A so called MRAP standing just outside Sar Howza on the day we visited the former girls school. I like this one, because it has a somewhat deceptive feel of tranquility to it (Photo: Heimken)

Afghanistan must be one of the most challenged countries in the world, at least the parts we got to see. This is by no means the fault of the general populace, but there are powers hard at work keeping this country down – they’re not just foreigners.

As Staff Sergeant Meredith of Apache Company 2-28 said, there are many men in powerful positions, who are not interested in educating their subjects out of fear they might start to want a piece of the pie.

War as a way of life

The role the Westerners are playing in Afghanistan, I’m not sure of. In some cases they might be helping the population, but at the same time the presence of this mighty war machinery is a welcome reason for some to keep fighting.

There are many men for who war has become a way of life and income. The infidel on Afghanistan’s soil is the best excuse for waging war.

The population is sitting on the fence, like onlookers, trying to establish, who will in the long run gain the upper hand. Whoever this will turn out to be, they will follow. Captain Perkins, a wise military man, said that this behaviour, or state of mind, has throughout history prevailed with people in wars.

He brought up the American War of Independence (1775–1783), when in America there was a majority of undecided onlookers, waiting to see, which side was winning.

It’s getting worse

The general impression I got from talking to aid workers, interpreters, locals and soldiers was that the situation in Afghanistan is worsening. Zee the taxi driver, who yesterday drove us to the airport, said he would try to leave.

So far, there is no peace and stability in Afghanistan, as the killing of former President Rabbani on Wednesday has proven graphically. The International Security and Assistance Force can – for whatever reason – not provide for what they intend to do.

On October 7 the war will enter its 11^th year. And I’m with international analysts, the secret service chief Nick Mohammed I spoke to in Mata Khan and Mullah Tuti in Shatowry: There will be no peace in this country as long as the situation in Pakistan is not resolved.

Why should the Taliban and insurgent networks even think of peace and reconciliation, as long as they’re supported in a safe haven across the border?!

Finally, the full V.I.P. treatment on our way back through Sharana (Photo: Loesche)

Meanwhile, Axel and I are back in Kabul. We arrived here yesterday at the military part of the airport. We are scheduled to fly on tomorrow in the morning to Dubai. The further we get from our embed, the more we wind down. Now, that we have some time to gather our thoughts, we slowly realise how exhausting this journey really was.

Three weeks were plenty.

We left the COP Sar Howza late on Saturday after we had the encounter with the mullah and mujahedeen Tuti. We were driven to the 172nd’s headquarters by MRAP convoy to Sharana and got there at around 22.00. The brigade’s PAO Major Buccino was waiting for us. He showed us our rooms. I was lucky to get room V.I.P. 2 this time. (About time. Buccino had been promising us the whole V.I.P. treatment since we first got here!).

In the news

I wrote a news piece for the agency about the mujahedeen getting involved in the peace process. Axel prepared three photos to go with it. We were both really knackered and slept in the next morning. Buccino had us signed up for a C-130 flight on Sunday afternoon.

We rode in his SUV to the terminal building, which in Sharana looks like a wooden saloon and stopped by at Green Beans Coffee, a franchise business that specialises on military bases. Once we got to the air field there were plenty of contractors and soldiers put down their names down for the flight. The roll call was at 16.55, we wouldn’t leave until 19.30. I suspected we wouldn’t make it because of the many passengers with higher priority.

The Game

Before the lights were turned off. The floor of the C-130 taking us from Sharana to Bagram (Photo: Loesche)

The most interesting thing about military air travel is that it’s so different from civilian air travel. First you don’t pay. The downside is that you – especially as a journalist – can get kicked off at any time, or the whole flight is just canceled or delayed. It’s a nerve racking game. There’s only one rule that counts: You know you made the flight when you are well in the air – even then you can just hope the plane won’t turn round.

