KABUL RUN

Russians, who preceded us by 22 years, were not the first imperialists to take the lonely road to Afghanistan to tame the wild Afghans – the British had much experience in the hills of Afghanistan, none of them pleasant. The first Anglo Afghan war started in 1839, as part of that so-called great game between Russia and Britain. A quick glance at the map would tell most students of history the clearest reasons why men keep fighting over this seeming dustbowl. Afghanistan, it is oft repeated, sits at the crossroads of Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Alexander the Great stormed through these great plains from Persia on the way to India; Genghis Khan would ride his Mongol hordes through the Afghan Plains. There is so much history buried in the dust here, so many stories that will never be told by those whose bones have crumbled into dust. To the East of Afghanistan is India, and to the Northeast sits China; to the North lies Europe, where the Russian bear lies brooding; and to the West is Persia, now modern-day Iran, followed by the rest of the Middle East. Any conqueror worth his salt has no choice but to take on the Afghans if he insisted on declaring himself ruler of the world.
And so in 1838, the powerful and influential British East India Company feared an increase in Russian influence in the region after Dhost Mohammad Khan, the Afghan ruler, renewed relations with the Russians. Ironically, Dhost Mohammad had earlier rejected overtures from Russia, but was apparently irked when Lord Auckland, governor general of India, got a little too pushy in trying to force Afghanistan into the British sphere of influence. And so the Brtish launched their attack westward from Jelalabad, then the frontier outpost of what was still part of British India. British and Indian troops captured Kabul in 1839 with so much ease that they thought well enough to drag the whole household along with them. Of the 16,500 members of the British army in Kabul, only 4,500 were really soldiers – the rest, around 12,000, were what they would call the "camp followers." These weren’t groupies of any sort – they were part of that long logistics tail that travels with any modern army. The british army was quite well known for its creature comforts. The camp followers consisted of everything from cooks, barbers and grooms, as well as more essential personnel like armorers. Of course there were also members of the soldier’s family, as well as servants and beggars. It is said that each British soldier was allowed to have up to four servants. Officers could bring twelve. Britain was, after all, still an imperial power, and its troops had to keep up with appearances.
After the British took over Kabul, Dhost Mohammed fled to the hills to organize his guerilla war under his son, Akbar Khan.
As luck would have it, in 1841, the British commander in Kabul was a Major General William Elphinstone, a politically well-connected army officer who made a name for himself with impressive displays of military incompetence. Britain could not have made a worse choice.
Akbar Khan declared a general revolt in November 1841, and Afghans murdered a senior political diplomat and raided the British armory in Kabul. In another incident, Kabul’s governor, William Hay Macnaghten, was invited by Akbar Khan for tea and was promptly murdered as soon as he got down from his horse. His body was dragged through the streets of Kabul. Elphinstone, for some reason, did nothing. In fact, Elphinstone took it a step further. To the horror of his officers, Elphinstone decided to call it a day, signed a treaty of capitulation, and, under guarantee of safe passage from Akbar Khan, decided to call it quits and go home to India.
Now it wasn’t all that simple for the British. The agreement Elphinstone signed had several conditions, including the surrender of the best British guns, the reserve gunpowder, and the cannons. Having been promised a safe passage to the British garrison in Jalalabad 90 miles away, Elphinstone was apparently the most trusting soul that side of Central Asia.
It was January 6, 1842. And so began the biggest tragedy of British military history.
As soon as the 16,500-strong British column started marching from Kabul, they were attacked again and again by Afghans on horseback, and by guerilla riflemen perched on the mountaintops.
January is far from the most hospitable month in the Afghan calendar. Then again, there are no hospitable months in the Afghan calendar. The sun is either so hot that it will sear exposed skin off your back, or its too cold that your breath feels like it’s forming icicles in your lungs. In addition, Kabul sits 5,900 feet above sea level, on a plateau, surrounded on all sides by towering mountains or gaping gorges. Thousands of British and Indian troops marched through snow two feet deep, into mountain passes that even Afghans would have been afraid to use. Men, women, and children froze to death by the hundreds, or were trampled by Afghan horsemen, or were sliced to ribbons with long swords. By the third day of the march, 3,000 people or roughly a fifth, lay scattered and broken on snowy drifts. Some were shot, some froze to death, many chose to commit suicide. By most accounts, Elphinstone was far from a good leader; he merely sat quietly on his horse as it trudged its way to Jalalabad while thousands died around him.
