CHARLES MOORE
TISAF HQ, Kabul
he Language Card issued to our troops here gives a flavour. 'Head', 'chest', 'stomach', 'back', 'blood', 'gunshot wound', 'Red Cross', 'Dead', 'wounded', it reads, offering the equivalent in Dan i for Afghans and in Arabic for al-Qa'eda. 'Good morning', it continues. 'Show me on the map', 'Do not shoot!' Only about a tenth of the planned 4,500-strong British-led force is here so far and the flow in is a trickle because of the huge logistic difficulties. The airport is still not fully open. Everything and everyone has to come in by plane to Bagram, at night. Apart from the Falklands, no modern British military commitment has been so inaccessible. And no problem — including the Falklands — has been so intractable. I am very impressed by the cheerful, businesslike attitude of our military, but I cannot see how they can bring order, reconstruction and the creation of a proper Afghan army in the 90 days allotted to them. The Afghans want us to stay, and do not want our proposed successors, the Turks. They see how relaxed the atmosphere has now become because of the British presence, and they want it spread over the whole country. Perhaps we are too welcome for our own good.
Iam staying here as the guest of 16 Air Assault Brigade. The privations are considerable — no running water, no mains electricity, no heating except a few stoves (it is -5°C at night), ration packs — but one delight is that in the grounds there is a stadium for buzkashi, the famed Afghan equestrian sport. I go and watch the match. The 'ball' is a headless calf. It is placed in a circle marked on the ground and the two teams, turbaned and mounted, form a scrum round it. Somehow, without dismounting, a rider has to lift the calf off the ground, tuck it under his thigh and gallop to the other end of the pitch and circle the flag there. He must then charge back again and replace the calf in the circle. Many of the men ride without stirrups, and their agility is breathtaking. The game is quite like rugby on four legs, since each team tries to tackle the other for the calf. One pulls at it as his opponent tries to outride him. Sometimes a man will lean horizontal in the saddle, tugging for all his might. Once the riders burst out of the stadium altogether, chasing one another across the rough ground beyond. 1 leave before the end and find a reserve pony tethered just outside the ring. The crowd invite me to mount him and I do so clumsily, to derisive laughter. He is small and wiry, with no shoulders, The saddle is hard and high and gaily decorated. I jump off quickly before there is any risk of having to move. Back at Twickenham, as the HQ is cosily named, there is widespread enthusiasm among the officers for an ISAF buzkashi team. The enthusiasm is not shared by the brigade commander, Barney White-Spunner. This is because he has actually taken part in the sport. Brigadier Barney, a Blues and Royals officer, is a keen horseman, and also, in his spare time, the editor of Bailey's Hunting Directory. A passionate Orientalist, he is currently writing the life of the archaeologist Aurel Stein, While following in his footsteps in central Asia, he took part in a game of buzkashi, relied too heavily on his stirrups and fell off. For the group photograph immediately afterwards, he was invited to hold a local child, who peed copiously all over him. Brigadier Barney would prefer a football match.
News spreads round the camp that Mr and Mrs Blair are to pay a surprise visit to Afghanistan. Eventually it becomes clear that this will consist of a two-hour stop at Bagram airfield at midnight on Monday. Mrs Blair has made known her interest in projects for Afghan women. A slight panic ensues, since no projects are yet working, and there are no women for Mrs Blair to meet except the six service personnel at Twickenham. 'There's nothing for it. A couple of us will have to put on burqas and bluff it out with her,' says one officer grimly.
In the failing light on Monday, the ISAF Commander, General John McColl, and I drive from Kabul to Bagram along the road the Russians built. The scene is one of `Ozymandias'-like desolation. The stream beds are dry, and the dusty plain is marked only by exploded tanks and the trenches that the Taleban built. Lonely machine guns, pointing skywards, indicate the Northern Alliance watchposts. The sun paints the jagged hills a lurid red, as in some Pre-Raphaelite painting. We lapse into silence, broken occasionally by exchanges between our Marine escorts, scanning the road ahead for suspect vehicles. We
reach Bagram as night falls, and we wait for the Blairs. By about 10.30 we are on a strange stage set — the 'humanitarian hangar' — lit up by arc lights. In it stand numerous American and British servicemen, and the press 'pool' from Kabul. Next arrives a party of American senators, led by John McCain and Joe Liebermann, wearing baseball caps, paying tribute to their nation's brave. The chill is intense and I seek refuge in a tiny tent which contains the one electric fire this side of Kabul. Crouched over it is Ibrahim Brahimi, the UN's special representative in the country. He wears an astrakhan hat and the weary look of one who has passed more time than he would wish in delegations meeting important people. I ask him about Mullah Omar, just reported, unreliably, to have escaped capture on a motorbike. Had Brahimi met him? Yes, twice. He has the grave courtesy which most Afghans show, he says. He knows nothing, however, beyond his own world, having been to Kabul and Quetta once, and spent the rest of his life in or near Kandahar. You have to understand, said Brahimi, that the Taleban is a movement based on ignorance, founded in justifiable revulsion by the young against the conduct of the mujahedin leaders for whom they fought. Its character was corrupted by bin Laden and al-Qa'eda, who exploited the ignorance.
The Blairs are on the tarmac. I pile into a Marine transport and arrive in time to see the television halo illumine Mr Blair and Hamid Karzai, the elegant chairman of the Interim Administration, striding down the guard of honour of aquiline Tajik soldiers dressed in long, Russian-style coats. The press from the plane, confused by the darkness, fight insanely for photographic positions, tumbling all over the red carpet, and then for vehicles to the hangar. If this is the Afghans' first sight of the civilisation that has fought to save them, they may be discouraged.
Back in the hangar, Mr Blair first offers words of sympathy for the loss of Gordon Brown's baby. On television back home, what he says will sound right, but there is something surreal about listening to such remarks in a country where literally millions of children have died from war and disease.
Afinal chat with the hypothermic servicemen, and the Blairs climb aboard the plane. 1 hitch a lift home with them. Alastair Campbell asks me whether the army gave me a rank while I was with them. I reply that I am just one of many mujahedin in the forces of conservatism. The New Labour warlord flashes me a smile of Tajik-like cruelty.
Charles Moore is editor of the Daily Telegraph.
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