AT THE FRONT
To report about the fight in Afghanistan, bring a full wallet and find a good "fixer."
By Barry Shlachter
TORA BORA, Afghanistan - His stomach empty from religious fasting and his face
swollen with toothache, the warlord denounced a troop of foreign journalists for
spoiling what was to have been a quiet scouting mission.
"This was supposed to be secret," scolded Haji Zaman Gamsharik, 44, after al
Qaeda mortar rounds hit closer to him and the reporters who had tracked him to a
vantage point jutting from the front line.
It was a moment that captured what it is to cover the war in Afghanistan - a
journalistic experience rich in frustration, tragedy, confusion and occasional
comic relief.
Moments before the rounds started coming in, Fox television's Geraldo Rivera
bounded down a mountainside, a blue bandanna around his head.
Asked why his two crew members wore helmets but he didn't, Rivera just laughed.
As they pushed off, the cameraman with him turned and said jokingly: "They don't
make a helmet big enough for his head."
Al Qaeda fighters manning the mortars must have spotted the large, conspicuous
congregation - or heard one of the commander's men fire his AK-47 directly
behind a Washington Post correspondent, apparently to frighten her.
No one was injured, but the shawl-wrapped commander fumed. Some reporters
appeared shaken by the mortar blasts, mindful that eight journalists already
have been killed in the conflict. But others seemed grateful for a dramatic,
firsthand story to report.
As we clutched the roll-bar of a rocking pickup speeding along winding mountain
paths from the front, a British free-lancer asked a colleague if it had been a
productive day.
Without missing a beat, Phil Sherwell of London's Sunday Telegraph rattled off
the day's accomplishments: "Got to the front, met Zaman, got shelled."
Besides the occasional danger, confusion is a persistent enemy of journalists in
Afghanistan.
Covering the latest battle front requires chasing down the chiefs of three
warlord forces, whose ragtag fighters had taken on the Soviets and are now
trying to oust Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda diehards.
It includes occasionally spotting U.S. soldiers in a warlord's sport utility
vehicle. The windows are darkly tinted - the soldiers duck low and refuse to
talk.
It involves travel by armed convoy followed by negotiations to push as far as
the warlords will permit. Success also depends on how far your driver will go
and how much you can pay.
When I first covered Afghanistan in the late 1970s, no one would think of
charging a journalist for a look at the fighting. It would have violated
Pashtunwali, the traditional Pashtun tribal code in which melmastia, or
hospitality, was a key element. No longer. Not when it comes to foreign
journalists with hard currency.
It's not uncommon for a commander - a generic guerrilla officer differentiated
from his men by possession of a walkie-talkie - to suddenly demand cash for the
interview he just concluded. Turning down an armed, 6-foot-3, 260-pound Pashtun
takes tact.
One warlord, Abdul Qader, controls the border crossing at Torkham at the mouth
of Pakistan's historic Khyber Pass, and his armed, unpaid minions try to shake
down journalists who haven't paid a package deal - transportation, "visa,"
personal guide, meals and room.
Most journalists couldn't get much done without paid sidekicks called "fixers" -
natives who serve as translators and guides, help cut through red tape, smooth
over cultural misunderstandings, find the right people to interview and
generally aid the reporters any way they can.
One Knight Ridder fixer is a lively character named Habib Iqbal, a part-time
guide and full-time wheeler-dealer.
Iqbal was recently approached by Lorenzo Cremonesi of Corriere dela Sera, a
daily newspaper in Milan, Italy. Cremonesi is covering the fighting while trying
to piece together the story of the ambush that claimed the lives of four
international journalists. One was a woman from his paper, and Cremonesi
enlisted Iqbal's help to track down the woman's missing driver and interpreter.
Lorenzo said he could offer only modest payment, for which he apologized.
The heavily bearded, troll-size Iqbal assured Cremonesi that he wouldn't work on
such a project for material gain.
"I'm a thief," Iqbal said, "but I don't steal from my friends."
Iqbal, 22, took part in the anti-Soviet holy war as a child, serving as a cook
and helping load supplies.
If not for the geography of birth, he could be selling Florida swampland as
retirement property or - with the right opportunities - negotiating corporate
mergers on Wall Street.
