Part Two

The Streets of Taliban Peshawar:

Wartime in the Afghan Refugee Camps

~
December 11, 2001

Islamabad to Peshawar, Pakistan

(Thirteen weeks after September 11)

*Travel Warning    

 United States Department of State Washington DC

              It was reported in the news [1] today that several areas of Afghanistan were suffering tribal anarchy and skirmishes between contentious Afghan tribal armies. Meanwhile, US Coalition bombing continued undaunted today on suspected al-Qaida hideouts in a mountainous region north of Kandahar and especially in the Tora Bora area near Peshawar and Jalalabad where Taliban remnants, “ and between 400 and 2500 foreign al-Qaida terrorists and fighters, continued to put up stiff resistance against anti-Taliban Alliance troops backed up by coalition special forces.” Those Alliance soldiers have reportedly spent the last few days advancing early in the day toward al-Qaida caves after US bombing runs and then retreating back before dark under intense mortar and rocket fire from the terrorists. The Alliance troops then pinpoint enemy positions by calling in air strikes on targets marked by discharges of enemy smoke.

            It was also curiously reported in the local news media that at one point today a group of Arab children could be seen through Alliance spotting scopes playing at the mouth of a mountain cave several kilometers from Alliance troop positions in the White Mountains near Tora Bora ...

 

 

 

 

*Grand Trunk Road Trip

 

                        It took me only five minutes this morning to obtain my Home and Tribal Affairs Department permit to enter the tribal areas at the Afghan border, a great departure from yesterday’s runaround for the Pakistan government visa. Then I met Shahid and his wife at the Saudi-Pak Tower and we went over to their home where their 13-year-old daughter cooked me an omelet. Afterward Shahid, his wife, and I took the 170-kilometer cab ride to Peshawar . Up the ancient Grand Trunk Road, which runs from Calcutta to Kabul , which according to my travel guidebook has been, “The legendary gateway to the subcontinent and to Peshawar in whose bazaars you can mix with the dignified and formidable Pashtuns.”

            Along the way we had to stop several times at Pakistan Army checkpoints and wait for long convoys of Pakistan Army troop carriers heading from the Indian border at the Kashmir war zone across Pakistan to the World War III Terror War anvil movement at the red line on the CNN War Map. During the stops I wasn’t allowed to take pictures except once when I weaseled access from an officer and was able to get a portrait or two of Pakistani soldiers in their rush to get to the front.

            I also had the cabby stop several times so I could make photographs along the desert highway. Once at a group of caves dug out of the side of a cliff where thousands of Afghan refugees had taken up residence rather than stay in their mangled homeland. Once we stopped at a brick factory on the banks of the River Indus where I watched and photographed bricks being processed for sale, and once we pulled over for a several-minute shoot at the Muslim temple just outside of Peshawar where the Taliban movement was conceived and where it was fostered and infused with a radical medieval form of Islam. Before it moved over the Khyber Pass and over the border to Kanduhar and before it eventually controlled 90-percent of Afghanistan .

 

 

 

 

            We arrived in Peshawar about a half an hour before sundown, and it was comical to see the insane driving that occurred thereafter as everyone in Peshawar crammed the roads and drove like wild men so they’d all get back to the house or wherever they were heading before Ramadan prayers began at sundown and the Ramadan fast was broken. We got to my Peshawar hotel (a place my Lonely Planet Travel Guidebook described as having, “Badly overpriced singles at eight dollars a night”) and a few minutes later the sun set and the fast was broken. Broken with a complimentary bowl of Mecca dates shared among a dozen or so people who were there in the lobby at the time, guests and staff.

            Later, before unsuccessfully crashing in my room, I went out for about an hour to get a bigger meal. I stopped at a restaurant that at first refused to serve me because I was an American. But after a short but terse negotiation with the owner, I got him to serve me anyway --- and I had a very good meal without any further hassle. On the way back to the hotel I walked through the market alleys in the dark. I wasn’t comfortable leaving the hotel at night, but I was hungry from the long drive and felt I had to risk it.

            The walk turned out to be an edgy one, yet it was somehow compellingly surreal. I was (as a spice vendor told me) “The first American we’ve seen out alone on these streets in quite some time ... ... ... quite some time ...”

