Well, after I made the confirmatory radio checks back to our office in Peshawar and another to our HQs in Islamabad, we moved on down into the valley. This was followed by the Afghan driver calling on the same radio to the demining party who we were to meet deep down in this valley. This was the normal procedure whenever and wherever we moved in Afghanistan as, surely, there was no-one available or capable of coming to rescue us in any sort of timely manner, should an accident or incident take place. Communications by radio were, at that time, our most important asset.
Surprisingly the drive from our hill top viewing, down into the valley took almost an hour as the road quickly turned into a weaving and unpaved track that had seen no maintenance for many years. The vehicles bounced and crunched on every rock and into every pothole as I hung firmly to the side handles in the rear of the car. This trip, down into the valley was cumbersome and tiring for me though I was soon to get very used to this form of travel, as it quickly became normal for all moves in the country. Often, as will be described later, such journeys were far worse.
On this trip and all subsequent trips I wore the traditional shalwar kameez clothing of the Afghans and Pakistanis. It was a long-sleeved shirt that was left outside the trousers and hung to about midway from the knee to the hips. The trousers (shalwar) were massive and at first comical, as they were five times the width of normal trousers. They were secured by a thin rope much like pyjamas, though this loose material was largely hidden by the long shirt (kameez). It was comfortable to wear and was set off by a chitrali cap which is woollen and flat on top and rolled up at the sides. In later trips I also grew a beard, though I looked more like Red Beard the Pirate than a local Afghan.
Once in the valley, we drove past the T55 tank and the BRDM that I had seen earlier. They had both been destroyed at least a couple of years before, though remained basically intact. I felt like I desperately wanted to get out and climb all over them, though I knew well the hazards of landmines in these areas and that I should do no more than look at them through the car windows. Incidentally, our drivers passed these war machines with barely a side glance and, again, I was soon to understand why these machines were now nothing more than scenery here in Afghanistan.
We drove on for an intolerably long time along the rough, unpaved and barely tracked routes, across the valley floor heading north west, to our night destination. We must have travelled for 2–3 hours since entering the valley floor and it was now late afternoon and still we were driving. I knew driving after dark was prohibited by the UN, though I had assumed only because of driver safety. However, I was to learn on my next trip that night-flying aircrafts from the Afghan Air Force often bombed moving vehicles at night and this was the real reason for the restriction.
In these days of 1991, the Afghan government was still communist and this government remained the enemy of the mujahideen groupings that operated throughout much of the country. They had been fighting the Soviets and the Afghan government for almost 20 years and this war continued. We, the deminers, would often look like mujahideen because of our dress and grouping of thirty to forty bodies at one time. From an informant’s perspective, or from a combat pilot’s perspective, we must have definitely looked like mujahideen.
There were surprisingly very few other cars on our road as we continued to drive and I guess we passed only about three to four vehicles heading towards us, with about the same going our direction. All were beaten up, old Toyota pick-ups, mostly filled with armed men, though we also saw a few of the very old Yak 4x4s, which were Soviet era vehicles and resembled those seen on WW2 movies. As a military guy who had studied Soviet military machinery, aircraft, ships and vehicles for several years without ever actually seeing any, the T55, BRDM and these Yak 4x4s were a real treat.
Well, by this time, it was nearly 5 pm and definitely getting somewhat dark, quite quickly. There was low cloud cover that day and the available light was rapidly disappearing. I heard Kefayatullah talking on the radio a little earlier and he told me that our demining crew had been expecting us for lunch, but we were far too late for that.
By just as the clock struck 5 pm, we turned a rocky corner and a small but well-developed village was clearly seen. The village was very typically Afghan with high mud walls surrounding the various compounds with their large, heavy wooden gates. A few trees grew alongside the dirt road and noticeably more grew inside the compounds. Of course, much of the village was in disrepair or had been damaged by shelling and fighting.
There was almost zero activity to be seen in the town itself, except for a few men walking along the sides of the road with AK-47 rifles casually draped over their shoulders. The shops were all closed by this late hour and few cars were to be seen. The Paktia River passed to our eastern side and was a rushing torrent as the winter snows were still melting and, even so far away, continued to affect this area of the country.
A few minutes later we pulled up outside a series of wooden doors as armed men in shalwar kameez and rifles, opened the doors. We motored inside where I saw it was a huge compound with a great number of mango and almond trees growing. The main building was made of mud and timber but was two stories high, strong-looking and obviously from a design and construction style of perhaps a thousand years before. Outside was a small but growing group of men, deminers I assumed, one of whom stood out. He was a tallish man of about 40–45 years of age with a very dark, closely cropped beard that was obviously dyed, and a Chitrali cap. He came over and embraced and hugged Kefayatullah warmly as we got out of the vehicles. Others from our cars were embracing friends and the warmth of the reception was amazing. The senior gentleman, whom I later came to know well and greatly respect, was engineer Habib. He spoke no English but it made no difference to him that I was neither a Muslim, an Afghan, nor that I could not at that time speak Persian. He was a very smart and broad-minded gentleman who was, surprisingly, a well-known and highly respected mountain artillery commander from his mujahideen days prior to becoming a demining supervisor. Engineer Habib shook my hand and embraced me and I immediately knew I had met a man of great interest.
In Afghanistan there are two major and official languages: firstly Dari (or Persian which is very similar to Farsi from Iran) and Pashto, which is the language of the Pashtun tribal people of the east and south of the country. Those folk from Kabul city typically know Pashto but speak and write Dari as their day-to-day language, whereas many Pashtuns may not speak fluent Dari, particularly those who hail from near to the Pakistani border where Urdu is the official language. In the central and northern areas of Afghanistan, Dari is common, but so too are many other languages such as Turkmen and Uzbek (based on Turkish) and Tajik, based on Dari. But a collection of tribal languages that date back into the millennia also permeates the land, including Balochi, Pamiri and Nuristani. Some forty languages have been recorded as spoken throughout the country and yet that still doesn’t include English! It all sounds a little complicated and indeed it is. Though to make it easier, Dari and Pashto are officially the two national languages with all the others being just part of the diversity and complexity that makes up Afghanistan.
By now it was about 5.30 pm, or perhaps a little later and we all went inside for the ubiquitous formal greeting and cups of chai. I was placed beside Kefayatullah and he beside engineer Habib, the three most senior spots on the carpeted floor that I quickly became used to sitting at. The other staff sat to our left and right largely depending on their seniority.
As the general banter and standard complimenting continued, three huge, somewhat scary looking men entered the room. However, to my surprise they displayed the most humble of manners and started to lay out plate, after plate, after plate of wonderful local foods. The men trod gently across the matting on the floor in front of us, always bent down to maintain their humility, as they placed out the food and poured each of us cups of tea. They didn’t look at anyone in the eyes, except if they were spoken to. They appeared, whilst performing these acts of submission, to be extremely humble and accommodating. This type of behaviour, from grown and mature fighting men, never ceased to amaze me throughout the country although it was a cultural issue for them and never seem to be demeaning in any way.
As this wonderful loading