In Afghanistan, Iqbal uses his flair for deal-making and his inimitable powers
of persuasion - not to mention his colorful mishmash of Pashto, Farsi, Urdu,
Arabic and English - to deliver journalists to career-challenging datelines.
He does his part to jump-start Afghanistan's free market economy - shipping
medicine to Kabul for a British charity, arranging convoys for a warlord's
security chief, procuring bootleg Indian whiskey, forging documents, "buying"
border-crossing clearances and brokering bus and SUV rentals. His Afghan friends
call him "Super Habib."
Though a devout teetotaling Muslim who fasts during Ramadan and stops our van -
deadline or no deadline - at prayer time, Iqbal longs for the luxuries and
recreational diversions offered in the United States.
Then, inexplicably, he'll break into his favorite song, I'm a Barbie Girl. He
emphasizes the lyrics, "I'm fantastic, made of plaaaaaaaastic" as his battered
tomato-red Toyota van bounces toward the rugged White Mountains of eastern
Afghanistan.
In the Wild West atmosphere of Jalalabad, the closest city to the front, the
Spinghar Hotel's lobby is crowded with fixers who come from a variety of
backgrounds.
One is a former attorney for an Afghan bank who gave up his room to a pair of
Knight Ridder workers, a reporter and a photographer, when the hotel was full.
Other fixers are teachers and medical students, ex-bureaucrats, even
ex-communists. Two of the most colorful are AWOL members of the Afghan national
cricket team, both 19 and employed by CNN.
At the Spinghar, the main journalist hangout, there are no towels, no toilet
paper, no heat and no sheets.
The Spinghar is the best hotel in town - and the most secure.
But there are many AK-47 assault rifles carried about in the courtyard, because
the hotel sometimes serves as the base for warlord Hazrat Ali.
The staff is somewhat less than attentive. A desk clerk laughed when told that a
rat nicknamed "Osama" had gnawed through our food supply and shortwave antenna
wire. Then the clerk demanded his daily tip.
Journalists double up, even triple up, to stay in the dusty rooms because the
Spinghar is the hub of news - as well as rumors and lies.
Every night it serves a tasty but never-changing dinner of Kabuli pillau (rice
prepared with raisins and carrots), roast chicken, a cube of stewed beef, fried
potato, boiled yam and cauliflower.
Some reporters have eaten that same meal for five weeks. There's no relief
unless someone organizes a lamb or turkey roast. An English cameraman named Jake
Sutton occasionally produces an eggplant and onion stir-fry.
Despite the hotel's decrepit state, the roof sprouts a modern array of satellite
phones and transmitters. They allow journalists to send photos or speak to
Washington or London - but local phone calls are out of the question, and water
from the tap is not fit to drink.
Illness is widespread. With trained medical personnel scarce, Nairobi,
Kenya-based Associated Press correspondent Chris Tomlinson has earned a
reputation as a deft diagnostician, with a stockpile of medicine.
Sometimes, tragically, the situation is beyond an easy remedy. CNN satellite
technician Steve Allen, 44, was found dead in his bed at the Spinghar,
apparently of natural causes. The death unnerved the periodically jittery media
corps.
The difficult conditions bring camaraderie. Reporter Rone Tempest of the Los
Angeles Times is remembered for contributing his only bottle of wine to a
communal Thanksgiving gathering.
Geraldo is remembered for not doing that.
There are cliques, too.
Sometimes, they are aligned by language and native origin among Spaniards,
Japanese, Scandinavians, Arabs, Americans, Poles, French, Italians, and
Mexicans. Sometimes, journalists congregate by job grouping (reporter or
photographer or TV crew member), sometimes by organization, sometimes by the
approach to covering a story.
The photographer I work with, Haitian-born Carl Juste of The Miami Herald,
endears himself to many by staying up into the early-morning hours helping
colleagues sort out their satellite problems.
The daily commute to the front lines brings an early bustle of activity from the
journalists - and their fixers.
Iqbal swings into action at 8 a.m. He darts about, notebook in hand, collecting
the funds he needs: $150 per hired pickup and $50 for "convoy security" and
unexplained warlord administrative costs.
He also needs $30 per escort, each carrying a banged-up AK-47 assault rife.
Finally, all is ready.
Let's go! Let's go!