 

*Anvil Movement

 

                        I rushed the red line on the 24-hour CNN Breaking News Box War Map along with about 4000 Pakistani soldiers --- the anvil in the American coalition’s hammer-and-anvil movement, meant to slaughter or capture or scatter as many al-Qaida and Taliban as possible. As hundreds or possibly thousands of them flee the fighting and seek the comparative safety of the Pakistan border tribal belt, Peshawar, Lahore, or Karachi. Places where they enjoy an 80-percent approval rating or better. Sneaking past the Pakistan army and the likes of me --- concealed in wagons or moving on foot down a maze of little-used border trails and across the countryside where no roads exist. Or around and over snowcapped mountains that stand almost as high as 15,000 feet above sea level.

            A vast majority of Westerners --- even most who consider themselves “well traveled” --- if dropped from their homefront porches into Peshawar, Pakistan at the Afghan border at the time of this war, would think they’d died and been sent to some smarmy purgatory somewhere just shy of hell. In fact, it’s not really that close to being the worst place on earth. On a scale from 1-10 with 10 being the best place on earth today (probably Amsterdam or Lawrence) and 1 being the worst (perhaps today it’s Kandahar or a cave at Tora Bora) Peshawar would probably rate a three or a four.

             I enjoy dropping myself into places as edgy or more edgy than  Peshawar at historic times like this. I like the fine line between safe-enough and not-so-safe, and the finer lines between civilized and uncivilized or lawful and lawless. My cameras enjoy the grit and the confusion of the dark side of the chaotic global street and the frames of edgy street life available here are so unlike what a Westerner is accustomed to on most Western streets.

             Just before I laid down for the evening I heard a CNN commentator report that, “on the morning of September 11 (three months ago today) civilians from 90 countries around the world were killed by a senseless terrorist attack on New York City and Washington DC.” The broadcast was live and it was 8:45 (ET) in the morning in New York City.

           The director at CNN flipped the picture of the Atlanta talking head to a picture of the still unbelievable site of the wreckage of Ground Zero. Still looking godless and unreal.

   Still mangled and still on fire.

            The clock struck 8:46 a.m. (ET) and there was a minute of silence on the TV in honor of the fallen thousands and a minute for worldwide viewers to look at that place I’d just been at a couple of weeks ago and the reason I was here right now. Meanwhile, I understand from chatting with the hotel staff, that after the city gets quiet enough later on at night, that usually you can hear the bombers all night long overhead. On their way up to Tora Bora to punish the terrorists for making that burning hole on the tip of New York. The damaged superpower ignoring talk of surrender and brutally pummeling the enemy’s desperate last-chance positions.

            I watched the 3-month September 11 commemorative media ceremony on the TV, watched tonight’s headlines (this morning’s headlines in Atlanta and New York) and jotted the most interesting of them down in my journal. Then I turned off the TV and the light, and I tried to get some sleep.

 

Headline News*[2]

      * “General Richard Myers, chairman of the joint Chiefs of staff, described Tora Bora located in the towering White Mountains of eastern Afghanistan along the border with Pakistan as ‘The only effective al-Qaida stronghold left."

     *   Eastern Alliance Ground Attack Pauses at Tora Bora for Talk of Cease-fire “US B-52 aircraft bombed the Tora Bora area this morning after cornered al-Qaida  forces ignored a ‘surrender or die’ deadline set by the opposing tribal Alliance.”

      *   Fighting Reported Late on Mountain Tops at Tora Bora

     *   Tribal Commander Claims Scouts Spotted Osama bin Laden With al-Qaida Troops at Tora Bora Cave Complex.

                “The first September 11-related indictment was issued against Zacarias Moussaqui,  the French-Moroccan,  accused of being the twentieth hijacker --- accused and arrested before September 11 for trying to learn how to fly a jet, but not take off or land.”

      *   New Terror Scare in West: 

                Bio-weapon Attack in US Warned About for End of Ramadan This Weekend.

 

 

~ 

December 12, 2001

Peshawar, Pakistan

 

 

Headline News*[3]

    *    “The fighting today at Tora Bora was mostly in heavily forested canyons, the opposition fleeing  from mountain top positions they held the day before.”