To cap it all off, on January 11, the fifth day of the march, Elphinstone accepted an offer by Akbar Khan to surrender himself as a hostage. Many British military historians look back to this with much embarrassment; here was the commander of 16,500 British and Indian troops, surrendering himself to stay alive, but abandoning all of his men to their fate. Elphinstone did survive while his men did not, although he reportedly died in Afghan captivity in April of that year.
The Afghans continued to decimate the British column, eating at it from the fringes and the edges, leaving behind carcasses for the vultures and jackals. It was hard to imagine how the unorganized Afghans could rout the disciplined and well trained British and Indian troops. Most Afghans were armed with just the Jezail, an ancient and enormous muzzle loading flintlock that must have been the butt of British jokes before the massacre. It’s basically a musket that you load with powder and ball through the shooting end of the barrel, and fired through the use of a flint. Think American revolution-type rifles, not the wild west kind.
The Afghan jezail is different in that it is usually a family heirloom, cared for and adored by generations of Afghan men. It is usually beautifully decorated, with its more complex parts cannibalized from older european flintlocks that have somehow found their way to central asia. Unlike modern rifles, it was usually fired by Afghans by tucking the butt under the arm, with the rifle held tight against the body.
Things came to a head on a hillock in Gandamak, a town just ten to fifteen kilometers from the British garrison in Jalalabad. There, on January 13, as the popular version of the story goes, some forty British soldiers, all that were left of 16,500 people, made a last stand. As the story goes, the Afghans again gave an offer of surrender, to which a British sergeant somewhat dramatically responds, "not bloody likely." A massacre ensued on the hilltop, the last of a seven day massacre.
Again, as the popular story goes, one man turned up at the gates of the British garrison in Jalalabad, part of his skull sheared off by a sword, his horse practically dying of exhaustion. The man’s name was William Brydon, an assistant surgeon of Elphinstone’s column. He was asked by the sentry where the rest of the army was, to which he replied: "I am the army." Of 16,000 souls who left Kabul, Brydon was the only one to make it to Jalalabad.
Brydon would later write his memoirs of the death march. Britain and India were in shock over the massacre. Lord Auckland suffered a stroke after hearing of the massacre. And Akbar Khan died before the year ended, possibly poisoned by his own father, who had grown frightened of the son’s ambitions.
That same year, Britain would send what it called "an army of retribution" back to Kabul to exact vengeance. Naturally, the British had to march the same route their massacred army took months earlier. It must have been difficult for members of the army of retribution, marching off to avenge their fellow soldiers, at the same time stepping over the withered remains and ghastly skeletons of their compatriots as they were uncovered by the melting snow.
Rudyard Kipling was not one to mince words. The journalist-writer, in one of his oft-quoted verses, wrote one of the most famous, yet largely ignored, pieces of advice:
When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains
And the women come out to cut up what remains
Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
And go to your Gawd like a soldier.
A century and a half later, it would occur to me that we came in through the same route that the ill-fated British column took trying to get out. And as friends would keep reminding us, we were lucky, very lucky indeed.


A few miles from Jelalabad, we passed a large, walled compound. We would have just passed it by, had it not been for a large gaggle of armed Afghans who were entering its gate on board a couple of Toyota 4x4s. We had no idea who they were, or if they would greet us or shoot us. Still, we told Iltaf to stop the van. Cameras rolling, we got down and approached. I went to the nearest armed Afghan and extended my hand. He took it. Assalamu Alaykum, I said, touching my fingers to my breast. Alaykum Assalam, he replied. No one seemed hostile, which was encouraging. I approached another armed Afghan who was perched on the bed of a Toyota that had stopped by the gate and gave the same greeting. This was when I heaved a sigh of relief: the Afghan was wearing a jacket in the lizard camouflage pattern of the Northern Alliance. These were not Taliban.