THE FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM
Friday,December 14, 2001
By Barry Shlachter
TORA BORA, Afghanistan - His stomach empty from religious fasting and his face
swollen with toothache, the warlord denounced a troop of foreign journalists for
spoiling what was to have been a quiet scouting mission.
"This was supposed to be secret," scolded Haji Zaman Gamsharik, 44, after al
Qaeda mortar rounds hit closer to him and the reporters who had tracked him to a
vantage point jutting from the front line.
It was a moment that captured what it is to cover the war in Afghanistan - a
journalistic experience rich in frustration, tragedy, confusion and occasional
comic relief.
Moments before the rounds started coming in, Fox television's Geraldo Rivera
bounded down a mountainside, a blue bandanna around his head.
Asked why his two crew members wore helmets but he didn't, Rivera just laughed.
As they pushed off, the cameraman with him turned and said jokingly: "They don't
make a helmet big enough for his head."
Al Qaeda fighters manning the mortars must have spotted the large, conspicuous
congregation - or heard one of the commander's men fire his AK-47 directly
behind a Washington Post correspondent, apparently to frighten her.
No one was injured, but the shawl-wrapped commander fumed. Some reporters
appeared shaken by the mortar blasts, mindful that eight journalists already
have been killed in the conflict. But others seemed grateful for a dramatic,
firsthand story to report.
As we clutched the roll-bar of a rocking pickup speeding along winding mountain
paths from the front, a British free-lancer asked a colleague if it had been a
productive day.
Without missing a beat, Phil Sherwell of London's Sunday Telegraph rattled off
the day's accomplishments: "Got to the front, met Zaman, got shelled."
Besides the occasional danger, confusion is a persistent enemy of journalists in
Afghanistan.
Covering the latest battle front requires chasing down the chiefs of three
warlord forces, whose ragtag fighters had taken on the Soviets and are now
trying to oust Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda diehards.
It includes occasionally spotting U.S. soldiers in a warlord's sport utility
vehicle. The windows are darkly tinted - the soldiers duck low and refuse to
talk.
It involves travel by armed convoy followed by negotiations to push as far as
the warlords will permit. Success also depends on how far your driver will go
and how much you can pay.
When I first covered Afghanistan in the late 1970s, no one would think of
charging a journalist for a look at the fighting. It would have violated
Pashtunwali, the traditional Pashtun tribal code in which melmastia, or
hospitality, was a key element. No longer. Not when it comes to foreign
journalists with hard currency.
It's not uncommon for a commander - a generic guerrilla officer differentiated
from his men by possession of a walkie-talkie - to suddenly demand cash for the
interview he just concluded. Turning down an armed, 6-foot-3, 260-pound Pashtun
takes tact.
One warlord, Abdul Qader, controls the border crossing at Torkham at the mouth
of Pakistan's historic Khyber Pass, and his armed, unpaid minions try to shake
down journalists who haven't paid a package deal - transportation, "visa,"
personal guide, meals and room.
Most journalists couldn't get much done without paid sidekicks called "fixers" -
natives who serve as translators and guides, help cut through red tape, smooth
over cultural misunderstandings, find the right people to interview and
generally aid the reporters any way they can.
One Knight Ridder fixer is a lively character named Habib Iqbal, a part-time
guide and full-time wheeler-dealer.
Iqbal was recently approached by Lorenzo Cremonesi of Corriere dela Sera, a
daily newspaper in Milan, Italy. Cremonesi is covering the fighting while trying
to piece together the story of the ambush that claimed the lives of four
international journalists. One was a woman from his paper, and Cremonesi
enlisted Iqbal's help to track down the woman's missing driver and interpreter.
Lorenzo said he could offer only modest payment, for which he apologized.
The heavily bearded, troll-size Iqbal assured Cremonesi that he wouldn't work on
such a project for material gain.
"I'm a thief," Iqbal said, "but I don't steal from my friends."
Iqbal, 22, took part in the anti-Soviet holy war as a child, serving as a cook
and helping load supplies.
If not for the geography of birth, he could be selling Florida swampland as
retirement property or - with the right opportunities - negotiating corporate
mergers on Wall Street.