*      Al Qaeda Given New Deadline:

Fighters Must Hand Over Leaders and Surrender Today;

         Noon Deadline Looms

*      60 US Special Forces on Front Line:

         Dressed As Locals

*    Donald Rumsfeld on Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts:

        “We Just Don’t Know What We Don’t Know”

*      B-1 Bomber Crashes Into the Indian Ocean:

         All Four Crew Rescued

 

 

*Acclimating to Chaos  

 

 

                      I spent the day today getting settled in. I went out in the market and spent nearly five hours (on two separate swings) cruising around the streets of Saddar Market taking streetphotos, handing out Kansas Jayhawk basketball stickers to kids, and chatting up the locals. Locals who when they see or meet me are either amazed, amused, miffed, or intimidated. 

            Nobody’s apathetic about me.

            It’s like it was out on the streets in Islamabad, except here about two or three times as many of the people I encounter are angry I’m here (about 25 percent), and I’ve begun running into some who seem to hide from me ... well ... as if they have something to hide from me ...

            The Afghan refugee camps are on the edge of town between Peshawar and the border and the number of Afghans here has multiplied significantly over the number I saw in Islamabad. More of them begging, and many of them carrying loads of their belongings on their backs in huge cloth sacks.

            I also checked out a couple of luxury hotels in other parts of the city today (by taxi cab and by motorized rickshaw) and a couple of cheaper ones as well. Trolling the lobbies for media pool hangouts and making a couple of connections along the way that just might get me over the Khyber Pass by the end of the weekend.

            I’m supposedly on schedule to infiltrate my way into the refugee camps with Shahid and his crew tomorrow --- but this cough and the jet lag just won’t quit. So by late afternoon I’d socked myself into my room (another winner of a hotel room that was overpriced at eight dollars a night, but at least this one came with its own toilet paper), and I spent the rest of my waking hours either writing or monitoring the room’s CNN Breaking News Box.

 

 

~

December 13, 2001

Peshawar, Pakistan

 

Kashmir Explodes:[4]
 

On the Streets of the Afghan Refugee Camps;

Under World War III Bomber Skies

 

  

* Deadly Kashmir Terror Attack Strikes Indian Parliament House: [5]

     Assailants used a VIP car, gate uniforms, and Indian military commando uniforms to gain entrance.

    Attackers used AK-47 rifles and grenades in attacking the sprawling red sandstone Parliament House building.
 

     Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpajee vows “Do-or-Die” Battle Against Terrorism.

 

 

                         The peculiar number of terrorists around here (both in the Northwest Frontier Province and in neighboring Kashmir) is on the account of the existence of hundreds of old princely states. In 1947 after Pakistan’s partition from India, a jihad (holy struggle) was declared by a band of Pashtun Afridi tribesmen who invaded Kashmir. A vote was announced for the people of Kashmir to determine their own choice after partition, Pakistan or India. But then India refused to allow the vote because had India allowed the vote at that time, it’s likely the mostly Muslim Kashmir population would have chosen Pakistan. 

            Nehru of India then flew troops into Kashmir, and then Pakistan sent troops in too. The first Kashmir war broke out and lasted until a United Nations cease-fire was implemented in January 1949 that gave each country a piece of Kashmir pending a popular vote and established the Line of Control. In 1953 India toppled and jailed Sheikh Abdullah (the Kashmir prime minister) and ever since then has evaded the United Nation-prescribed matter of the referendum.

            A shooting war broke out again in 1971 between the two and has promised to break out again between the nuclear powers over Kashmir ever since. India began testing nuclear weapons in 1974 and Pakistan soon followed with a nuclear program of its own and now both have nuclear missiles pointed at each other’s major cities.

            The Lonely Planet Pakistan travel guidebook I brought with me explained that, “The UN’s strong action against Iraq after its 1990-91 invasion of Kuwait and since stands in contrast to its near total inaction over the Kashmir question, and this is a source of great resentment in Pakistan today.” And after being here for a week, after about 20 conversations about Kashmir (weather I’m interested in talking about it or not), I’m forced to agree with the guidebook.

