Say ye, “We believe in God and the revelation given to us and to Abraham, Ismail, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes, and that given to Moses and Jesus, and that given to (all) Prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them and it is unto Him that we surrender ourselves.”
—Quran (2:136)
I had arrived at my office in Atlanta at 6:03 A.M., a glint of sunrise peeking through the window. I lost myself in work as I sent e-mails to CARE offices in Africa and Asia and made phone calls to the CARE International office in Geneva. Just before 9:00 A.M., someone stuck his head in and blurted out that a plane had struck the World Trade Center up in New York. I didn’t even turn around as he went on to tell others. I thought to myself, “My God, what a terrible accident.”
I remembered reading about an incident in the 1940s or 1950s when a military plane had struck the Empire State Building. There were few casualties then and I wondered how an accident like this could happen now. I thought of my friends in the Red Cross who would be called to assist. Airline crashes are such grisly affairs.
Eventually, though, my curiosity got the best of me, so I walked down to the communications conference room just in time to see the other passenger jet fly into the second building. It was 9:06 A.M. when United Airlines Flight 175 blasted through the upper stories of the World Trade Center like a deadly dart hitting its mark.
September 11, 2001: Time stopped for me and just about everyone in the civilized world. The world as we had known it had just changed, and my emotions caught fire. In a split second I felt anger, hate and a thirst for revenge. This just simply couldn’t be! Not in America!
We stared in dull surprise as the newscast on CNN filled airtime with more talk than news. At 9:40 A.M. we heard that American Airlines Flight 77 had struck the Pentagon! For all practical purposes, America was under attack. But from whom? Most around me made the logical leap to Islamic extremists and Osama bin Laden as the most likely perpetrators of these cataclysmic events.
I watched as long as I could before getting back to work. There could be trouble in the Muslim countries where CARE had field offices, and I immediately thought of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Not far behind in my thoughts were Egypt, Sudan, the Philippines and Indonesia. As I started back to my office to check e-mail traffic and call our field offices, I found myself walking alongside CARE’s Senior Vice President for External Relations. We said very little, but we both knew some form of American military response would be forthcoming. America would be at war again.
“We’re all going to be bloodied by the time this one is over,” I told her.
Little did I realize that my statement would be prophetic for myself.
The Twin Towers began to collapse and United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a field in rural Pennsylvania and we at CARE began our own plans for a response to save the vulnerable who undoubtedly would be affected by this catastrophe.
On Friday, September 21, 2001, I was asked by CARE’s senior management to fly to Thailand to support CARE’s Regional Management Unit (RMU). It was obvious by then that there was going to be U.S. military action in Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden was protected by the radical Taliban government in Kabul. CARE wanted to be ready to respond with support, and the Bangkok RMU had direct command and control over the CARE offices in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In Bangkok, I would meet the acting director of CARE Afghanistan (an Englishwoman named Anne Murphy74), the assistant country director (Mohammed Ali75, a Somalian) and was told that Nicolas Palenque, a French Canadian was in route to join us.
I knew Anne from training. She was a strong woman and an excellent administrator. I had not met Mohammed but if he was Somali, I instinctively knew that he would be topnotch. Somalis are very resourceful and direct, and I have always enjoyed working with them. Nicolas was coming from CARE/Canada. He was an ex-paratrooper and had worked in Afghanistan before. Anne and Mohammed had been evacuated from Pakistan after 9/11.
The four of us, plus the Director of the RMU, quickly commenced contingency planning, a process to develop an emergency response for any disaster scenario. In this case, we were asked to plan for the possibility that up to one million Afghan refugees might cross the border into Pakistan. The thinking was that the U.S. military would initiate massive airstrikes to disrupt the Taliban’s command and control capability. The Afghan capital, Kabul, and other large cities would be struck. The civilian population, to escape the bombings, might take the Khyber Pass and other routes to head east for safe haven in Pakistan.
