Sarobi, Afghanistan

November 2001

The man was waiting for us at the turn of the mountain road.
From a more clinical point of view, it was the perfect ambush position. The road was rocky and had never seen a drop of asphalt. To compound things, the turn and the incline had also forced us to slow down.
He was dressed in the ubiquitous shalwar chemise, the loose knee-length blouse and baggy trousers common in Afghanistan and Pakistan. An earth-colored turban wrapped around his head completed the image. All in all, he would have looked pretty harmless, if not for the full sized AK-47 in his hand - and the fact that he was flagging us down.
We weren't particularly worried at that point. It wasn't the first time that an armed Afghan flagged us down. On the road to Jalalabad, a group of armed Afghans also flagged us down and charged us a small toll fee. To make things official, they even gave us a handwritten receipt. Of course we couldn't read the Pashto [or was it Arabic?] on the scrap of paper they gave us. For all we knew, they just gave us grandmother's favorite recipe for boiled goat's hooves. But it worked with the pencil pushing auditors back home, so it suited us just fine.
There was something different about this man, though. He flagged us down, and over the protests of Dennis, Iltaf our Pakistani driver slowed. Don’t stop, Dennis said, don’t stop. But it was too late, and the van lost momentum and coasted to a stop. We glanced at each other nervously.
As an outgrowth of the former British Empire in India, Pakistan naturally follows that strange British propensity for driving on the "wrong" side of the road. After the Romans, the British may have built much of the world’s roads, transportation being a major factor in the reach of any empire. But in the course of just one century, Britain had lost much of its empire, and consequently, much of its clout in dictating which side of the road the world drives.
Iltaf, being Pakistani, and this being a Pakistani registered van, was driving from the right side of the vehicle, which meant that he was right in front of me. The gunman leaned in and quickly scanned the insides of the van. For a brief moment, our eyes met, and I was not sure what I saw. He did not look extraordinarily cruel or malicious, nor did he have the glazed look of someone swimming in a haze of opium, or the crazed look of bloodlust. In fact he just looked like any ordinary Afghan, except he had a gun. He then spoke rapidly to Iltaf in pashto. I couldn't follow their exchange, and even if Iltaf wanted to tell us what was being said, he probably couldn't as he spoke no English. Inside the van, we were exchanging worried looks. Then the man drew back and motioned Iltaf to drive the van up a side road, a path really, that led further up a rocky hill. Iltaf hesitated.
Just then, a smaller man ran down the hill waving his AK-47 and barking commands. Behind him was another armed Afghan. And beyond him, still another. The guns were now pointed at us. Putang ina, someone said.
I think there was a brief discussion on whether we should make a run for it. Some obviously wanted to just gun the engine and speed off. But it wouldn’t have been easy. It would take great effort for the van to gain momentum since we were in an incline on a rocky road. And it really is difficult to outrun automatic rifle fire, especially if the man wielding the rifle is just beside you, separated only by a thin sheet of aluminum and glass. I no longer remember the discussion clearly. But in hindsight, even assuming that we agreed quickly on what course of action to take, it would not matter. Iltaf, the man who controlled the wheel, the man who would decide our fate, also could not understand English.
At this point, Iltaf had no more choice. He put the van in gear, turned the steering wheel right, and gingerly proceeded up the side road while the armed men surrounded us. It was disconcerting, to say the least - we were out in the middle of nowhere, on a mountain road, accosted by armed and excitable men, and now they were making us take a detour. How remote can you get. Ten meters off the main road, the smaller man, apparently the guy in charge, banged on the van's side and made it stop. He strode up to my window, put his hand in, and peered inside at us and our stuff. He looked young, and his face was not seamed or wrinkled by the Afghan sun. It is difficult to tell age with Afghans. They either look very young or very old. If the first gunman had that neutral look, bossman seemed agitated and very aggressive. I took the chance and grasped his hand and spoke the customary Islamic greeting "assalamu alaykum," peace be with you. Traditionally, the other person is obliged to respond with the greeting alaikum assalam, and with you, peace. Sometimes, this disarms muslims and breaks the ice. On more than one occassion, it surprised the other person that a foreigner had bothered to learn the islamic greeting. But this guy apparently was in no mood for niceties. He just let go of my hand and barked more orders in pashto. At that point, we knew we were really in trouble.