In a matter of minutes, we were all happily shaking hands, and exchanging Salaams and smiles, and little else. We followed them past a long building, and a large concrete apron, and came across two soviet-made armored personnel carriers that appeared to have been damaged in the fighting. The Afghans gathered around, pointing excitedly like victorious troops at the Soviet equipment. Giddy with delight at having come across "friendly" troops, we took photos and posed for souvenir shots with the Afghans. A little while later, another armed Afghan called our attention and tried to make us go with him. Unsure of what his intentions were, we tried to ignore him. After a while, though, he got a little insistent. Even after we got in our van, he was still pulling at us, motioning to some distant place beyond the conrete apron. We weren’t sure if he was just being overly friendly, but at that point we decided it best not to get on the bad side of our new friends. After some hand gestures, he surprised us all by jumping into our van with us. This raised a howl of protest from everyone, and I think we even tried to push him out. We didn’t know this guy from Adam, and already he was hitching a ride. Unfortunately, he was also well armed. Our new passenger pointed Iltaf in the direction of the concrete apron. So we sped off again into parts unknown.
The concrete apron, it turned out, was actually a concrete taxiway. The building, it also turned out, was an airport. And the whole compound, we found out, was the Jalalabad airport. This was a complete surprise for us. We didn’t even think Jalalabad would have an airport.
But it did, for good reason. For years, Bin Laden lived in the Jalalabad area, and directed Al Qaeda operations from a secret headquarters near this city. When Bin Laden was evicted by Sudan for constantly insulting the Saudi Royal family, he flew back into Afghanistan and landed his private jet here in Jalalabad airport. It was here, not Kabul or Kandahar, where Bin Laden directed his private personal war against the non-Muslim world. And it was a homecoming of sorts for the Bin Laden, a heir to the billion dollar Bin Laden construction empire who gave up his comforts to fight for his vision of an Islamic world from inside backwards Afghanistan.
We bounced down the runway, marveling at the enormous craters left by American bombs on the runway. Obviously, this runway was disabled early in the fight. Then, our newfound friend pointed to one corner of the runway. This was what he had wanted to show us.
The wreckage appeared to have been that of a helicopter gunship, that had taken a direct hit from a missile. From what was left of it, the chopper had been, until recently, a Soviet Mi-24 Hind gunship, the heavily armed and armored helicopter that had earned the nickname "the flying tank" in Afghanistan. For more than a decade, these monsters ruled the skies over Afghanistan, delivering terrifying payloads like rockets, chemical weapons, or Spetsnatz soviet special forces troops on top of Afghan fighters and civilians. On this day, this Hind was not going anywhere. It was nothing more than twisted and burned metal. The lack of a bomb crater implied that the aircraft had been hit by a missile. We picked our way through the wreckage in awe. For years, we had been held in a trance by those spectacular missile-videos released by the Pentagon – the image of a building or a parked helicopter growing larger as the missile approached. Then, a flash, and static. For the detached viewer, it all looked like a videogame. Now, in front of us, lay the effects of those videos. The five bladed rotor head still sat on part of the charred engine block. The tail lay on one side, virtually untouched. One of the mujahideen grabbed what looked like the nose-mounted machine gun of the helicopter, and, like a child, played with it by making buzzing sounds with his lips.
We were all agog at the sight. This was the first and clearest face of the war. Val immediately started shooting. We had a hurried conference, and seeing that night was falling, decided to setup a live point beside the wreckage and broadcast the very first Filipino news advisory from within Afghanistan.
It was here that all our preparations paid off. We hauled out the videophone as well as the extra gasoline and a small generator. The mujahideen crowded around, wondering why this bunch of hairless asians were making such a big fuss out of a blasted helicopter. The consensus was for me to do the first live report, an honor in itself considering everything we had gone through to get here.
Setting up a satellite videophone in the early part of the new millenium was a pretty complicated affair by today’s standards. Two yellow suitcases held the satellite antennae, which you have to unfold and point at the satellite orbiting some 22,300 miles above the earth on a geostationary orbit. Thankfully, the whizkids who make these gadgets have tried their best to make setup simple enough for an educated gorilla to handle.
