliver this time. Minutes later I was introduced to Pasha, who, within half an hour, became my new best friend. He was fluent in English, had worked all over the world and was extremely amiable. I told him what I wanted and he delivered. Simple, excellent, wonderful Pasha. Pasha had big brown, kind eyes and a roundish face covered by a clipped beard. His jet-black hair was beginning to recede and he looked as if he was about to hit 40. When he laughed he revealed pearly white teeth with a gap at the front. Although not that tall, he played a mean game of basketball but had been laid off for a few days after injuring his knee. Some days I could tell by his limp that he was in real pain but he never complained.
My brief was to speak to some local restaurateur about the impending political crisis over the border and how it was going to ripple through into Pakistan.
We drove off to a small restaurant and there I was introduced to the manager. We sat and drank tea and talked, and talked. Within an hour I had everything I needed to meet my deadline and then it was back to the hotel to phone over the story. It wasn’t the most important piece of journalism but it carried the all-important byline – ‘Yvonne Ridley in Islamabad’.
Newspaper rivalry is intense, and so naturally we were delighted to discover that the Mail on Sunday’s man was still stuck in Abu Dhabi airport after his plane had been delayed and, as a result, he had been unable to file a story. Apparently someone within the Daily Express had tipped off the Mail on Sunday that we were headed for Islamabad, so they had to play catch-up.
I was told the MoS reporter was a dear old friend of mine, Ian Gallagher, and, much as I enjoy being in his company, I hoped he would check into another hotel. Thankfully, when he finally did arrive in Pakistan he headed up to Peshawar and checked into the Pearl Continental.
On the Sunday we visited an Islamic university, which Pasha said was probably the most important madrasa, or religious school, of its kind across the Muslim world. He advised me to wear a traditional dress and headscarf, so we popped into Rawalpindi, where I bought a black pashmina-style shawl. I asked Pasha to keep me right on cultural matters and said that, if I did or said anything offensive to him or anyone else, then he must be brutally honest and tell me, because I had never been to his country before.
I wore a longish black dress and my leather, high-heeled sandals because they were so comfortable.
As we reached the university at Nowshera in the Northwest Frontier Province I saw an unremarkable whitewashed building with a simple domed mosque on one side. It hardly looked like one of the most significant institutions in the Muslim world to me. However, I learned that thousands of olive-skinned, bearded young men graduate every year and 90 per cent head for Afghanistan to see their hero, Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. Bin Laden has an honorary degree from the International Islamic University, known politically as Jammia Haquania.
I’m sure the Americans would call it a school for terrorism, but as far as the teachers are concerned it is a centre of academic excellence on a par with Harvard, Oxford or Cambridge. The eight-year courses cover every aspect of Islamic study and young Muslims throughout the world are drawn to it like a magnet. It is run by Moulana (professor) Sami Ul-Haq, who is chairman of the defence council in Afghanistan and Pakistan and is held in very high regard.
When we arrived he was in Lahore, chairing a meeting of the most senior Muslim clerics in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and, later that night, he was in the company of Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf, giving advice on the current political climate.
I was taken to a small room, where two young men were sleeping on cushions, and was asked to sit and wait. The moulana’s son, Hamid Ul-Haq Haqqani, eventually arrived and we all sat down cross-legged and talked.
Hamid, also a moulana, explained to me that some of the university’s most senior tutors had visited bin Laden several times. They all described him as the ‘perfect Muslim’ because he is regarded as a pious man who has turned his back on the West, Hamid explained. I’m not sure that George Bush or Tony Blair would agree with that, but I continued to listen to this earnest young man.
He said he was very disturbed by American threats of retaliation and denied that his university was run for fanatics and would-be terrorists. He keenly pointed out that everyone was disciplined and there were no weapons in the school, not even knives. He dismissed American accusations that bin Laden had masterminded the 11 September attacks, which he referred to as a ‘mishap’. Offensive as it may seem to Westerners, most people I spoke to in Pakistan referred to the atrocities euphemistically as a mishap.
‘Osama bin Laden was an American hero funded by the Americans when he was fighting the Russians,’ Hamid told me. ‘Now they have turned him into an enemy. If this war of words continues it is going to develop into a Third World War. This will mean many Muslims, Christians and Jews are going to be killed.’
It was quite a chilling statement and it was said calmly, quietly and without passion, which made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
As we drove off, I asked Pasha what he thought and he replied that he was scared for his wife and two young sons and wondered if he should move them to the countryside. Like many of Pakistan’s 80 million moderate Muslims, he feared the outbreak of war and was genuinely frightened about the consequences.
