Rocket Attack

The sounds I was hearing were not hard to mistake. I had heard them before, and was not amused to hear them again. One big one followed by two smaller ones. The house shook a bit and instinctively I dove for cover next to a wall, landing with a big thump that knocked the wind out of me. I didn’t get a chance to see the fire balls in the middle of the night. The rockets had apparently flown over our house and struck somewhere in the city, not far from us.

After letting the dust from the roof settle around me I ran upstairs and found my boss ready and waiting for me. We dashed out of our compound like mad men, heading straight for ground zero. We arrived there in less than 5 minutes, thru streets full of mud and houses ravished by decades of war. The impact site was an area called TV Hill; it was already full of onlookers, everyone yelling who knows what. The adrenaline at this point was flowing freely thru my body. In the cold of the night I was beginning to sweat profusely.

The rockets had impacted on an old cemetery causing no visible damage; another rocket hit an abandoned house. Thru our interpreter we let everyone know we were not soldiers but ordnance technicians there to help them. It was very difficult moving everyone back to a safe area. We looked around with our flashlights around the impact sites to make sure there were no unexploded ordnance laying about that might harm others.

We couldn’t determine where the rockets had been fired from and since Kabul is not a very safe place to be, especially at night (or at any other time for that matter) we decided not to push our luck and returned to the safety of our house. The residents, as well as all us foreigners got lucky this time. At the house I sat down in front of the television with a cold beer, not paying attention to the program. Now that the immediate danger was over and the adrenaline rush was gone, I started thinking “what the fuck is going on here? This is supposed to be a secured country!” My knees started shaking, and my palms got very sweaty. That was my second night in country, welcome to Afghanistan.

That’s Afghanistan, a young democracy in a very old country. The U.S. led coalition liberated the Afghan people from a very restrictive and suppressive Taliban regime, based on a strict adherence to the fundamentalism of the Koran. The Taliban government was backed in ways by the Al-Qaeda terrorist group, and even now a few years after the liberation, the Taliban is still wrecking havoc with the citizens. There are still kidnappings, beheadings, extortions, attacks and so forth, of both locals and foreigners.

There are three main reasons for the continued attacks. First, the famous inhospitable terrain allows the insurgents to move almost at will over the country, making it extremely difficult for our soldiers to capture these small pockets of resistance. Secondly, we are dealing with militants with religious motivations, waging a “Jihad”, a holy war against the infidels.  And lastly, the fact that the people of Afghanistan have never been conquered for long. This last reason is probably the most important. Through out the centuries, the Afghans have resisted every invasion. They will continue to resist forever, to the death if necessary. They have resisted and beaten every major country that has invaded, from Alexander the Great, the Mongols, the British Empire and the Soviet Union to name a few. Countries that are far superior militarily and technically.

It is not the wealth of the country, or its military superiority that counts in this country, it is the will of the people. The will to keep their country free, the will to exercise their right to choose their lifestyle without it being imposed by anyone.

 A year after that first rocket attack, they are still coming, but with less frequency. They will continue to come, of that I am certain.