            The owner of one shop in Aabpara Market walked across the street to greet me just so he could tell me that he thought America should come over here and solve both the Pakistan economy (“You should give Pakistan your extra money...”) and the Kashmir problem with India (“And you should help us bomb India into the sea...”) instead of attacking Afghanistan (“Why are you really here anyway?”).

            A few days ago a receptionist at the Islamabad Holiday Inn (who pitched himself to me as a fixer and guide) came over to my hotel room in Aabpara Market just to tell me the same thing. In both cases I told them that if we did that --- took that kind of responsibility for the rest of the world --- the trouble we’d get for the effort wouldn’t be worth our while. I reminded both that what they suggested was the very thing experts suggested as the principal reason Osama bin Laden attacked America in the first place. Because we helped Saudi Arabia and Kuwait defend themselves against Iraq and because we helped Kosovo establish its independence from Christian Serbia ...

            “Damned if we do, damned if we don’t,” I told them.

            “Why don’t you stop waiting for others to fix your problems and start fixing your own goddam problems?” I unwisely ended up barking at both of them ...

 

Headline News*[6]

*   Fierce Fighting Centered Around Tora Bora Today:

         “Afghan forces under opposition commander Hazrat Ali, Haji Zahir, and Mohammed Zaman Ghun  Shareef advanced up the snow-covered valleys toward Al Qaeda positions in the eastern White Mountains.”

*   More US and Western Troops Move to Front Lines

*   According to a Defense official:

        “Virtually the entire Air Force strike fleet---ten long-range bombers, a dozen tactical jets and four or five gun ships--- have focused on one primary complex near TB for the past several days.”

*   "The Afghan Alliance took territory during the day but then retreated at night, losing territory and having to fight for the same territory  again the next day. The al-Qaida forces are holed up in two parallel valleys, with opposition forces fighting their way up from the north and Pakistani forces blocking the border to the south. Leaving the enemy to either fight their way out or to try to escape to Pakistan.”

*   According to Donald Rumsfeld:

         “Were in a pitched battle over there. There’s a lot of fighting going on, and a lot of people are exchanging ordinance, and a lot of people are getting hurt.”

*   "The warlord Haji Zaman agreed to another unauthorized cease fire but the US ignored it and

          bombed relentlessly.”

*   "President Bush said: “I don’t know whether we’re going to get him tomorrow or a month from now or a year from now. I don’t really know. But we’re going to get him.”

*   Osama bin Laden Videotape Touting Terrorism Horrifies Nation.

          Videotape Found in Jalalabad Home Leaves US Aghast:

          Bin Laden praises Allah For September 11

*   'Snatch-and-Grab’ Units Dispatched to Tora Bora; Bin Laden Targeted.

          “A senior defense official said there is growing confidence that Osama bin Laden remains in the  Tora Bora area, citing three factors: al-Qaida fighters are putting up extremely stiff resistance, “like there’s something worth fighting for”. Afghan fighters besieging Tora Bora have reported recent sightings of Osama bin Laden; and other intelligence sources have provided suggestions of his presence at Tora Bora as well, which the official declined to specify.” (I heard over CNN today that since his voice was recorded giving combat orders over radio broadcasts from Tora Bora on Monday, the voice had been confirmed by the CIA as bin Laden’s).

 

          “None of the three by themselves are particularly convincing, but all three coming together might

          just mean something,” the official said.

*    15 Suspected al-Qaida and Taliban Arrested at Pak-Afghan Border Trying to Escape Afghanistan

 

~

                        And at 6:30 a.m. today I left my room, and walked out onto the most poignant streets of this messed up world at a most poignant moment in global history. Armed with my streetphoto cameras and a lifetime of global street wisdom --- I aimed to capture a poignant moment or three of the here-and-now of this place. Portraits of these people in flux --- out here on the streets in the heart of the terror ...

 

 

 

*A Note Home Just in Case:
The Wrong Place at the Wrong Time

 

 

*   Afghan Refugees Thrash British Journalist in Pakistan [7]

 

                London:

 

              British journalist Robert Fisk was attacked and badly beaten this week by a mob in western Pakistan.

