Arrival in Afghanistan

I have traveled a lot in my years in the military and seen many different things but Afghanistan was different than any other place.

First, for those readers that have never been to Afghanistan or any other far away place…getting there is an experience in it itself. The trip there took me from Florida to Washington, to Germany and to Dubai, where I spent 3 days waiting for the flight into Kabul. That first part of the journey is bad enough to discourage even the best of travelers.

Flying into Kabul took me over some pretty rugged terrain, and incredibly huge mountains. Looking out the window I saw nothing but brown, hardly a patch of green. Granted, it was the middle of the winter, January 2004, but I was expecting to see at least a snow covered city. Kabul is located in the middle of what seemed to me a crater. In actuality, the city is surrounded on most sides by mountains so the plane cannot make a straight on approach. Instead we flew around in circles over the city losing altitude, like a bird of prey circling over its victim, until the right time to make its kill. A few feet over the runway I noticed several groups of men working to one side, I immediately recognized them as deminers. I just couldn’t believe that demining was going on just a few meters from an active runway. Everywhere I looked there were signs of war, abandoned military vehicles, shot up houses, and military encampments. I was thinking to myself “here we go again, in the middle of the shit once more”.

I was one of the first ones off the plane. I nearly ran to the head of the line since I had heard they were notoriously long. At the immigration line, the line completely disappeared and chaos reigned, it immediately reminded me of the Ethiopian airport. From experience I knew to do nothing and let the crowd and mayhem sort itself out. Before I knew it I was in the back of the line, so I sat down and lit a cigarette with an Italian woman coming to work for the UN.  While sitting there I took notice of the inside of the terminal (if you want to call it that). There were bullet holes all over the inside as well as explosion damage along with shrapnel “injuries” to the walls and overhead. I was trying to imagine what kind of fighting took place in here, had anyone died right in the same place I was now sitting, surely so.

It took nearly an hour to move the 20 meters to the counter, where one man stamped my passport and handed it to me. Less than 2 meters away another man took my passport and wrote its number in an old notebook. Another two meters yet another man took my passport and scanned it in a machine. No wonder it took forever to get thru the line and into baggage claim. As expected, my bags were there all alone by time I got to rescue them. Stepping outside was mayhem, there were Dutch soldiers guarding the airport terminal, and a throng of Afghanis standing around for I don’t know what. My boss was there immediately to rescue me from the masses, and into our Land Cruiser we went heading for the city.

I started to see the city right away for what it was, a war torn city, after years of rival mullahs fighting amongst themselves and against foreign invaders. From the recent western coalition against the Taliban, to the soviet invasion, all the way back to Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great. This nation and its capital have been at war forever and ever. Creating a fighting force of indomitable strength and courage, the mujahideen, what we know as freedom fighters. Every where I looked in the city there were bullet holes, decimated blocks of city, destroyed buildings and houses and yet people were going about their business as if nothing had ever happened. The necessity of living. There didn’t seem to be any infrastructure at all. The streets were all damaged, and dirty. In the days to follow I would find out that power was not constant. Water was un-drinkable. And the police force…well lets just say that there was one.

War had finished quite a while ago but, I was very apprehensive going to Kabul. Bin Laden had not been captured yet and contrary to what people might think Al Qaeda was not gone from the country. It was still a very dangerous city, something I was to find very shortly. So now I found myself in a foreign land still waging a covert war, not the warmest of feelings!