This was before President Musharraf had made his emotional address to the country, telling his people he would join in America’s war on terrorism and asking for their understanding and support. The man was caught between a rock and a hard place but he came over on TV as a dignified statesman.
The Taliban had warned Pakistan that, if it cooperated with the West, it would suffer, and a few days later we were told that four Scud missile launchers positioned at the Torkham border by the Khyber Pass were pointing in our direction.
I called my very good friend Paul Beaver, who is also a milita
ry adviser, and expressed some concern. He was quite dismissive and said that the Scuds would never reach Islamabad, but warned me to steer clear of Rawalpindi and Peshawar. I asked him how London was and started to feel homesick.
I told Pasha I wanted to get into Afghanistan, and so we resolved to go to the embassy on my first Monday. However, David Leigh, the news editor on the Daily Express, laughed at the very idea that I might even get a visa for Afghanistan and said foreign journalists were being kicked out of the country. He asked me to head for the refugee camps instead.
I was hacked off and prattled on to Pasha about male bosses, having two bosses, working for the Daily and the Sunday. He laughed and was tickled by ‘Madam’, as he called me.
Still, I was counting my blessings. This Jim Murray bloke seemed to be a really good news editor, I told Pasha, very relaxed and unflappable. He knew how to sell a story in conference – that ritual gathering in newspaper offices attended by the editor and his lieutenants, who earnestly discuss and decide the content of the next issue – and had a very gentle, encouraging manner with the younger members of staff.
His predecessor was very different. We used to be great friends, or so I thought, until he was promoted. I felt his attitude change and I found him difficult to deal with. No one was more delighted than me when he moved on, because after he left I was back on the front page – what a relief!
By the time I’d finished carping on to Pasha, we had arrived at the refugee camps in Peshawar – and some of the sights were heartbreaking. This cold crash into reality put things into perspective and I soon forgot about office politics.
We had an Afghan photographer called Ghaffar Baig with us, whom we had bumped into in Peshawar, and, as tends to happen often in Pakistan, a simple operation takes on the appearance of a convoy. We were soon joined by his colleague Mohammed Riaz from the Dawn Group of Newspapers.
Mohammed had been to England in 1999 and had spent some time working in the Guardian and Observer offices in Farringdon Road, London. He was very pleasant and seemed to hold influence with camp officials, for which I was grateful.
As we walked through the camp I felt like the Pied Piper. I had the camp officials, Pasha, Ghaffar and Mohammed walking several paces behind me, followed by scores of curious children and anyone else who wanted to join in. When I stopped, they stopped; when I moved, they all moved. In the end I swung around and asked the officials to stop following me. I thought their presence would intimidate anyone I spoke to, but my request was refused.
I told Mohammed this was not what I wanted. I needed to speak to refugees from the past few days and not the ones here who had been installed for ten years or more. He passed on my words to Pasha and Ghaffar, and so we left and headed off for another camp, which we would need permission to enter. I told Pasha that if we asked for permission it would give someone an opportunity to say no, whereas if we went in it would be easier for them to say yes. He loved my logic but said it would get me into trouble.
Mohammed left our party to pick up some travel documents and he said confidently that he expected to get an entry visa for Afghanistan. I envied him.
Anyway, in we went to Jalozai (the largest refugee camp in Pakistan). It was heartbreaking. Some of these Afghans had been living in these squalid conditions for more than twenty years since Afghanistan was first plunged into war.
The homes were made of mud and brick and the newest arrivals from the summer were living in makeshift, canvas tents. The men sat and around and idly chatted while the children played. There was no sign of any women, which is not unusual in this very male-dominated, macho society.
When they do venture out, many wear this all-enveloping blue garment called a burka. It looks stuffy and hot and very uncomfortable. You wouldn’t see me dead in anything like that, I thought to myself. Although Western women still suffer at the hands of chauvinists, our life is a blessing by comparison.
I found out later that none of the women make an appearance until around dusk, when they head towards the public toilets and showers. If they are seen during the daytime it is considered immodest.
This really hacked me off. Why is it that women are expected to show full self-control, yet men in any society, East or West, seem to think they have the right to pee any time, anywhere? Can you imagine telling a bunch of men they can’t use the toilet until dusk? Can you imagine the outrage? I can see the demonstrations now!
I was trying to work out a delicate way of raising this subject without causing offence, when I suddenly gasped for breath. There, sitting by a fire, poking a stick at a kettle overflowing with scalding water, was a child. She was sitting on her hunkers, grubby knees resting against her flawless, olive-skinned face, which was dominated by saucer-wide brown eyes. A tumble of matted curls hung carelessly around her melancholy features as she played dangerously close to the fire and the kettle.