One of the men grasped the handle of the van's door and pulled the sliding door open. Until that moment, we were still fooling ourselves with the false sense of security provided by the van. We were still cocooned, separated from the rest of Afghanistan by a thin shell of metal, rubber and plastic. When the gunman opened the huge sliding door, we felt very naked and exposed. Then he motioned us to step out. Naturally, we all hesitated. Then the small big boss started shouting, and we heard the snick of charging bolts being pulled back and rounds being chambered into the rifles. Small big boss was on my side, so I could see everything he was doing. I was pretty miffed that he snubbed my greeting, but I was ready to forgive him as soon as he lifted his AK-47 with his left hand, yelled, and cocked his gun with his right. The AK carries the bigger 7.62mm bullet, and makes a distinctively chilling sound when you cock it, and the rifle cartridge snaps into place inside the chamber.
I had a small videocamera on the seat beside me. Thinking and hoping they were just out to rob us, i got my thick black jacket and used it to cover the camera. With that, we all got down from the van, except for Iltaf.
At this point, Val had the presence of mind to press the record button of his huge camera. It was much later that we learned that Val had been recording. The images he captured were spooky in their own way. The first images were ghost-white as the camera iris struggled to adjust to the harsh afghan sunlight. Then, figures of men walking up a barren rocky hill. The uncertainty was thick in the air, you could almost feel it while watching the video, see it in the way the men walked with leaden legs towards what could be a very long day, or a very short life. In the video, Dennis is ahead in the distance with the boss. Patrick follows, with Jim ambling very slowly behind with his head down and his hands behind him, as if deep in thought. I enter the frame, walking ahead to Dennis and the boss.
The human eye sees a particular color because that is the only one reflected by the object. For example, an apple looks red because when light strikes the apple, the fruit absorbs all the other colors of the rainbow except red, which it reflects into your eyes. In Afghanistan, there’s a lot of khaki going around. The word khaki comes from the Persian and Urdu word "khak", or dust. It was developed by the British during its Indian and Afghan campaigns, as a suitable replacement for the screaming red colors its armies favored in other less brutal parts of the world where men have fooled each other into thinking that warfare was a gentlemanly sport like foxhunting. South and Central Asians, who had little use for such trappings, soon taught the British the need for a more practical sense of battlefield fashion.
It is always easy to look back at more dangerous times and see how we could have done things differently. Sometimes, after sufficient time and introspection, after running the incident over and over again in our minds like a looped reel, we may convince ourselves of feelings and thoughts, often heroic, that we may not really have had. Having said that, it is difficult to describe with all certainty everything that really went through our minds at that time. There was terror, certainly. And there was a numbing sense of helplessness. The rest, I attempt to recall with all honesty after many years, so please bear with me.
I remember looking around a dun-colored landscape, thinking there was not a single tree or shrub to hide behind, no place to escape. Not even a respectably sized boulder. Just the endless khaki-color of rocks and sand and sun. In the video, everything seems washed out, because Val didn’t have the time or chance to flick on the white balance. But even in our memories, the images already seemed washed out. There was nothing, no other color to reflect the harsh sunlight, just a monochrome of rocks and sand and dust whose starkness was just highlighted by the shadows of noon. And while the sun beat down on us from its apex, I seem to remember feeling a chill, the kind no amount of sunlight can drive away because it comes from within.
We were being led up a small rocky trail that turned left, away from Iltaf and the van, and out of sight of the road. I do remember thinking we had just been kidnapped, and wondered if this was what it was like for all the kidnapping victims of the Abu Sayyaf in Basilan that we have covered. But what really made it terrifying was the knowledge that we could not communicate with our kidnappers. The Abu Sayyaf, for all their arrogance, cruelty, and intransigence, could at least speak Filipino. But how do you beg for your life if you cannot even speak the language?
And I remember, after feeling that chill, worrying how brutally cold the afghan nights were, and how the midday sun could sear unprotected flesh, and for that I cursed myself for leaving my jacket to hide the camera. And lastly, and this I remember clearest of all – I worried that we were about to simply disappear from the face of the earth.
In hindsight, this may have been the most frightening moment in our professional lives, frightening not just because of the uncertainty it left us, but because of the uncertainty it would leave our families. This was Afghanistan. It would take several days before Manila would start wondering why we never showed up in Kabul. After that, I can’t imagine where Manila will look first. Anyone who tries to track us down would only find a paper trail until the Pakistani border, after which we would have virtually disappeared into the Afghan dust. The whole country was a wasteland of angry warlords, hungry refugees, and passive-aggressive bandits; it’s hard to imagine how anyone would be concerned with the fate of a group of third world journalists. I remember hoping that if the unimaginable happens, someone, anyone would be left to tell our story. It was a terribly morbid thought, but for centuries, people in this land tended to disappear without a trace, their bones bleaching and mixing with the rock.