               Fisk, 55, a veteran foreign correspondent for the London based Independent newspaper, was set upon by a group of around 100 Afghan refugees after his car broke down on a road west of Peshawar between the Pakistani border towns of Quetta and Chaman.

               A colleague told Reuters that Fisk said that the sight of two westerners pushing a broken down car attracted a crowd. They were friendly at first but then a child threw a stone which hit him on the head and then the others joined in.

               Fisk suffered injuries to his head, face, and hands after being pelted by stones.

             “I’m glad to be alive,” Fisk told Reuters. I’m going to bear scars for the rest of my life. Sadly I broke down in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

 

 

 

       A note Home as I leave  the hotel for the Afghan refugee camps:

 

            From bad to worse in Kashmir and in the Middle East. Here the al- Qaeda in Afghanistan are surrounded at Tora Bora in the nearby White Mountains. The remainder of al-Qaida and Taliban who were scattered by the fighting are crossing south and east into Pakistan lairs of sympathy, including through Peshawar and the Afghan refugee camps I’m off to photograph this morning at the border.

            Me with my penchant for being in the right place at the right time --- but me with this lingering bad cough and less in control of my health as the hours go by and as I get closer to the battle.

I guess I’ll just have to trust in the disguises I bought in Islamabad, in my ability to pick civilized, honest, and well-connected guides --- and in what brought me to this point from the beginning of my streetphoto career until now.

 

            The next couple of days might get a little hairy --- so if I never get back to these pages I just wanted to leave a note to say that I loved everyone who ever bothered to love me back.

 

            Especially you Janet!

 

            If I got in trouble, I got in trouble doing what I loved to do...

 

            PS---

            Rock-Chalk-Jayhawk --- Go KU!!

 

*A Day on the Streets

    Of The Afghan Refugee Camps:

 

 

On Both Sides

of the Red Line on the

24-hour CNN Breaking News Box

 War Map

 

                       What an extraordinary and surprising day!

       Shahid, his wife, and their driver picked me up just after sunrise at Khani’s Hotel in Saddar Bazaar, and we drove North through Peshawar as the empty city streets filled-in with people for the day. We were caught in traffic on the outskirts of the city, and the drive to the camps from there took about 45 to 55 minutes, and during that time I noticed the heavy, hazy morning desert atmosphere turn thick with smog from all the rickety 2-cycle motorized rickshaws that flood the streets and maneuver around in groups like herds of sheep. These little buggies aren’t only smog machines --- their hell to ride in. Only about a nickel to hire one, but hell to ride in. Your ass so sore afterward from the bouncing and your head so banged up from hitting the metal cage roof driving through potholes and over curbs, that soon after you hire your first one you’ll have wished you’d just have spent the extra dollar for a cab instead.

            Traffic cleared as we left Peshawar behind and headed toward the red line border on the CNN TV War Map not too far from Damadola, Pakistan. Traffic slowed to a crawl about two kilometers or so from the entrance to the refugee camps. About a half kilometer away from the last Pakistan Army and Peshawar Police checkpoint, Shahid asked me to put on the clothing I’d bought in Islamabad to disguise myself as an Afghani --- as I’d be turned away as an “illegitimate foreign visitor” if I were discovered. He told me if he were to succeed in getting me through the gates and deep into the heart of the camps where he intended to get me to, I’d be the first American and first international photographer to get there since September 11. I wasn’t sure weather to believe that or not, though it rang true from what I’d been hearing down at the Marriott press pool breakfast gatherings with the media. But nevertheless, I was no doubt the only American street photographer who got in there at this particularly edgy and historic Tora Bora moment.

            So I donned the woolen hat and the woolen scarf I bought in Islamabad, and I tried to look as much like an Afghani as possible. I carry a full beard --- so that was a plus. And between putting on the disguise and our arrival at the gateway, I stole a few quick photos out the car windows, including one just before the border of a Pakistani military officer --- an automatic rifle slung over his shoulder and resting behind his back --- leading a man away for questioning.

            The authorities peeked into our van when we got to the entrance and waved us through, obviously not noticing the high-top Converse Chuck Taylor All Star basketball shoes I was wearing, or he’d never have allowed us in.

