War Diaries Part III
The War in Afghanistan | 99 Days

Chapter 7- Front

I am walking through an Afghan graveyard. Walking past little pregnant clay mounds covered with sticks and stones. I am walking with my translator Shafiq. My skin feels flush and, I because I am wearing earplugs, I can feel my breathing resonate through my skull. We are moving across the ridgeline now, toward a Northern Alliance tank position on a hilltop called Puze Pulekhomri. This tank, a Russian T-55, has been firing into the Taliban controlled valley. It's part of a Northern Alliance ground offensive following yesterday's capture of the strategic city of Maser-e-Sharif. But the Taliban on this front line are firing back. They have tanks of their own. And according to a local Northern Alliance commander, they are some of the fiercest fighters in this war--made up mostly of Saudis, Chechens and Pakistanis. Team Bin Laden. From a bunker in the rear, we've timed their incoming rounds. We've got between five and seven minutes to cross 500 yards. We hear the concussion of outgoing 81 millimeter mortars and machine gun fire all around, we feel a bit of fear in every step, but the magic light of dusk has painted the mountain ridges burnt sienna and the trees below are awash in reds and yellows and strangely, very strangely I find myself thinking, what an absolutely beautiful fall day. That thought will soon be erased by a Taliban tank shell that lands just 20 feet away from us.

* * *

Suffadin was 16 when he left his father's farm to become a soldier. He's been fighting in Afghanistan's civil wars for ten years now, so long, he says, he can barely remember what his life was like before. He has been shot three times by the Taliban. Twice in the leg and once in the foot. He shows me the purple ganglion at the knee where one bullet entered. A white crescent moon at the calf where it exited. I ask him if he feels lucky a bullet hasn't killed him yet. He say he feels unlucky to be such a good target. He lives in the dirt maze trenches of a Northern Alliance front line position near Dash-e-kala. He can see his enemy on an opposing hilltop less than a mile away. The turf in between is minestrone thick with land mines.The Kalashnikov he carries has been with him roughly since the beginning. He's fired it thousands of times. He, and it, both show the wear of a battle that never ends. He has not seen his wife or two young sons in a year. He misses them beyond words. Perhaps he will see them, he tells me, at Ramadan. Enshallah. God willing.

"I'd like to have an easy life," he says, "to live with all of my family again. But what can we do. We should fight until the Taliban are gone."

* * *

On the sat phone I pitch NBC's foreign editor. I pitch that he let me take just my mini dv camcorder and a videophone engineer and camp out with the Northern Alliance on their front lines for three days. Rumors had been building that Maser-e-Sharif was about to be captured and that the Northern Alliance was going to begin a series of coordinated ground attacks. I wanted to be an early warning listening post. Light and mobile, able to file reports from the front lines as soon as anything happened. Covering the ground war in Afghanistan has been nearly impossible so far. First, the terrain alone is so rocky, rutted and harsh that a 150 mile trip from Khodja Bahaudin in the north to the Panjshir Valley can take a week--if you can clear the snow in the mountain passes. A colleague who recently made the journey, returned and was seen shaking his head and muttering, "never again, never again. For any amount of money." Second, most journalists covering the war in Afghanistan are working from Northern Alliance held territory, which comes in very small slices. Finally, until recently, there hasn't been much fighting happening on the ground anyway. Northern Alliance leaders said they were waiting for U.S. B-52's to soften up Taliban positions before attacking. Most of what television news has had to offer so far is cockpit video of the air war and and bomb damage assessment satellite photos handed out by the Pentagon. Like the video game coverage of the Gulf War, this does not provide the fullest context of what's happening here. NBC's foreign editor buys my pitch. We head off to war in a bruised and battered 4X4 with a maniac drive named Wade, who keeps pointing to himself and saying in Tarzan English, "Wade good. Machine good. Wade Good. Machine Good."

* * *

The idea was to put a face on the war. It was easy to find. Like the machine gunner named Shah Morad. He fought against the Soviets when they invaded. Now he wants to take his country back from the Taliban, whom he says are all foreigners, alcolytes of Bin Laden who have taken over Afghanistan. He has been at war for seven years.
"I've been doing this so long," he says, "reassembling his Russian PK, bandoliers of 7.62 rounds at his feet, "that I'm not sure I can do anything else."

On a ridge not far away, another Northern Alliance fighter, Enayatullah is talking on the radio. He's talking to his Taliban counterpart in the Valley. They're both laughing.
"That was your last shell," The Taliban voice says, after a the Northern Alliance test fired several 20 millimeter machine gun rounds into their position.

"Not yet," says Enayatullah, who signals he crew to fire a few more. This is the game that's played in the always dirty and drawn out days of trench warfare between these two sides. It's a game of radio psyche out, where each tries to coax the other to defect to their side. Even in the language of Dari, which I do not understand, they sound like teasing children. More friends than enemies. I wonder if it will make it harder for them to kill each other when the order comes. To a man the Northern Alliance soldiers say no.

"When we speak," says Enayatullah, "we try to speak well. With politeness. But when we fight, we will also fight well."

Neckmohamed tells me he will have no problem when it's time to attack the Taliban. His entire family of 15, including his wife and three children, were killed last year by the Pakistani Air Force. At the time the government of Pakistan was supporting the Taliban. The bomb they dropped, he says, exploded on his house.

* * *

An incoming 80 millimeter tank shell makes a shrill whistling sound as it flies toward it's target. It is a sound that seems so familiar from war movies that it is cliche.

You know there will be a bang shortly after you hear it. Our timing was good. Shafiq and I made it across the 500 yards to the Northern Alliance tank position. We chatted with the crew. It was quiet again. Almost peaceful. Three more journalists moved up from the rear bunker to our position. A producer and shooter from National Geographic and a writer for USA Today. I shoot the tank commander using a spotting scope to check out the Taliban positions below. That's when we hear it. The whistling sound. We all know there will be a bang at the end, we just don't know where. That question is answered when it strikes the back end of hilltop so close to us the concussion knocks me over and into the tank tread. I'm still rolling. I turn and get the cloud of black smoke now drifting over us. Then I hear, "I'm hit, I'm hit, and it's not in a good place."

I swing my camera around to see National Geographic producer Gary Scurka bleeding from his upper thigh. At that moment I faced a moral dilemma. The guy is right in front of me, do I shoot this or help him. It didn't take me long to decide. I would do both. I shot the immediate aftermath, action-reaction, the wound, his facial expression the bleeding, then I grabbed him with my left arm and while still shooting with my right, we ran to a trench 50 feet away. In the cover of the trench, I took off my Afghan scarf and wrapped it around his thigh twice and pulled it into a tight knot to try and stop the bleeding. I set my camera down, but left it rolling. I needed and wanted to shoot every frame. This is what had been missing. This is what happens on the ground, after bombs hit their targets, or just nearly miss them. Ten Northern Alliance soldiers were killed near the same position the day before. Whether the bombs are fired out of Taliban tanks or dropped out of U.S. planes, whether the casualties are Afghan fighters or American journalists, this is what it looks like up close.

# # #

POSTSCRIPT:

Wounded journalist Gary Scurka was choppered to a hospital in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. He suffered multiple shrapnel wounds, but is expected to make a full recovery.

Later this same day, four European journalists are killed after advancing on the Taliban front line with Northern AlliancE troops.