Well, we made the flight … after standing lined up in two lines on the airfield for half an hour while the C-130 was being relived of it’s cargo it had flown in from wherever it had come from. The specialty about this flight was that we flew in complete darkness. The lights were switched off before the start and didn’t come on until after touch down in Bagram. (Axel was actually signaled to switch off his iPod because of the light from the display).

The glow of lightening

The only light source were the back ends of the night vision goggles of the two crewmen standing at the rear doors looking out the tiny round windows, probably on the look out for enemy on the ground. You could also see the faint glow of the emergency exits on the roof and the glowing of clock’s hands on our fellow passengers wrists.

It was the bumpiest flight so far. I was singing songs I learned when I was with the German paras doing my national service ten years back. At some point the few round windows in the hull lit up. Not to far away there must have been a thunderstorm. The noise of the aircraft was so loud that you surely couldn’t make out any thunder.

25 Minutes later we landed safely in Bagram. Axel an I shoved our luggage into the 24-hour holding area and made our way to the DEFAC. We had only had breakfast late in the morning. We were relieved to have made the first part of our air travel.

Hotel California

Bagram airfield before we left for Kabul. The white plane is unmarked. It wasn't a UN plane (Photo: Loesche)

Whilst we were eating chocolate ice cream sitting outside the DEFAC I told Axel that I wasn’t in favour of sleeping at “Warrior” again. On our first visit I saw a sign for a hotel on Disney Boulevard, the main road in Bagram. And, if I remembered correctly I had heard Major Buccino say something along the lines of: “Don’t all journalists stay at Hotel Such-and-Such in Bagram?” – after we had told him the story about our adventurous stay at “Camp Warrior” on our way out.

We walked for twenty minutes and were about to give up, after we had passed the Polish compound and the Egyptian field hospital, then finally we read the sign “Media Support Centre” and under it: “Hotel California”. We knocked on the door of a smallish wooden hut. We stepped inside and were greeted by a sergeant who said he had been expecting us.

At first, I though he was playing the “I’lI-pretend-I-now-what’s-going-on-even-if-I-don’t”-game. Then he showed us our names written on a white board and told us our flight for tomorrow had been booked. We were astonished. Another incident of following some instinct that leads you straight to your goal. We hadn’t known the media were so well catered for here.

Afghanistan from above

The pilot of the two propeller STOL flight took a sharp right turn and steep dive into Kabul airport. STOL stands for Short Take-Off and Landing - nuff said! (Photo: Loesche)

We slept in our own room with a bunk bed – a major improvement to the huge and crowded tent in “Camp Warrior”. It seemed befitting that the sergeant drove us all the way to the terminal the next morning. Where we were listed for a so called STOL flight (a regular scheduled flight) to Kabul.

At 13.30 we boarded a small two propeller air force plane with regular passenger seats and plenty of foot room. We clung to the windows for all of the 15 minute flight to Kabul, made some photos. It was the first flight that we could actually see where we were flying. We got billeted and put into a tent at KAIA. One step closer to home!

Bad ideas make for good photos! On the pick up next to the Afghan police gunner (Photo: Heimken)

Our embed with Alpha Company 2-28 in Sar Howza ended with a highlight. On Friday afternoon we found ourselves riding a green Afghan police Ford pickup truck with one of the most respected – and probably feared – mujahedeen of Eastern Afghanistan.

In the early afternoon a convoy of MRAPs left the base in Sar Howza heading down the main road to Orgun. I for the first time was riding in the armoured lorry the soldier’s call a LMTV. It’s more spacious and you have a much better sight out the windows than sitting in an MRAP. The downside is: you have much less protection against IEDs or RPGs.

Our mission was to deliver a metal dam gate to a remote village to the southeast of Sar Howza called Shatowry, not that far from Paktika’s biggest city Orgun. The unit that had been manning the COP Sar Howza before 2-28 took over in July got into a heavy fire fight with insurgents when they attempted to do the same in June.