In Afghanistan, Iqbal uses his flair for deal-making and his inimitable powers
of persuasion - not to mention his colorful mishmash of Pashto, Farsi, Urdu,
Arabic and English - to deliver journalists to career-challenging datelines.
He does his part to jump-start Afghanistan's free market economy - shipping
medicine to Kabul for a British charity, arranging convoys for a warlord's
security chief, procuring bootleg Indian whiskey, forging documents, "buying"
border-crossing clearances and brokering bus and SUV rentals. His Afghan friends
call him "Super Habib."
Though a devout teetotaling Muslim who fasts during Ramadan and stops our van -
deadline or no deadline - at prayer time, Iqbal longs for the luxuries and
recreational diversions offered in the United States.
Then, inexplicably, he'll break into his favorite song, I'm a Barbie Girl. He
emphasizes the lyrics, "I'm fantastic, made of plaaaaaaaastic" as his battered
tomato-red Toyota van bounces toward the rugged White Mountains of eastern
Afghanistan.
In the Wild West atmosphere of Jalalabad, the closest city to the front, the
Spinghar Hotel's lobby is crowded with fixers who come from a variety of
backgrounds.
One is a former attorney for an Afghan bank who gave up his room to a pair of
Knight Ridder workers, a reporter and a photographer, when the hotel was full.
Other fixers are teachers and medical students, ex-bureaucrats, even
ex-communists. Two of the most colorful are AWOL members of the Afghan national
cricket team, both 19 and employed by CNN.
At the Spinghar, the main journalist hangout, there are no towels, no toilet
paper, no heat and no sheets.
The Spinghar is the best hotel in town - and the most secure.
But there are many AK-47 assault rifles carried about in the courtyard, because
the hotel sometimes serves as the base for warlord Hazrat Ali.
The staff is somewhat less than attentive. A desk clerk laughed when told that a
rat nicknamed "Osama" had gnawed through our food supply and shortwave antenna
wire. Then the clerk demanded his daily tip.
Journalists double up, even triple up, to stay in the dusty rooms because the
Spinghar is the hub of news - as well as rumors and lies.
Every night it serves a tasty but never-changing dinner of Kabuli pillau (rice
prepared with raisins and carrots), roast chicken, a cube of stewed beef, fried
potato, boiled yam and cauliflower.
Some reporters have eaten that same meal for five weeks. There's no relief
unless someone organizes a lamb or turkey roast. An English cameraman named Jake
Sutton occasionally produces an eggplant and onion stir-fry.
Despite the hotel's decrepit state, the roof sprouts a modern array of satellite
phones and transmitters. They allow journalists to send photos or speak to
Washington or London - but local phone calls are out of the question, and water
from the tap is not fit to drink.
Illness is widespread. With trained medical personnel scarce, Nairobi,
Kenya-based Associated Press correspondent Chris Tomlinson has earned a
reputation as a deft diagnostician, with a stockpile of medicine.
Sometimes, tragically, the situation is beyond an easy remedy. CNN satellite
technician Steve Allen, 44, was found dead in his bed at the Spinghar,
apparently of natural causes. The death unnerved the periodically jittery media
corps.
The difficult conditions bring camaraderie. Reporter Rone Tempest of the Los
Angeles Times is remembered for contributing his only bottle of wine to a
communal Thanksgiving gathering.
Geraldo is remembered for not doing that.
There are cliques, too.
Sometimes, they are aligned by language and native origin among Spaniards,
Japanese, Scandinavians, Arabs, Americans, Poles, French, Italians, and
Mexicans. Sometimes, journalists congregate by job grouping (reporter or
photographer or TV crew member), sometimes by organization, sometimes by the
approach to covering a story.
The photographer I work with, Haitian-born Carl Juste of The Miami Herald,
endears himself to many by staying up into the early-morning hours helping
colleagues sort out their satellite problems.
The daily commute to the front lines brings an early bustle of activity from the
journalists - and their fixers.
Iqbal swings into action at 8 a.m. He darts about, notebook in hand, collecting
the funds he needs: $150 per hired pickup and $50 for "convoy security" and
unexplained warlord administrative costs.
He also needs $30 per escort, each carrying a banged-up AK-47 assault rife.
Finally, all is ready.
Let's go! Let's go!
THE FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM
Friday,December 14, 2001