            After the checkpoint the traffic kept crawling through a sprawling maze of bustling refugee camp markets fronting shanty settlements, and along the way I watched tens of thousands of refugees clamoring for their daily bread. All along the route --- a few miles before the entrance to a few miles past the entrance --- was a teeming chaotic bazaar of Afghani refugee merchants and Pakistani merchants trading and servicing the four million refugees living there in spare and crowded mud houses made from mud bricks produced inside the camp by enterprising and industrial Afghani refugees.

            When the traffic and the number of people along the roads finally thinned, and we were far enough away from the army and police (comfortably imbedded, but I’m not sure comfortable is really the right word, inside autonomous and lawless tribal lands) the access became workable for my kind of streetphotos, and I started getting serious. I made the driver stop at a cemetery near a fortified outpost, and I set up there for fifteen minutes until I got just the shot I flew over here to capture. Just the moment I wanted to express, as it turned out. A black and white image of a man laden down with a heavy sack of belongings thrown over his shoulder and trudging through the cemetery. The landscape (with grave sites in the near background) representing the death and the hopelessness of the enveloping conflict. The fort in the background speaking to the turmoil. The heavy sack across the man’s back representing the burden of his flux, his refugee status. And his swift cadence expressed (I hope) in the soft focus of his determined movement was a measure of his focus and the value of his time in that hard-scrapple place at this historic and chaotic moment in time.

            We drove past the border a mile or so, and we pulled up to one of the two schools that Shahid overseas through his NGO called the Experimental High School of the Sciences Under the Auspices of the Eagle Eyes Association for Afghan Displaced Youth. At the time we got there, the 200 or so (all male) students were all at their desks taking end-of-the-term exams in an open-air school that appeared to once have been a livestock pen. It wasn’t as much a school as most know it. A flat piece of ground with straw thrown about the dirt and boxed in by eight-to-twelve-foot high mud walls for protection from the chaos of the camp and to provide privacy for the mission of the school. Along one of the short sides of the boxed space (about 45 feet) and along one of the long sides (about 90 feet) there were classrooms with corrugated metal roofs that probably once served as stables for camels or horses, the scent of that past livestock use wafting about from the doorways.

            I made photographs of the school. A few of the students concentrating on their exams, a few of the teachers monitoring the test, and a few photographs of the headmaster stalking around the desks with a switch behind his back in case he needed to exercise discipline.

 

 

 

 

               




 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

            We left the school driving slowly through a pack of about 100 students who’d finished their exams and who were simply awed by me --- an American liberator there in my Chuck Taylor high tops, khaki cargo pants, khaki safari shirt, tan baseball cap and sun glasses. It was so surreal --- that I suddenly for a moment or two became self-aware and awed by the thought of it all myself ...

 

   

 

            We drove northwest on the border (along the CNN red line), and I made a few rural road shots along the way. Common camp street scenes of trucks driving past us overloaded with dozens of people (mostly men) standing and hanging off every conceivable space and every hand or foot hold --- the tires of the trucks about to rub their sunken undercarriages.

            After awhile we crossed back over the border a short distance to a refugee school housed in buildings along a canal that brings Peshawar water from the Kabul River in the Afghan mountains. Just as we were driving up and parking at the school across the street from the canal, I looked through the windshield and coming straight at me was a Taliban from Afghanistan hauling a sack of belongings over his shoulder. I was astounded, --- --- --- but what did I expect being at that place, at this time? So I seized the moment, and working with the street elements at hand in the two seconds I had to respond, I  composed a shot that would (if he continued walking toward me) squeeze him between a windshield wiper and a windshield sticker. To express my idea about how such a person must feel at this point in his desperate war; squeezed and under incredible pressure and strain. And when he walked into the composition, I captured that important historical streetphoto.

 

 

     

 

            “Isn’t that a Taliban,” I asked everyone in the car as soon as I’d fired off the shot and as he passed by me about a foot from my car door, already knowing it was by the shape, color, and tie of his turban and by his general fierce and hyper-focused demeanor. And all three exclaimed “yes!” at once --- they too amazed and curious to see this man who we’ve all been hearing so much about the past week on our TV news reports. The Taliban confederate fleeing away from Afghanistan --- defeated. The Taliban everyone was looking for, to capture or kill or re-educate. For going overboard with his conservative and suppressive extremist fervor and for shielding Osama bin Laden from his deserved September 11 justice.

