"The Afghanistan Journalist"
Lala Musa, Pakistan
November 25, 1984
Dear Folks,
The words of a stranger. How often I hear those, and yet how few I can still recall by day's end. Most are of the simple and ordinary things in life, like how the weather is, or praise for someone's work. While other times those words from an unfamiliar voice are too important to ignore, and to forget them, to not pass on their message, may mean all the difference between living and dying for others.
A lot of tragedy, oppression, and need reaches the ears of one willing to listen earnestly to the voices of the public. This is especially true when, as I sometimes do, you let the others know you are an actual journalist searching for their view on life. So, how do I decide which of those stories or messages is retained and shared with others in my writing, and which are to be condemned to silence? It's never an easy choice. Sometimes, something as innocuous as the look in the other's eyes, when they tell me their words, can be the key to my taking any action after we have parted and gone on to new distractions.
For almost two weeks now, I have had just such a pair of eyes tormenting the back of my mind. Ironically, they belonged to another journalist about the same age as I am. He was an Australian, and when I met him in Peshawar he had just returned from one month with the mujahadeen (freedom fighters) in Afghanistan's battle-blackened Panjshir ("Five Lions") Valley, just north of that occupied nation's capital city, Kabul.
Peshawar, where journalist Anthony Davis and I met in the dining room of the Green's Hotel, has always been more than just another town. Built at the spot where the infamous Khyber Pass spills down from the barren ranges of Afghanistan's Hindu Kush, Peshawar was directly on the path of most of the trading caravans, nomads, and conquering armies that swept down from the vast expanses of central Asia to the Indian subcontinent. As in the past, the greatest riches to pass through its shadowy narrow streets of hashish smoke and overhanging balconies are its people--especially the hardy, enterprising Pathans, the ever-changing tiny crowd of adventurous foreigners, and, lately, the steady stream of refugees from the war in Afghanistan.
It is the plight of those three million refugees who have crossed into Pakistan since Moscow's December 1979 invasion which Tony loves to cover the most. A Bangkok-based correspondent for the highly-regarded newsmagazine Asiaweek and The Washington Post, the short and stocky writer speaks the Afghans' language fluently and is well-known to the mujahadeen's leaders. Three times he has risked his life to illegally cross the closed Pakistan-Afghanistan border and travel firsthand with the guerrillas to get the complete story of the fighting there. This latest trip was prompted by reports of a massive Soviet offensive on the Panjshir valley last April, the seventh of eight offensives since 1979.
"We wanted to see just what was left," he said.
Very much a "people's journalist," rather than one who just stays in an office and gets everything over the telephone or from bureaucratic spokespersons, Tony can truly feel for common, everyday people whose lives are affected by the wars he covers. Which is why he found the latest scene awaiting him inside Afghanistan to be "thoroughly depressing." As well as why he believes sharing their plight so important that he risks his own life.
The destruction in the valley, now deserted by its former 100,000 inhabitants, was total, he said. Its villages stood as empty blackened shells. The once lush farm fields were reduced to scorched earth, torn apart by tank tracks. What had once been picturesque orchards and dirt cart lanes were little more than junkyards for destroyed tanks and armored personnel carriers. Where in the past there had stood grazing goats and sheep, there now lay endless spent cartridge cases and craters.
The 100-kilometer-long valley's tranquility was but a memory, he added sadly. To more easily control the people, their rural livelihood had been taken away so they would have to move to the city to survive. Crowded together like sheep in a pen, the Afghans could then be kept in order by fewer of their Russian masters. Anymore, the valley was a killing field populated by the fighters of both sides. The songs of birds and the voices of children had turned to the screeching of shells, into the explosions of bombs. Or worse, screams.
About the only ray of hope in the valley was the estimated 7,000 to 8,000 freedom fighters. In spite of having mostly old carbines for weapons and horses for transportation, the mujahadeen still controlled most of the area. The Soviet led force of over 20,000, with its hundreds of tanks and helicopter gunships, still hadn't figured out how to win that confounding valley.
"It was the lesson of Vietnam all over again," Tony had said in a soft voice.
Evidently the lessons of war do not seem as apparent to many others, as they do to persons like Tony. I haven't crossed a nation yet that hasn't had its share of such bloody lessons spilt onto its soil and streets, only to see them repeated again and again.
If only more strangers would let their words be heard, perhaps those lessons would come fewer and further apart. At least Tony can say he tried.
Steven