Letter from Kabul - 1995

27 April 1995


After 16 years of war, including five years of bloody civil war, Kabul is peaceful. The fighting ceased on 21 March as Government forces drove the Taliban faction out of rocket range of Kabul. How long this peace will last is unclear, but the government in Kabul is looking very strong at the moment. During the last three weeks it has sunk in to Kabulis that there is peace. Countless number of shops have opened, a daily newspaper has started, music, onced banned, is now heard in restaurants. Women from wealthier families have cast aside their drab clothing and bright pink, red, yellow and blue clothes are starting to be seen.

It is strange for me having only known Kabul under siege to feel peace and calm. Over 30,000 people have been killed in Kabul and countless others wounded and maimed for life. But such is their resilience, Kabulis are rebuilding bombed homes and putting their shattered lives together. There are still about 400,000 people who need assistance and in response, 15 NGO's (non-governmental organisations) have got together and formed the Kabul Emergency programme and have a
coordinated strategy to feed, restore water supply, improve sewage and rubbish collection etc. Although we (the ICRC and Federation) have not joined because we have to remain neutral and impartial because of our mandates, we work closely with them. It is a very difficult time nation wide for the Red Cross, Red Crescent movement, because we must strive to work with all factions and not be seen to be giving a disproportionate amount to one factional area in comparison to the others.


Between 11 and 17 April I went to Badakhshan, the remote north-eastern province of Afghanistan which includes the Wakhan corridor where the Pamir mountains join the Hindu Kush. Our main reason was to give assistance to the village of Qarluk which was engulfed by a huge landslide late last month. Over 350 people were killed out of the approx. 750 people living in the village. All the women in the village were killed except three and most of the children. It happened at 11 am so most of the men were out ploughing in the fields.

Due to an ecological disaster facing the whole of Badakhshan, caused by overgrazing by cattle, sheep, goats, deforestation, ploughing and planting on steep mountain slopes etc, many villages are threatened by landslides. We encouraged a number of people to evacuate and rebuild in safer places.


We also visited other districts in Badakhshan. The general situation of the 1 million or so people living here is appalling. The province borders Russian Tajikistan and there is regular conflict on the border. Russian jets have been bombing villages inside
Badakhshan killing many innocent civilians. They do this saying that Afghanistan is harbouring Tajik rebel fighters. When I was in Faisabad jets Russian jets flew overhead and bombed a village 6 km away killing 6 people and seriously wounding many others. The following day Russian jets bombed neighbouring Taloquan killing over 100 innocent people. When I visited the district capital of Baharak I saw many houses flattened by Russian bombs and grieving families who had recently lost family members. In the hills behind Baharak, frightened women and children shelter in caves at night to shelter from the Russian aerial bombing. In the northern districts of Darwaz and Shegnan, famine is affecting large numbers of people. Traditional foods such as wheat is in short supply and starving people roam the country-side scavenging the land for wild flowers, tree bark, wild honey which keeps them alive. To replace the wheatflour which is the staple, people are grinding mulberries and making a flour from it. Many women and children have died of starvation and malnutrition is rife. To get news from Darwaz, 13 men from the district came to Kabul. It took them 15 days to fight there way over snow-bound passes to reach Faizabad the capital of Badakshan. It took them a further month to get to Kabul to break the news. The region is so remote and impossible to drive there from Kabul.
We had to wait over a week to get suitable weather to fly. Once there we travelled on mountains tracks for some of the way by Jeep and then walked and rode horses. We have mounted a major relief operation to assist the people of
Badakhshan. We flew in 700kg of medical supplies plus food and key items. I am also awaiting a charter plane from Iran with further relief supplies. In addition, I have sent a very urgent report to Geneva imploring them to inform the international community; governments and NGO's etc.


However, despite the tragedy unfolding, one can't but help notice the incredible beauty of the high mountains of the region. We were in the region north of the Hindu Kush and travelled through the Kohi Xaja Muhammad (range) which goes up to 5000m. As we crossed the high passes the massive bulk of the Hindu Kush was closeby to the south. Huge hanging glaciers spill from the high summits and the jumble of rock, ice and glaciers give this part of the Hindu Kush shape and form unique to the Greater Himalayan chain. Kush.

For the first week of April I was in Nangahar and Laghman provinces in the east of Afghanistan where we have ARCS branches. I think I wrote a little about that in my last letter.

I find that most days while I am working I find something which shocks, saddens or makes me very happy. Today I went with Ahmed Gizo to the Kharte Se hospital in the west of Kabul. On arrival we visited the men's ward which had 80 patients packed in. About 35 of them have had legs blown off during the past week by land-mines. Most of them are in a lot of pain as they have to regularly soak the open stumps in plastic bags of iodine to prevent infection until the final operation is done and the healing takes place. As I was talking to one man who had both legs blown off above the knee just two days ago, a nurse dipped the raw stump which looks as if someone had just chopped his leg off with a meat cleaver exposing bone, muscle and flesh were raw - as his stump touched the iodine he let out a piercing scream and then cried like a baby for some time after wards. I have seen thousands of people of all ages with legs blown off in the last 18 month and I find myself getting very angry with the countries that produce these weapons of destruction, and the armies that use them. However my anger subsided later when I visited the Red Cross orthopeadic centre were artificial legs are made and fitted. My good friend Alberto from the Italian Red Cross runs the centre. He has been doing the job for five years and employs about 150 local staff who do brilliant work producing , limbs, wheelchairs and crutches. There are three other Red Cross orthopeadic centres in Afghanisatm.

