It was good to see him and he introduced me to Christina Lamb from the Sunday Telegraph. Jason went off and Christina and I sat down together and had dinner – she offered to pay because I was short of Pakistani rupees, although I had my credit card, so I agreed to get her the next dinner. (I’m still waiting to repay the compliment at the time of writing this!) Christina was also to make headlines just a few weeks later when she and photographer Justin Sutcliffe were escorted from their rooms at the Serena Hotel in Quetta by police. She was expelled from Pakistan in November 2001 apparently because she had tried to book an internal flight using the name Osama Bin Laden. She had said in an interview with a local newspaper that she had meant no harm when attempting to book the flight from Quetta to Islamabad at a Pakistan International Airlines office in the southwestern city.
We got on very well and gossiped terribly about a torrid affair between two journalists and its consequences. Newsrooms are hotbeds of such gossip and – in spite of my earlier observation that it’s almost impossible for a journo to have a relationship with someone who isn’t one – I personally usually steer clear of flings with hacks, because, as I learned very early in my career, journalists can be very indiscreet. I suppose it’s down to our burning desire to break the news.
Just then our attention was diverted by a John Simpson broadcast. The man-mountain had donned a burka to go off into Afghanistan on an undercover mission. He was placed in the back of an open wagon in the lowliest position because of his new persona as a woman.
It was an outrageously funny broadcast. He is so passionate about his work and so enthusiastic, but I failed to see the point of his story. Maybe I missed the important message but it seemed to me a broadcast about John Simpson wearing a burka to do a broadcast after illegally entering Afghanistan in disguise. Christina and I both laughed and raised our eyebrows, part in admiration and part because it was all so funny.
It planted the seed of an idea in my head. The words ‘burka’ and ‘invisible’ began to swirl around and the seed began to grow.
3
CARRYING ON UP THE KHYBER
That night I went up to the fifth-floor bar where alcohol is served to foreign guests only and saw all the familiar faces. Ian Gallagher was there but he left shortly afterwards looking sheepish. That made me nervous because I knew he must have had a good exclusive, unless I was being paranoid – another trait suffered by many journos.
Anyway, I decided not to let it bother me and I began talking to a Spanish-born photographer from New York who had just visited relatives in Israel. He told me that he still had to go home and it was going to be weird seeing the Big Apple without the Twin Towers.
He worked for the New York daily, News Day, and he was very pleasant but I could tell he was hurting inside. He was also getting some mild hassle from his girlfriend because they were supposed to go on a holiday and spend some quality time together when he was diverted to Peshawar. I said we were in a difficult profession and unless you worked in this crazy line of business outsiders could not understand.
‘But she does work in this business. She’s a photographer,’ he said, laughing. Just then a Lebanese television reporter walked in and we exchanged pleasantries and names. Tania Mehanna from the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation was striking to look at and although she appeared to be quite demure, she had a wicked sense of humour. I loved her instantly. She had covered the same demonstration in the morning as I had, and I told her my bottle had gone and I had left.
She then revealed she had been attacked with sticks and a French female journalist had had stones thrown at her. Pasha’s instincts, as usual, had been spot on. The three of us decided this called for something a little stronger than a beer, so we bought what looked like a bottle of whisky and drowned out the vile taste with lots of Coke.
I remember someone once telling me there was no such thing as a bad whisky, but, trust me, this stuff was rough. It reminded me of some home-made Irish poteen I had once drunk on an overnight shift at the Newcastle Journal. It wasn’t called the graveyard shift for nothing and, to amuse ourselves, I and two others began drinking this lethal concoction while filling out the Times crossword.
We completely forgot about the time and became so drunk and engrossed in the crossword that we finally called the Times switchboard for the answer but the operator refused to end our agony and said we had to buy the paper in the morning like everyone else. I looked at my watch and it was about 5 a.m., so I got a taxi home where Husband Number Two, the policeman, was waiting up. He accused me of having an affair. What a nerve! This coming from a man who eventually left me for another woman.
However, I don’t suppose it looked very good coming home reeking of alcohol and insisting I’d been at work but I slurred that he shouldn’t judge everyone by his own behaviour. I woke up next morning in the spare room with the hangover from hell.
It was nearly midnight in Islamabad and the three of us were drinking the last of the whisky and Coke. They were great company and we all promised to keep in touch, comrades in adversity, all for one and one for all.
I wobbled over to the elevator and went down to the ground floor, where I had arranged to meet Pasha. I really concentrated on walking in a straight line because I was still very conscious of the fact that alcohol is regarded as offensive to many Muslims.
I got into Pasha’s battered yellow taxi and off we went to the bed-and-breakfast he had organised. I remember vaguely going up some flights of stars and being shown into a room with a TV, bed and adjoining bathroom. I quickly crashed out and don’t remember a thing until about 6 a.m., when I woke to the thunderous roar of a low-flying jet. It was quickly followed by another and another and I thought: It’s started. The bloody war has started and I’m missing it.