Welcome to Shangri-La

An elder walks through an orchard in the village of Shatowry, home of mullah Tuti. We actually were given some apples. They were tasty (Photo: Heimken)

The village we delivered the gate to was more like a spread out hamlet along a river carrying only little water at this time of the year. The guys and I in the lorry drove up all the way along a winding path not built for the huge machines to a square building with loudspeakers on top, which turned out to be a mosque.

This little village seemed like a green refuge on the slope of the mountains hidden away from the dusty road to Orgun. This place was a bit like I imagine Shangri-La, the mysterious place from the novel of the same title, would be like. There was a certain calm about it. It seemed untouched by the war. The men and boys that gathered around us were very welcoming.

At that point just one MRAP and our lorry were parked in front of the mosque. The other soldiers had dismounted down by the river. We were being escorted by a translator and cultural adviser we had picked up from the brigade headquarters in Sharana the previous day.

Meet the Mullah

We hadn’t been parking up there for long when a relatively old man with a long beard, a turban and sunglasses came walking up the road towards where we were waiting. From his aura it was immediately clear that this was the man Captain Perkins had referred to as the big don nobody messes with – Mullah Tuti.

This man who is closing in on eighty and already has had a quadruple bypass made his name in the 1980s fighting the Russians. He is accredited with having captured a whole Russian convoy of Tanks and armoured vehicles.

Once earning his respect as a military commander, he still is one of the most respected religious and moral authorities in this region today. He has been approached by the head of the Taliban Mullah Omar and he has been invited by the Afghan President Hamid Karzai – both seeking his support.

Take a ride

Mullah Tuti up at the dam above Shatowry with Captain Perkins in the background (Photo: Heimken)

This rather short man is the guy you want to have on your side if you want to get anything done in this region. Apart from delivering the flood gate, this mission was to garner the Mullah’s support for the peace process with the Taliban.

If somebody can give instant weight to a peace shura where all the elders of the region meet then it is this man. So, after Captain Perkins and the Mullah had a chat in front of the mosque and the villagers had taken the metal flood gate from the back of the lorry the Mullah invited us to go and see the dam, higher up in the mountains.

Some sort of strange euphoria was in the air. In a minutes time Axel and me were sitting on in the back of the Afghan police pickup truck. I was holding on to specialist and army photographer Jacob Cohrs, racing up the hill on a seriously treacherous stretch mountain path.

With us in the open truck bed we had two deputies of the Mullah, one agricultural adviser and a young Afghan police officer standing up clinging on to a heavy Russian built machine gun mounted on the roof of the truck. The cultural adviser, Captain Perkins and the Mullah had taken their seats in the front cabin alongside the driver and two police officers.

Stupid idea

We were literally clinging on to each other for our lives. The police driver was heading up the narrow washed out slope like a berserker to the sound of tires losing their grip on the steep dusty slope filled with potholes. I was sitting on the side of the truck.

At some point the vehicle was bouncing so violently I thought I was going to fly over board. It was a good thing I had my helmet and body armour on. If I went flying off the truck I would break some bones but probably wouldn’t be fatally injured.

After we had gotten hold of the situation and what we were doing a second worry popped up in our minds. Axel asked me: “Do you think what we are doing here is a good idea?”. I gave it a brief moments thought:

We were somewhere in the remotest region of Eastern Afghanistan. We had jumped onto a pickup truck with one of the most feared Mullahs of the region and were driving at break neck speed up a steep mountain trail to an unknown destination …

“I’m not quite sure”, I answered back to Axel. I was contemplating how big a chance we had of winning a fire fight against determined Taliban. If I counted correctly, we had the firepower of two M4 assault rifles and Perkins pistol.

The Afghan police surely had their AK-47 rifles and the big ass machine gun. But would they be willing to defend these infidels against the Taliban with their lives? We had no means of communicating with the convoy and soldiers we left behind in the village.

Protected guests

Mullah Tuti standing on the dam above the village of Shatowry (Photo: Heimken)

This seemed to be a very stupid thing to do. Then I thought: “We are with the single most respected guy in this area, even the most rogue of Taliban respected, or rather feared. No Talib would be bold enough to try and harm the guests of this man.