            I got out of the car, and I watched him trudge down the road toward Peshawar. Me standing there on the border street shaking my head at the wonderment of having gotten to a place like this at a time like this. To have watched and to have photographed a momentary encounter like that, another of the intrinsic dream shots I imagined could happen right in front of me while conceiving the possibilities of this streetphoto project in Kansas.

            We entered the school (the Eagle Eye High School for Displaced Afghan Youth) and Shahid surprised me by asking me if I’d consider giving a short speech to the whole school (250 students plus two dozen faculty) and I asked, “About what?” And Shahid suggested that since the whole school was currently studying human rights, and that since I was an American, might I speak about that?

“Of course,” I blurted right out with a grin, always game for incredible last minute, once-in-a-lifetime challenges.

            I didn’t want to say anything that might offend (or get me stoned to death) because I was told that I would be the first American that any of the nearly 275 men and boys had ever met in person. That responsibility alone was almost as enormous as was the responsibility not to offend as I gave my off-the-cuff address to nearly 275 people whose country was currently having the shit bombed out of it by my country. And then, at that moment, I inconveniently chose to recall that article I’d just read in the local newspaper last night about the British journalist from the Independent who’d been maimed and nearly stoned to death by Afghani refugees just a few days ago when his car broke down on the road between Quetta and Chaman.

            I was a little bit intimidated as I climbed the stairwell to the roof, the only place large enough to hold a school assembly. But not so intimidated that I wasn’t bemused by a poster I noticed that was hung on the wall at the stairwell landing titled; “The 17 Steps to Human Rights.” The poster listed the 17 steps in order, and number one on the list was “religion.” Well --- I’m sorry --- but I’ve just seen too many horrible examples over the years across the world of religion being politicized (particularly in the context of this god-awful religious terror war) and used as a human rights wedge instead of a first step toward human rights. Christianity used as a motivation for battle (God is with us). And this bloody jihad-gone-amuck used as justification for evil.

            I didn’t want to be stoned to death, but I just couldn’t let that one slide by. But instead of challenging religion (as that would make me no friends in this place at this time) I focused on what I thought was the first step toward building human rights.

            A solid education.

*A Surprise

Human Rights Speech

 By an American Global Street Artist

at an

Afghanistan Refugee Camp High School

 

 

(at the time of and in the vicinity of the battle of Tora Bora)

... interrupted by the roar of the war...

 

                        “Human rights are the same all over the world. That’s why they call them human rights, not Afghani, Pakistani, or American rights. It’s human rights.

            “Human rights are the rights that lead us to happiness and protect our happiness, and I believe that maintaining happiness is the equivalent of  attaining genius.

            “For me, happiness means to have the lifelong opportunity and freedom to travel and wander wherever I want to around the world. Pakistan was the 49th country I’d ever wandered to and photographed in my life, and now Afghanistan is the 50th.

            “Being here to meet you at this moment makes me happy.

            “And I believe that human rights and the happiness that subscribing and adhering to a code of human rights provides --- begins with education.

            “Education is hard and ignorance is easy.

            “Education leads in the end to an adherence of human rights which leads us to the genius of maintaining happiness. In short, education leads us to peace, security, and contentment which leads us to happiness --- while ignorance leads us to insecurity, poverty, and war which leads us to hopelessness and unhappiness.”

        (Serendipitously, and seemingly on cue --- --- --- a coalition bomber roared high overhead the open air assembly with its Tora Bora load and then two American fighter jets playfully ripped the sky much lower, one seeming to celebrate a successful run at the enemy with a three-quarter barrel roll and a wing-wag directly over our heads, which diverted my attention from my speech to the assembly. Although the sound of the roaring war jets shook the walls of the school and shut my speech down for about eight to ten seconds, when I looked back down to continue my talk, not one of the audience seemed to even notice the war above them that had stopped me in mid speech. As if it were normal, or by now too typical to wonder about for them any more.)

            I continued:

            “Education is hard. But it leads us toward peace, which plants a seed to grow us toward the genius of happiness. Ignorance is easy. But it leads us to war and unhappiness.