I scrambled out of bed and dragged on my clothes from the night before and ran, barefoot, out into the fresh air. I found a fire escape and began climbing upwards as fast as I could. I got on to the roof and to my embarrassment saw the airport – Pasha had booked me into a bed-and-breakfast next to the bloody airport. What I had heard were some early-morning flights zooming overhead. I felt such a fool, but thankfully no one was around to witness this spectacle of Yvonne Ridley still wearing last night’s make-up, barefoot and hung over. My descent was more careful as I returned to my room.
After breakfast I told Pasha I wanted to go to the Khyber Pass and he said it was impossible because no foreign journalists were being allowed there.
‘You know I can’t take no for an answer. I have to see for myself,’ I pleaded. He laughed, shook his head with resignation and added, ‘OK, madam, we will go. If anyone can get through it will be you.’
We linked up with Ghaffar and went to the political agent’s office for the Northwest Frontier, where a very officious civil servant was refusing every journalist’s request. It was like the United Nations: Germans, French, Japanese, Czech, Spanish, two Americans and me.
I asked the man very graciously if I could have a travel document that would enable me to travel through the Khyber Pass.
‘No journalists are allowed there until further notice. The answer is no.’ Those journalists who had already been rejected trooped out while others waited to be told the same.
‘Why?’ I asked loudly. By this time the official had turned his back on me. He then turned round and repeated that I could not go and I shouldn’t waste his time.
‘You’re obviously not the man who can make decisions around here,’ I provoked. ‘I want to see your boss. I want to get this from the horse’s mouth.’
He looked at me in a very cross fashion and then said something to Pasha. Pasha then replied, and the civil servant said something that was obviously offensive to Pasha, because I’ve never seen him look so angry.
‘Madam, that man has just spoken down to me as though I am uneducated because I don’t come from this region. However, you have upset him enough that he is going to see the man above him. He is very angry.’
I told him
that coming from Newcastle and having what is known as a Geordie accent often offends the snob class. I’m not sure he understood but he chuckled.
The paper pusher went away and came back. He looked at me as though he’d just found something nasty stuck on his foot and pointed to a door. Pasha and I walked in and there was Shahzada Ziauddin Ali, the deputy chief of protocol for Peshawar, sitting behind a vast desk with flunkies on either side of him.
He asked me why I wanted to go through the Khyber Pass and I said, ‘Sir, I am a journalist and my boss has asked me to write a feature on this historic Pass. I fully understand your difficulties and I can see that you are a very understanding man but my boss is not. He will not believe I’ve been refused entry and he will accuse me of being lazy.
‘I’ve even bought two books on the Khyber Pass, but I beg you, sir, please let me through so I can do your wonderful country justice by writing and expressing myself in my own words.’
He looked at me very sternly from across his desk, and then, with a hint of a smile, he said, ‘You may go, but I warn you that you cannot take any pictures. We will provide an armed escort for you and you must not step out of the car on the journey.’
I thanked him warmly and then I went outside, where all the other foreign journalists were amassed, waiting with bated breath. ‘The man says yes,’ I beamed. Several journalists punched the air and suddenly the paper pusher was overwhelmed with foreign passports of every nationality. If looks could kill, I would not be writing this now.
‘Madam, I don’t know how you do it. Sometimes you can be a very hard woman and I get afraid for you, but when you try to be nice you are so charming,’ said Pasha admiringly. And he gave one of his infectious giggles.
There was a German TV crew there and I whispered to the cameraman that the deputy political agent had insisted on no cameras. He smiled and said, ‘I understand but I cannot be parted from my camera – we are joined together.’
We laughed in a conspiratorial manner and waited for the paperwork to go through.
After an hour – everything has to be done in triplicate and involved visiting another office across town – our motley crew was assembled and our convoy was about to pull off when the strangest thing happened. A Polish man driving a magnificent Japanese touring bike pulled up to get his machine on to a trailer that was joining our convoy.
‘Who does he work for?’ I asked. Ghaffar, the Afghan photographer who has the habit of appearing and disappearing like a genie in a bottle, told Pasha the guy was a tourist and he had a tourist visa to travel through the Khyber Pass and on to Afghanistan. I made a mental note to try to persuade the Afghan Embassy I was a tourist wanting to spend a weekend in Kabul.
Just as we were about to set off we were joined by a striking young man from the famous Khyber Rifles Regiment. Pasha told me to sit in the front of his taxi for once and I refused. ‘There’s no way I’m having a man with a loaded gun sitting behind me. He can sit in the front.’
The soldier had obviously been told to keep an eye on me, so we both ended up sitting in the back and our convoy set off. As we reached a checkpoint just before the Pass, bundles of official documents were being sifted through, so I stepped outside for a wander.
I saw a big sign saying NO FOREIGNERS BEYOND THIS POINT. Ghaffar shouted over to me that he wanted to take a photo and I stood on one side of the sign while a young boy looked on, perplexed. The picture would be one for the family album, I thought. Little did I realise it would wing its way around the world’s media seven days later.
Off we set again for the famous Pass. I was very excited and had been in touch with one of my mates who loiters around Whitehall. He told me to watch out for the regimental crests and said I was in for a great experience.