It was a recipe for disaster, but it wasn’t that which caught my breath. This child could have been my Daisy. They were almost identical. I felt the tears well up into my eyes and my throat constrict.
My little girl was sitting in a clean, ironed uniform with all her friends in a school that nestled in the dramatic hills of the Lake District overlooking Lake Windermere in Beatrix Potter country. Every night after playing with her friends she would have a hot bath or shower, maybe even a pillow fight, and go to bed in her dormitory.
Every morning she would get up to a hot breakfast, the laughter of other children and school. Daisy is half Palestinian and her life is very privileged compared with those of other Palestinian children.
This little Afghan girl was sitting in a ragged dress, alone and unhappy. She had no education, no hope and no toys. Her only distraction was a kettle that was threatening to scald her pure olive skin. She didn’t know where her next meal was coming from and she was living a hellish existence in a camp of no hope.
Life is so unfair. What had she done to deserve this existence? It’s at times like this when you question your faith, regardless of your religion. That image will haunt me for a long time to come.
It’s funny how you try to be so professional, and then something happens to give you a swift kick and remind you that you’re a parent. I can still feel a lump in my throat when I think of that beautiful child.
As we moved around the camp we managed to communicate with everyone via Ghaffar, who spoke Pushtu, the language of Afghanistan, and then translated in Urdu, an official language of Pakistan, to Pasha, who relayed the words back to me in English. We made a great team and the fact that I was with an Afghan and Pakistani team helped smooth international relations.
Earlier that day we were told a BBC crew had been stoned by some refugees angry at the prospect of an air strike on their country, and two other Western journalists had come under attack. I think the refugees were beginning to feel as though they were on show, like animals in a zoo, and complained about media intrusion. I couldn’t really blame them.
I noticed the aid agencies were no longer on site and their offices had been abandoned. Later, I was told they had been urged to quit the camp because none of the Pakistan authorities quite knew how the Afghan refugees would react if and when their homeland was blitzed by American and British bombs. There were fears that the refugees had hidden huge caches of arms around the camp in the event that they wanted to start fighting again.
Afghan men are born fighters and most own a semiautomatic or Kalashnikov by the time they’ve reached their teens. Fighting is a national pastime and has gone on for centuries either among themselves or would-be interlopers. But I was to find out later that their women are made of even sterner stuff.
There are millions of Afghans living in refugee camps in Pakistan, and Peshawar is regarded in many ways as an extension of Afghanistan. It became obvious to me that backing for an American-British bombing campaign would find little support in this part of the country.
It is a widely known fact that the Afghans are totally ungovernable – probably a bit lik
e the people of the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan, who appear to ignore their country’s law and liaise instead, reluctantly, with the political agents in the region.
The Express foreign editor, Gabriel Milland, called and asked me to file a very emotional colour piece for the daily title, which I was also working for. By the time it reached the paper someone must have changed their mind and a very straight, hard news piece appeared instead. Oh, the frustration of it all!
The following day Pasha and I drove to the Afghan Embassy, where I applied for a visa. To get to the little visa office behind the main building I had to walk into a courtyard area, where a few men sat around looking bemused. I had my head covered by a scarf and my whole body was fully clothed apart from my feet. I was wearing my really comfortable leather sandals, which revealed scarlet-painted toenails.
Despite my attempts to show some respect for their culture the man in the visa office was not impressed and slung my visa application in the direction of a pile of fifty others. I couldn’t quite understand what he said after that but I left under the distinct impression the visa would be ready by 9 a.m.
Pasha said that, if I got a visa, then he would take me across to Afghanistan. ‘Madam, I cannot let you go out there on your own – you need protecting,’ he said.
Our plan that day was to go to a small town in the shadow of the Hindu Kush mountains, where a variety of guns and ammunition are made in a series of illegal lockups and small factories. Children as young as eight are crafting these weapons and so I was greatly excited by this story.
We eventually arrived in Dera-Adam Kheil, which I can only describe as a one-horse town – and it did look a bit like one of those places depicted in Wild West movies, stray goats and Asian influence aside. Pasha and I slipped down a side street and there, in a series of open lockup garages, were men and boys working on eighty-year-old lathes producing a variety of weapons. Pasha spoke to them briefly, explaining what I wanted and who I was. They started laughing and one man, who appeared to be the owner, welcomed me in and we began talking via Pasha.
In the Hands of the Taliban Page 3