Eventually the Russians had had enough. We'd helped make Afghanistan their Vietnam. One day they just got back into their tanks and few remaining Hinds and crept out of town.
We withdrew, only for the muj to start fighting among themselves all over again — as they do. If there's no enemy, they kick the shit out of each other. They're even worse than Jocks. Fifty thousand people were killed in Kabul alone during the civil war that followed.
The Taliban finally won in 1996, and they ran the shop until late 2001. That was when, after 9/11, the USA came calling with a few thousand tonnes of bombs so the Northern Alliance could enter the city and take over for the US forces that were 'liberating' the country. And so the show goes on.
Even today, the US are still shitting themselves at the prospect of Stingers being used against them, and rightly so. Pallet loads of the things are unaccounted for. They could be lying in somebody's shed, still waiting for that rainy day, or in Iran, being busily reverse-engineered.
42
'This your first time in Afghanistan, mate?'
The Australian in the aisle seat to my left was in his late fifties, with grey, well-groomed hair. He'd been dressed from head to toe by Brooks Brothers. The hand that took a gin and tonic from the permanently smiling attendant was manicured. He had 'diplomat' written all over him.
One look at my T-shirt and unbooted feet should have been enough to tell him how I fitted into the picture. There would be thousands of guys like me in-country, and our two lives wouldn't overlap. No invitations to the ambassador's party would be heading in my direction.
Nonetheless, he held up his glass. 'Cheers.'
I nodded. 'Yes, first time.'
He took another sip, then dipped into our bowl of cashews. 'So what do you do? What brings you here?'
'Travel writer. I do guidebooks. We call them "Outside the Comfort Zone".'
He laughed, then threw a few more nuts down his neck. 'You really think people will want to come here?'
'Dunno. That's what I've come to find out.'
I sat back in my very comfortable seat, reclined it a bit more and picked up one of the Indian business magazines to fuck him off as nicely as possible.
The alias cover address and alias business cover linked me with Outside the Comfort Zone, a small independent publisher in the East End whose niche was extreme travel. The Firm had probably set it up donkey's years ago. The books it brought out featured all sorts of places the Firm was interested in. I was now one of their freelance employees. My passport had had to go through all the normal channels. The visa application had been handled by a commercial company in London, and still had their sticker on the back.
The laptop told me I had a girlfriend, Kirsty. I could never remember her new number, which was why it was right there for me. If anyone called it, she would back me up as part of the ACA. No wonder I loved her.
I flicked through the mag. Uncle Sam wasn't exactly flavour of the month. Nor was Uncle Tony, come to that.
I flicked through some more and saw a picture of Dom alongside a piece about 'Veiled Threats'. He was sitting with the woman I'd seen on screen in Dublin, on the bonnet of a 4x4. He was dressed in a safari vest and had an earnest expression. She was wearing the same gear as in the documentary, a white headscarf and long black dress. Her name was Basma Al-Sulaiman. Basma. Baz… A few blue pepper-pots stood around in the background to give the shot some depth. Well done, Pete.
The article was about the plight of Afghan women and the safe-house Basma ran in Kabul. She was talking about the promises made after the Taliban were kicked out. Their lives were supposed to get better once they were 'liberated'. Local women were supposed to be running multinationals by now, yet they were still third-rate citizens. Some of the girls in her refuge had been shot up with heroin at an early age to make them dependent, then used as mules by dealers to move drugs from around the country. It was perfect cover. Nobody paid any attention to them, and there was a lot of spare room under a burqa.
It sounded as if nothing much had changed since my last time there.
When the girl Farah died, I'd carried her body a short way from the village that night and buried her. I found out from Ahmad a couple of weeks later that her husband had managed to get over his loss. He'd gone out the next day and bought himself a replacement.
43
'We've started our approach, sir.'
The attendant was giving me a gentle shake. I hadn't even realized I'd fallen asleep.
I looked down at the vast mountain plain, six thousand feet above sea level, which held the capital. I'd never set foot there. Last time round, it was full of guys with red stars on their hats goose-stepping about with vodka bottles in their hands. We'd stayed in the mountains that hemmed them in.
The Australian didn't waste a second. 'Kabul has swollen from less than a million to nearly three million since the Russians left, and now the Taliban are back in the mountains, refugees from there are pouring in.'
To dodge any more waffle, I studied the parched landscape ten thousand feet below. The city was a giant mosaic of low-level, grey-brown buildings, not more than a couple of storeys high.
He didn't get the hint. 'Do you know what the Australian government advice is about this place? Don't go. And if you're there, get out.' He smiled to himself as he leant forward to share the view.
'Welcome to sunny Kabul.' He laughed. 'Who in their right mind would want to come to this Godforsaken place?'
I kept looking out. 'Who knows? I file a first-person account exactly as I find it. It's more like a travelogue for their website, really.'
I sat back in my seat. He nodded, not believing a word. Private contractors wouldn't tell other private contractors what they were doing. Different bits of the military wouldn't tell each other either. In a place like this, everyone had op sec. Or bullshit.
We thumped the runway. Flashing past the window on our left were more fixed-wing aircraft than I'd ever seen parked in one place, military or civilian, then every size and shape of helicopter. HESCOed compound followed HESCOed compound, each flying a different national flag, but all part of the International Security Assistance Force. More than thirty countries supported ISAF, from Finland and Norway to Portugal and Hungary, but only four were doing the actual fighting: the Americans, Brits, Dutch and Canadians.
The Stars and Stripes fluttered over a collection of stadium-sized tents. I bet some of them were bowling alleys and movie houses with milkshake bars.
The British compound would be the one with the Portakabin, a small TV, the boxed set of Only Fools and Horses, and a couple of teabags for the kettle. It was probably on the other side of the runway, where the husks of bombed-out buildings sat alongside the occasional intact concrete block, like a row of old man's teeth. Beyond, it looked like dustbowl all the way to the mountains.
Flags everywhere flew at half-mast. These days, they were probably like that permanently.
As we taxied past acres of armoured vehicles and steel containers, economy passengers were already surging forward to disembark. They chattered away on their cellphones as the aircraft still rolled.
The Australian had a suit-carrier handed to him. When the aircraft stopped and the seat-belt lights were switched off, he stood up and held out his hand. 'Well, nice to have met you. I hope it goes well.'
'And you.' I pulled my Bergen from the overhead locker. All it contained was the laptop and a bit of washing kit.