            “Even now we can hear the roar of the warplanes overhead, and we can see the white streaks of their exhaust, and we can look straight up over our heads and watch all these war machines I helped pay for by paying my taxes heading to or returning from dropping bombs and missiles on your homeland, Afghanistan.

            “Well, I’m here today to try to inspire you to become educated men and to make a lifetime commitment to preferring education over ignorance and peace over war. And I’m here to challenge you not to just educate yourselves, but to educate all those around you as well --- even the girls.”

(A smattering of giggles and a murmuring arose from the audience, and I continued ...)

            “Education is difficult.

            “Ignorance is easy. 

            “And I challenge each of you to choose the difficult path of a lifetime of education. Because if you do decide to become an educated man, educated enough to become a happy genius --- and perhaps even wealthy enough --- you might one day chose to exercise your human right to travel as freely around the world as I do. And then you might even choose to travel to the United States of America to visit me and to stay with me in my house there in Kansas.

            “And if you ever do end up knocking on my front door, then perhaps by that time my government and your government may have worked together well enough so that together we’ll be able to build a lasting peace. A peace so strong and stable all over the world that together we’ll be able to disable the warplanes of all nations forever because they’ll no longer be needed to assure human rights.

‘So you’re all invited over to my house in America, and if you travel there to see me, then maybe you and I can find those war jets that just flew over us and that bomber you can still hear right now,” (I pointed toward the sky with my index finger), “and together we can chain them all down to their runways forever.

            “Education is hard.

            “Ignorance is easy.

            “Choose the difficult but intelligent path toward education over the easy but counterproductive road to ignorance, and together we will distance ourselves from the unhappiness of war and poverty and embrace the values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness --- thereby achieving security, and along with security, the global human contentment of liberty and personal satisfaction.”

 

 

 

 

*I Think They Will Bomb   

   All of Afghanistan to Bits   

                        After the speech (which was translated into both Uzbeki and Pashtun dialects by two advanced students who knew English, and which was met by thunderous applause from the audience, embarrassing me) I was treated like a liberator rather than the observer I thought I was. And afterward, each of the nearly 275 men and young men insisted on standing on line to shake my hand. I even saw a few of the more enthusiastic students sneak back into line to shake my hand again, so I probably shook more than 300 hands altogether in the ten minutes following the speech.

            It had been among the most astounding hours of my astounding life.

            Later, on my way down the stairs and out the door, I noticed three faculty and about 25 students crowded around that “17 Steps to Human Rights” poster, examining it in light of what I’d just told them about education --- which it turned out was number two on their list.

            Back out on the street at the car while we were leaving, I asked one young man (the one who’d acted as my Pashtun translator for the speech) what he thought about all the war jets overhead and what was happening up the road at Tora Bora and he answered with a grimace, “I think they will bomb all of Afghanistan to bits.”

            On the way back out of the refugee camps I re-donned and tweaked my disguise for the authorities, and we went through the checkpoint (I just mostly starred ahead and occasionally nodded during question time from the uptight well-armed Pakistani Army soldiers), and afterward the four of us giggled for having put one over on the government.

            It truly is easier to apologize than it is to ask permission, I quipped. And I had to figure that working around bureaucracy is pretty much the same in every culture (an international sport) because after I made that quip it took the three of them close to a minute to stop laughing. While I bitterly sat there recalling my Monday in Islamabad when I spent six hours asking permission. Almost a whole day getting my freaking permission slip stamped in my passport that I never even had to use once today hopscotching back and forth across the border. “However, perhaps I’d need it tomorrow,” I reasoned to myself, “if I get that chance to make that run over the Khyber Pass and up the Grand Trunk Road toward Jalalabad ...”

            As we were driving back into Peshawar from the camps I flipped through a copy of a Displaced Afghan Youth School Magazine I’d picked up at the school after the speech (put out by Shahid and his wife and called Babloo Bably), and on the title page it was written:

            “No country can afford to not adopt, connect, and adjust to globalization.

            “Can we afford being left behind?

            “NOT AT ALL!

            “So now we all must abide by the international laws and codes of human rights!”