The famous Pass has been making history for centuries and once again it is in the limelight because of the tension in the region. Military experts are again speculating over its significance. Mighty armies and marauding bandits have all passed through its dramatic gorges and granite crags, along with drug dealers and other smugglers. Even now it is likely that British soldiers will once again march through the Pass, all 53 kilometres (33 miles) of it, which winds around the inhospitable Hindu Kush mountains, northwest through the Safed Koh range, connecting Peshawar and Kabul. It varies in width from 3 to 137 meters (10-450 feet).
From a military point of view it is as strategically important as Gibraltar and Suez because it connects the northern frontier of Pakistan with Afghanistan. The feared Taliban fighters and Osama bin Laden know every nook and cranny, but for strangers this winding passage holds many hidden dangers and is also scarred by tragedy. The Pass has been the gateway for invasions of the Indian subcontinent from the northwest and has had a long and often violent history.
The Khyber Pass is controlled by Pakistan but it had become a no-go area for tourists and media as tension rose in the tribal region over America’s expected plans to attack neighbouring Afghanistan.
As we reached the treacherous 3-metre section I could see the German cameraman with his arm dangling from the window of a land cruiser. There, strapped to his wrist, was his massive TV camera, capturing every inch of our journey. The mountains on either side looked unconquerable, although there were a few faint footpaths by precipitous cliffs that had been created over the centuries.
The Pass reaches its highest elevation less than three kilometres (two miles) from the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and that was where our convoy stopped and parked up. We looked down at Torkham and it would have been a crime not to take any pictures.
The cameras and videos came tumbling out and the magnificent sight was captured for ever. I looked around for Ghaffar and he had gone AWOL again. Slightly tetchily, I asked Pasha where he was and he went to look for him.
One of the Khyber Rifles explained that we were looking at a strategic gateway dating from 326 BC, when Alexander the Great and his army marched through the Khyber to reach the plains of India.
Later, I read in the copy that Miriam had said I could crib from, that Persian, Mongol and Tatar armies forced their way through the Khyber, bringing Islam with them. Centuries later, when India became part of the British Empire, the British troops defended the Khyber Pass from the British Indian side.
During the Afghan Wars the Pass was the scene of numerous skirmishes between Anglo-Indian soldiers and native Afghans. Particularly well known is the battle of January 1842 (the last year of the first of the three wars), in which about sixteen thousand British and Indian troops were killed.
The British constructed a road through the Pass in 1879 – during the second war – and converted it into a highway during the 1920s. A railway was also built here in the 1920s but its Afghan side now lies in disrepair. It is such a shame because I bet that that rail journey would be one of the greatest on earth. Damn wars, damn conflicts, damn poverty! Instead of spending money on bombs, wouldn’t it be better to feed the world and restore all these magnificent routes and tracks?
Then I saw the many regimental badges hand-carved into the rock by British soldiers and it was very moving.
Just then I caught sight of Ghaffar and went to remonstrate with him. Pasha stood on my toe to shut me up and said, ‘Ghaffar has been talking to a friend of his from the Khyber Rifles and I think when the convoy pulls off and turns right we can turn left and head towards Torkham and the border.’
Honestly, Ghaffar is so frustrating, but I could have kissed him then and there. He then took some photographs of me holding a semiautomatic, standing next to one of the soldiers. I gave him my little Nikon camera and he took one of me posing in a very Boadicea-like manner overlooking the Afghan border, wielding a semiautomatic. It was a picture that I was never going to see, but I had no idea at the time.
I am so clumsy that I managed to remove a safety catch after I got part of my scarf caught around the gun. The normally heroic, gutsy Khyber soldiers, who would give anyone a run for their money, scattered in seconds at the sight of me
waving this loaded weapon around trying to untangle my scarf.
When I realised what I was doing I froze until one brave soul moved forward and thankfully disarmed me. Everyone laughed nervously, and I have to admit I’ve seen that expression before when I began my basic training with the Territorial Army. Little did I know how useful that training was going to be for me less than seven days after this hairy gun-wielding episode in the Khyber Pass.
I joined the TA when I was working in Darlington for the Northern Echo in 1990 and, while I have to say that I initially joined for a bet, I ended up really enjoying the experience and the wonderful people I met. The bet arose from a dinner party Jim McIntosh and I held for four of our friends who were, like him, members of the Northumbria Police Force stationed in Sunderland. The conversation was lively and the stories were riveting. There’s nothing so funny as real life, and tales emanating from a group of police are gripping, sad, hilarious and compelling.
We moved into the lounge and, although silent, the TV was still on in the corner. Armed with brandies and whiskies, we pondered out loud what we could all do if we weren’t in our current jobs. The blokes all said they could fall into security and the girls said nursing because they were already well equipped in first aid and weren’t afraid of the sight of blood. Then Margy Rowland, a gutsy copper if ever there was one (she was later invalided out of the force after a vicious assault on her), asked me what I would do.
I thought and thought and the silence was deafening. ‘She’s bloody useless if you take away her notepaper and pen,’ mocked Jim. I was incensed and then my attention was diverted by an army advert looking for TA recruits. ‘There you go. I could join the Army,’ I declared. They all fell about laughing.
In the Hands of the Taliban Page 5