Student army fills Kabul with hope and dread

We are reading so much, viewing so much, about the Taliban (Taleban) today in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I lived in Kabul from 1993 -98 and remember in 1995 they were advancing on Kabul as a fledgling student army.

Here is a flashback to that time in 1995 when Tim McGirk from the Independent Newspaper described the situation..


Wednesday, 22 February 1995

"Garoom! Garoom! Rocket!" shouted the old Afghan, pretending to fall to the earth as if he'd been killed. It was a perfect act, for the Afghan had plenty of experience of seeing how bodies flew when a rocket landed. Many relatives had perished in the hail of rockets that obliterated parts of Kabul during a two-year siege by renegade mujahedin.

The rocket attacks on Kabul stopped nearly two weeks ago, when a force of Islamic students known as the Taliban ambushed the rebels of Hezbi Islami, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and sent them running down Kabul's icy ridges. The old Afghan said: "We hate rockets and guns. If these new people, the Taliban, give us peace, then we are with them."

With 2,000 Taliban fighters poised 8 miles outside the city and another 8,000 further south with more tanks and a dozen MiG fighters, many of Kabul's inhabitants look on the students with gratitude and dread. Because of Taliban, the Hezbi Islami rebels are in retreat. Because of the students, peace has descended on the city. The roads from the south are open, bringing badly needed food, medicine and blankets.

However, the Taliban might be next in the queue to pummel Kabul. Their leader, a one-eyed cleric, Mohammed Omar, claims his students have a divine mission to bring peace to Afghanistan by disarming warlords whose feuds have left over 20,000 Afghans dead in Kabul alone. President Rabbani refuses to give up his guns to the students. A confrontation looms.

In Kabul there are entire neighbourhoods where no buildings stand. The rubble has collapsed into the streets and only brick walls remain. If peace is not reached in Kabul between the warring mujahedin factions, it will not be long before the capital is too ravaged for Afghans to bother fighting over.

Like the houses, with their roofs, doors and windows blown away, the people of Kabul have been disfigured by war. Many lack limbs. They hobble through the debris, picking for anything that might be of use; a picture frame to burn for a few minutes of warmth, or a sheet of tin to shield them from the wind during the bitter nights.

Many of Kabul's 700,000 inhabitants have moved house several times in the siege, whenever the attackers switched the direction of their assault. The eastern and southern neighbourhoods are so badly shelled that many fled to the west, where they are crammed into metal shipping containers. Some live 16 to a classroom in an abandoned school. Bob McKerrow, a New Zealander who heads the Kabul delegation of the International ederation of the Red Cross, which is bringing in medicine and supplies, said: "Malnutrition is getting worse in Kabul. I've had mothers come up to me and tell me their milk has run dry. These mothers are having to feed their babies on bread and tea. There's nothing else." Relief agencies fear Afghanistan may become a forgotten war, neglected by the donor countries.

At the same time, new Mercedes speed through apocalyptic scenes that resemble Dresden after the bombing. These limousines were given to militia commanders by President Rabbani to buy their loyalty, but people in Kabul see the cars as symbols of the warlords' corruption.

Yesterday, relief workers arrived in old Kabul, a human anthill of mud houses hanging from a steep mountainside. They brought two lorries of blankets and plastic mats. The scramble for these items was so frenzied that one militiamen clubbed people with the end of a rocket-propelled grenade.

One woman, clutching a new plastic mat, was Qandi Ghul, 40, a widow with six children. A month ago, her husband thought it was safe to return to old Kabul. He was wheeling their few belongings on a cart when a rocket killed him.

"We have no money. No roof. Two of my children work in a bakery, earning 7,000 Afghans a day (£1.50). rom that, we must all live." The woman, lifting her veil to speak, added: "If the Taliban make it cheaper to buy a piece of nan bread, then let them come."

The Islamic traditionalism of the Taliban worries some Kabul women, many of whom had Western the Communists and the mujahedin came to power. The Taliban is against women working or leaving their homes without a hejab, a long veil that covers the whole body except for the face.

irozan, 20, a graduate who supports 10 people in her family on the £60 a month she earns cleaning cups in an office, said: "I don't mind wearing a hejab. It goes with Islam and I feel relaxed wearing it with so many mujahedin roaming around. But if the Taliban won't let me work to feed my family, I don't know how we'll survive."

If you want to read further, check out the story below.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/student-army-fills-kabul-with-hope-and-dread-1574261.html