Earlier that year, the tech guys in ABS-CBN had announced they were holding a seminar for reporters and cameramen who were willing to learn how to use the videophone. That time, only two people signed up – Val and myself. It was pretty confusing for me, especially since I was still trapped somewhere between the middle ages and Windows 95. But I tried to digest the concepts and the new technology, while most other reporters were just happy to have their cutaways taken by their cameramen. It was just an afternoon seminar. A few months after the training, I offered to bring the whole satellite videophone setup with me on a coverage in Basilan. I even designed a new backpack for myself that would fit the hardened videophone case. The backpack was enormous by most standards, and it was a backbreaker when fully loaded. For the Basilan trip, I loaded up the videophone while my cameracrew scratched their heads in wonder. I just wanted to test the technology, and familiarize myself with its workings. At nights in Basilan, I would haul out the equipment and tinker with it, and call Manila if they have been receiving our signals. It didn’t occur to me that a few months later, that obsessiveness would pay off.
Videophone. The word is really misleading, because it sounds like any simple phone you can pick up. The videophones in 2001 were complex systems that took an army of goons to carry and a platoon of Einsteins to setup. The heart of the unit is a hardened laptop, encased in a thick, waterproof Pelican suitcase. Aside from the main unit, the videophone comes with the satellite antenna. Subscribers have the option of getting two antennae, which means faster transmission rates. Each satellite antenna comes in a nice yellow plastic suitcase. Unlike the typical dish antenna, this antenna is rectangular, and unfolds into a bigger rectangle that you point at the satellite. The antennae are then cabled to a separate modem that is connected to the laptop. So far, I’ve described the easy part. At this point, you connect.
The early videophones, aside from weighing in at a backbreaking fifty pounds, would only give you the quality of a badly lit webcam. The jitters and pixels were so bad that Max Headroom would win a breakdancing contest hands down. That’s why we were advised to avoid any movement when reporting live using the webcam. We were also advised to avoid feeding video that had any movement at all, as this resulted in plenty of pixels.
Val and I setup the videophone on the runway. Patrick took out the handycam and started shooting while Val tinkered with the equipment. Jim did an impromptu spiel to camera, saying that after the raggedy bunch of Afghans crowded around us had driven away their more organized enemy, they had virtually turned into children again, gaping in wonder at the new technology spread out around them.
With that on tape, Patrick panned to the left, where I was in an attempted conversation with a mujahideen. I had somehow liberated his AK-47 from his hands, and was inspecting it like a little kid. Ooohh AK-47 huh? 30 round magazine, 7.62 caliber…
Jim broke in, "tanong mo kung ilang taon na siya, ed." [Ask him how old he is.]
"You, what age, you?" I asked the muj in overly simplified English. "Me, 33, you, what age, you?"
For a moment, the muj appeared to have understood me, nodding as he was with apparent comprehension. At least, until he responded to my question by stretching out his hand and pointing… to some place to his right. This was one conversation that was not going to go anywhere.
"Oh. You over there? Somewhere over there? Okay." With that, I gave up translations for the day.
The conservative western media had long tended to portray the mujahideen as selfless, religious, disciplined fighters who moved mountains to boot out the Soviets. But there were obviously a number of clowns in their ranks, the unfunny kind. While some mujahideen dutifully got down on their knees for evening prayers, one of them mimicked pushing his rusty AK47 up the ass of an unknowing colleague who was prostate in prayer.
While we were setting up the videophone, Jim and Patrick went exploring with our new friends. They gave the two the grand tour, although there was a point when the mujahideen warned them to stay on the beaten track because of the danger of landmines. The Afghans didn’t know English – they just mimed by putting their fingers together, and then spreading them forcefully outwards and upwards. The message was pretty clear: watch where you pee, or you may end up having to carry more than the family jewels in your pocket.
It was already dark when we finally broke into some entertainment program in Manila to declare, with much pride, that we had just crossed the border into Afghanistan, and were now somewhere in Jalalabad, halfway to Kabul. In hindsight, it probably wouldn’t have raised a hiccup from any of the Filipino viewers in Manila. We were breaking into primetime entertainment programming, and there were other, uhm, more pressing stories in Manila such as the murder of actress Nida Blanca. But we were proud and happy to be in this unhappy place.
I don’t remember much of that live report, except for the fact that I was bathed in light in the middle of a dark mine-strewn airfield with no other light for miles around. It would have been a tempting target for anyone with a mortar. I looked in the direction of the camera [you almost never see the camera when you do spiels at night, because the bright camera light is in your eyes] and spoke of the great difficulty we had in crossing the border, and of our newfound friends, and the great battle that apparently preceded us in this airport. Then I turned sideways to let viewers get a peek at the wreckage of the helicopter behind me. It was over quickly. All our efforts, all our risks, boiled down to this brief accomplishment set in the middle of someone’s gameshow or soap opera. Such is TV.