I also remember thinking that if this was trouble, I didn't want to be passive about the whole thing. Dennis was ahead of the column with an armed bandit, followed by the boss, followed by Patrick and Jim. I came behind followed by Val. Up ahead I could see that Dennis and the bandit had stopped on a plateau and dropped to one knee. I strode ahead of Patrick and Jim to try to plead with the boss. That was when I noticed one bandit rifling through Dennis' camera bag, which was on the ground. He rummaged through it, found a nice shiny camera flash, turned it this way and that, and stuffed it in his pocket without a word. It was kinda funny in a twisted sense - the man pocketed the flash, but he didn’t bother taking the expensive camera hanging from Dennis' neck. Later, we would joke about how the bandits would try to make the flash work in the middle of the desert without a camera. Much later, the thought bordered on the hilarious - around the campfire, the bandits would try to figure out what the flash does. Someone presses the wrong button, and the flash goes off with a brilliant, well, flash. In a panic, everyone whips out his AK-47 and starts blasting away at the offending device.
Back on the hill, the boss was standing over Dennis and the other bandit. Dennis, for some strange reason, took out a soda from his pocket and graciously offered it to the boss. "Pepsi?" Dennis eagerly offered, before tossing in a surprise line that only he could pull off: "The choice of the new generation!"
I remember that because it was so hilariously ridiculous that I didn’t know if I should laugh or get worried that Dennis was losing it. Then I remembered that Dennis tended to get funnier the more nervous he got.
"Filipini, filipini... Journalist, journalist!" I pleaded with small boss. The man looked up at me as if I were a talking goldfish, barked a few words, and then started patting my pockets. We were being robbed at gunpoint! I pretended not to know what he was trying to do, and he patted my pocket more insistently and held his palm out. When I hesitated some more, he just reached into my right hip pocket while clutching his AK with his right hand. Getting the message, I turned out my hip pockets and gave him all the pesos and Pakistani rupees I had inside. After emptying my hip pockets, he demanded I empty my cargo pockets as well, and started patting them down. Resigned to the robbery, I gave him some trinkets from my cargo pockets. He gave me another pat down to make sure I was well fleeced.
While he got a handful of money and trinkets, small boss failed to get the biggest prize – my wallet with around six or seven hundred dollars inside. I usually keep my wallet in my back pocket like most Filipinos.
Then it occured to me - the shalwar chemise, the long flowing top and the incredibly baggy trousers which everyone here wore, only had hip pockets and no back pockets. People who have lived their entire lives without a back pocket would probably think other people would have no need for one. So while he gave me a final pat down, I kept my arms down at my side, with my hands bent back and fingers loosely shielding my back pocket. I was hoping that if it did occur to him to pat my ass as well, my hands would get in the way of a thorough search. When his hands patted me down one last time, I held my breath as his fingers searched around my hips and brushed against my hands. His hands were just inches away from my wallet when he gave up. It actually worked, and all he got from me were a few dollars, several hundred pesos, and a bunch of Pakistani rupees.
After fleecing me, he moved on to Patrick, and zeroed in on his vest pocket where he kept his wallet and passport. Again, the guy just reached in, fished out Patrick's wallet, and unburdened him of his cash. It wouldn't have been so bad if he also didn't insist on taking Patrick's passport as well. We all protested. In a place like this, a passport could be the next best protection for a foreigner, aside from a gun. The whole time, Val was recording the scene. Finally, the boss gave back Patrick's passport. All this time, the other bandits were robbing the rest of the group. I noticed that while the other bandits robbed us, at least one of them stood a distance away with his rifle at the ready. If we made any sudden move, or were foolish enough to grab a gun or make a run for it, we would still have to contend with at least one armed bandit who knew the weapon and the terrain.