We got to the stone dam a couple of hundred feet uphill in the mountains above the village surrounded by a beautiful mountain landscape. We inspected the 30 by 5 meters structure for which the flood gate had been constructed. Down below, only a trickle of water was flowing downstream.

Standing on the dam the Mullah was telling anecdotes to Captain Perkins and the cultural adviser. Axel and I were so taken by the whole experience we shot the occasional photo but seemed like in trance breathing the thin mountain air  – just hoping we would get back to the village unharmed.

After 15 minutes we made our way back to the pickup truck. The Mullah was joking that he had at his disposal some bounty that surely was worth a few million dollars – laughing all the way to the truck. Racing down hill the driver switched on his blue light.

An MRAP roling through the river bed in the village of Shatowry. I always wonder whether the litle boys get exited by the huge vehicles like I used to when I saw a fire engine or tank when I was a boy (Phot: Heimken)

Tea at the mosque

The Mullah invited us to the mosque for a glass of tea and a chat. He and his men went in to the two room building with high ceilings and red carpets. We took off our body armour and helmets and sat down on the floor in the first room, while in the adjacent room the Mullah and his men were praying.

A short while later, they came over and to my surprise the Mullah sat down right between me and the Captain. The cultural adviser sat down in front of us and started explaining that the Axel and I had come from Germany and we would like to ask him some questions.

I fingered the side pockets of my trousers. To my dismay I realised I had lost my voice recorder somewhere along the way. I got my notebook out and started off by thanking the Mullah for having us as his guests today.

Abraham and Reagan

Axel was told that actually nobody was allowed to take photos, but he could take one or two. Axel winds me up calling me Peter Scholl-Latour (Photo: Heimken)

The Mullah replied, he hadn’t even slaughtered a goat for us yet. And he went on to explain that the Pashtunwali, the Pashtun social code, commanded him to respect his guests. And also, Abraham had set the example for Muslims to treat their guests well and share.

I said: “Thanks anyway”. I dared to ask the first question and wanted to know whether he would come to the shura to be held the next day in Sar Howza. “Okay. Even if I don’t have a car, I will walk”, he answered jokingly.

You would imagine one of the fiercest former Mujahedeen in the country to be a grave and serious man. Instead this fellow sitting next to me was in high spirits cracking jokes all the time having a laugh with his guests.

He went on to tell us the story of how he as a military commander with one of the seven big mujahedeen organisations fighting the Russians was invited by former President Ronald Reagan to Washington in the 1980s. He said that one of them, Mohammed Yunus Khalis, was a very simple fellow.

The other fighters though of it as a bad idea and advised against it but Khalis actually went on to ask Reagan, who he thought of as an honourable man: “Why don’t you just become a Muslim?” The president replied: “You just keep your religion and I keep mine”.

The tee served was sweet. At one point the Mullah made a big old burp. One of the elders who had taken seats on the other side of the room spoke up. “You should definitely hold on to the man in your middle. He is the greatest of all Taliban”. The whole room cracked up in laughter.

No sleepover

The Mullah went on to tell more stories. One was about how the Taliban had taken prisoners and acted like “animals”.  And how he stepped in to free the 50 or so prisoners they had taken just before the holy month of Ramadan. Even the government of Afghanistan treated their prisoners with more respect the Mullah said, indicating contempt for both sides.

After half an hour our the talk slowed. The Mullah looked over to me and said something smiling. I found myself smiling back and nodding. The interpreter said: “The Mullah invites us for a meal for which he would have goats slaughtered and we could stay the night as his guests”. Would we accept?

Captain Perkins saved the day by diplomatically pointing out that there was still some urgent business for him to take care of back at the outpost. The Mullah accepted the excuse and we all rose to our feet. I had severe pins and needles having sat with crossed legs for the whole meeting.