It was dark when we finished, making it more difficult to pack up.
From the airport, we rattled on westward down the desert. It wasn’t totally dark, and we could make out the mountains to the south. The sky was a deep dark blue. What struck us most was the moon. It was a golden crescent shining against a dark indigo sea, the edges so unbelievably sharp and razor crisp because of the dry unpolluted Afghan sky. Because of the absence of humidity, skies and heavenly bodies are so much clearer, sharper, and distinct. It was the kind of sharpness that reminded you of paper cuts. It was a desert moon, one of many thousands probably seen by Afghans and Arabs over the generations. It wasn’t hard to imagine why the Arab Muslims chose the crescent as the symbol of their religion; night after night, it was this startling sight that sliced into their imaginations, embedding itself into their minds like the clear quiet voice of God.
Soon, we edged into Jalalabad town. There were no signs; homes just started sprouting up beside the roadway, and we soon came across two-story buildings as well. In sign language, we told Iltaf that we wanted to sleep. He drove up a driveway between two long buildings – this was the Jalalabad version of the Hilton.
We piled out, and Iltaf sought out the owner. Fortunately, the owner could manage to croak out some English; unfortunately, he also knew the value of his knowledge. At first, he quoted a reasonable price of 500 Pakistani rupees. As the night deepened, and more journalists arrived to check in, he tried to raise the rent a hundred percent.
The room wasn’t particularly comfortable. In fact, it was just that- a room. Now, after some thought, the room reminds me of a small classroom, with the part farthest from the door elevated by half a foot, like a platform. Perhaps in another era, this had been a school. There was a ragged carpet on the floor, and what passed for a couch and a table. There wasn’t even a bed. It must have measured three or four meters wide and long. Into this room went five journalists and the driver. Naturally, our first question was where to sleep. But being to grateful to have gotten this far, we decided to just haul out sleeping bags and sleep on the floor. Which was just as well, since Iltaf had cornered the only couch and was snoring on it long before we had gotten our equipment down from the van.
Hungry for both information and food, we stepped outside for a little exploring. Despite the language difficulties, we managed to buy some grilled meat of uncertain origin from a roadside stall, and some na’an bread, the unleavened staple of most afghan and arab diets. We dug into the toasty hot meat, despite being unsure of its origin or quality. The meat wonderfully tasty, and it was probably our best meal in days.
Dennis made light of our language difficulties. Someone turned on a handycam, and, like a TV reporter, Dennis spoke of how difficult it was to converse in English with the Afghans. So, he said, he’s had to resort to Bisaya. With that, he turned to the hotel owner/manager, and spoke to him in rapid Filipino that he wanted his eggs scrambled and nicely cooked. Whether the manager understood him or not is unclear. Still, the manager nodded enthusiastically, and gave him the thumbs up. At this point, Dennis raised his fist and shouted, Mabuhay ang New People’s Army, and the manager agreeably raised his fist as well.
In another shot, Dennis was with the manager, squatting over a stove. The manager took out a plastic spoon, and tried to get a gob of frozen cooking oil from a smelly can. The plastic spoon broke with a snap, and Dennis guffawed with laughter so loud that the manager laughed as well, raised his broken spoon, and said "one hundred dollars." The man was actually trying to charge us a hundred dollars for a plastic spoon! Dennis replied, "I will give you one hundred Philippine dollars." Not knowing the exchange rate, the old man agreed. Still a ripoff, if you ask me.
We tried to get a good night’s sleep in our first night in Afghanistan. It would have helped if Iltaf didn’t snore so loud. But we decided to be more understanding, since he got us into Afghanistan. We must have gotten two hours sleep that night, on the moldy carpet.
The next morning, we discovered that dozens of journalists had checked in while we were sleeping. We also discovered that a bunch of armed men had taken residence in the floor above us with an army of acronyms - RPG, AKs, and RPDs. The floor above us was a virtual arsenal. It was scary, because no one knew who was who. Were these Northern Alliance fighters, or some warlord’s goons? Or were they one and the same? As soon as we could pack up our bags, we loaded up and sped off for our next stop – Kabul.