Then, it was Val's turn. The boss fished out Val's palmtop, which was thick and tempting, though not as shiny as Dennis' flash. Val protested the loudest, saying the palmtop contained all his contacts, even his contacts in the Abu Sayyaf. Again we protested, but the boss ignored us. When we protested some more, he babbled back; when we protested louder, he started shouting. Then he raised his rifle, pulled back the bolt again, and let it snap forward. The warning was pretty clear to everyone. But Val wasn't about to be put off by a rifle. Somehow, and until now I still cannot figure out how this happened because the camera shut off at this point, Val was able to reach out and fish his palmtop out of the hands of the boss without him shooting us. The man was looking at Val's palmtop, probably trying to figure out what it does, when Val just took it back. The boss just seemed to shrug and leave the matter at that. Also, the bandits didn't take Val's huge camera. Later we decided that the camera was too big for the Afghans to lug around without a car, and even harder to operate. What would they do? Open a video production outfit to shoot afghan weddings? Still, it was amazing that Val came away from the experience with his camera and palmtop intact. I still can't figure out how Val did it. That man lives a charmed life.
Val pocketed his precious palmtop, mumbling something about stupid bandits and stupid drivers. With the boss and his men finished with their looting, we waited in suspense for what was coming next. A million thoughts played through our minds: Would they also rob us of our clothes and shoes, and leave us to alternately freeze and bake in the middle of nowhere? Or would they drag us off someplace and ask for ransom? Somehow, thoughts of that huge jar of petroleum jelly in the car came to mind. Or would they simply shoot us. Finally, the boss waved his fingers at us, as if trying to make us disappear. Uncertain what he meant, we stood rooted on the spot for a few moments, until someone finally started walking down to the van. If the walk up the hill seemed like eternity, the walk down seemed even longer. We kept looking back at them to gauge their intentions. We were so worried that they would start shooting us as soon as our backs were turned, that it was difficult to stop oneself from running down the hill. We tried to act nonchalant, even as curses flew all around.
In the driver’s seat, Iltaf could see us walking back. Perhaps in his excitement to get out of there, he started backing away even before we got to the van. For a moment, I remember worrying that after finally being freed by these bandits, we would still shrivel to death in the desert because our driver panicked and sped away even before we could get into the van. Thankfully, Iltaf realized his mistake immediately, and stopped to take us in. Or perhaps it was because we hadn’t paid him yet.
I remember distinctly, as we neared the red van, seeing a small sedan speed down the road where we had been stopped earlier. The car was also captured on Val's video. I'm not certain, but i think they were the Japanese journalists we met on the road earlier this morning. Fortunately for them, they got away unmolested because the bandit group was busy with us. Down at the van, Iltaf was still in the driver's seat, quaking, while an armed bandit stood to one side, guarding him. We climbed into the van, and Dennis started cursing the poor driver, who started jabbering back in Pashto. Naturally, we couldn’t understand a word he said, neither could he understand us. But since we were shouting at him, it was pretty clear what we were saying. For his part, he kept putting his hands to his chest and spreading them out, as if to say, what could I do. Poor fellow, it was hard to blame him. That time, we unanimously decided that we should have just ignored the armed bandit and sped up the road. Of course we had the wonderful benefit of hindsight. For all we knew, it was just another guy asking for toll fees, like what happened on the road to Jalalabad the day before. And if we tried to speed past him, what was to stop him from opening fire on our van with his automatic rifle? And how sure were we that he didn't have his armed friends waiting further down to road to take us out if we ran over their front man? If we had ignored the armed checkpoint in Jalalabad, they would probably have blown so many holes in the van that we would whistle at minimum speed. And that time, they only asked for a few pesos worth of toll fee, and even gave us a receipt. It is hard to make intelligent decisions when you don't have much information to work on. But on that day, at that time, we heaped all our fears, anger and frustration at the one guy in the van who couldn't understand us. Poor Iltaf probably worried that we were about to beat him up. Of course we weren't - he was the only one who knew the road to Kabul.
In the van, we took stock of our situation - most of our cash had been taken, but our important papers were intact. Our cash situation had changed from frightening to terrifying - i had five or six hundred dollars stashed away in my wallet, and it turned out that I had the biggest amount of money left in the ABSCBN group. If anyone else had any bigger amount, he certainly didn’t volunteer the information. How we were going to last in this place with that amount was anyone's guess. Also, we noticed that they took one of our small videocameras. The older videocamera that I hid under my jacket was still there. One of the bandits also took my pakul.
Once we got going again, we took turns cursing poor Iltaf. But after a while, we all lapsed into silence as the mountain road rode up steep canyons. On one side, a sheer drop plummeted to a raging river. On the other side, rocks and cliff faces. On either shoulder of the road, shattered hulks of cars, trucks, and tanks were left to rust; the accroutments of modern civilization left abandoned to join the ancient dust of afghanistan. As the twisted skeletons of past wars sped by the window, it occured to us that for all the terror we had just gone through, we were still so very lucky to be alive.