I left for Bangkok on my 53rd birthday. Kara, who was nine years old, was planning a surprise birthday party for me, and she was heartbroken. As I left home for what we both knew could be a dangerous assignment, Kate showed the stoic face she always had, but there was tension as I departed.
Although I was proud that I had been chosen to help plan for CARE’s response, my survival instincts flashed a warning. The 9/11 attack had changed the rules, and civilians, especially American civilians, would be a new target for these extremists.
Once I got to Bangkok and met up with the CARE team, it became clear that the situation had settled somewhat in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But it was probably the calm before the storm, as U.S. forces gathered their intelligence, re-positioned military assets and developed a strategy for the upcoming operation. We determined that a team could do better planning for CARE’s response and coordinating with the UN and other NGOs in Pakistan. Nicolas had not joined us yet and was being re-routed to Islamabad.
I was no fool—the danger we faced was real. I knew about security, first as a soldier and then as a civilian, but I also knew that we were climbing into a dormant volcano that could blow at any time.
Anne, Mohammed and I left for Karachi on September 28th. We departed in the middle of the night on Thai Air, one of those red-eye specials so common in Asia and Africa. Almost all of the other passengers on the plane were Pakistani or Afghani men dressed in traditional clothing. I surmised that they were probably returning from a vacation in Bangkok.
With its world-famous red light districts, inexpensive shopping, incredible restaurants and liberal views on life, Bangkok was, and is, a popular destination for males from around the world. For Muslims and Christians, Bangkok allowed visitors the opportunity to leave the Bible or Quran home and partake of what Thailand had to offer.
Mohammed fit right in with the passengers. Anne and I looked like we had luminous signs around our necks that flashed, “White people, targets of opportunity.” Still, with this many Muslims on board, I felt that no one was apt to hijack the plane and fly it into something. Once the flight took off and we had our meal, the captain turned off all the lights in the cabin to let people sleep. It was as if we were in a cave.
A number of the Muslim tourists did not want to sleep. Many stood in the aisles chatting loudly in Arabic or Pashtu. Perhaps they were speaking of their experiences in Thailand. They might also have been talking about the impact of 9/11 and the coming war with America. I wondered to myself about these Arabic men. Whose side would they be on?
The three of us were in the center section. I sat in an aisle seat. Anne sat next to me and Mohamed was in the middle of the five seats. From a security point of view this was a foolish arrangement. Mohammed should have been in the aisle, with me next to him and with Anne farthest from the aisle. I kept wondering about the political and religious bias of our fellow passengers and how this might impact our safety. Being a disaster planner, I naturally gravitated to the worst-case scenario.
A group of men next to me was talking loudly. They were so close that one kept bumping into me during their lively conversation. For all I knew, they could be saying “Let’s kill the dumb American in the 319 aisle seat.”
Paranoia took over. I started to think, in the noise and darkness, how easy it would be to slit my throat. These people could have been Taliban or returning Osama bin Laden operatives. I got little sleep that night. I never discussed my worries with Anne, who slept soundly. I was relieved when we made it to the Karachi airport without incident.
We entered the Karachi air terminal jet-lagged and proceeded to the security screening. I was carrying a satellite phone for emergency communications, which was not legal in Pakistan. True, I was carrying an “official” letter from CARE saying that this equipment was to be used for emergency humanitarian operations, but illegal is illegal. I put the double-locked case that held the “sat phone” on the x-ray belt and it went through the machine without arousing interest. I was relieved but troubled that no one wanted to open the case. With all the wiring it could have been a bomb.
Our next stop was to a booth where we were to pay the entry tax. It looked like a ticket booth for a circus sideshow. The man taking the money was more interested in his cigarette than in the passengers. He put the money into a simple dirty box, and every move he made seemed like an imposition.
Security guards cradling automatic rifles were positioned throughout the terminal. This is not unusual in most Third World airports, but tonight it had an aura of foreboding. While standing in line for baggage someone asked my nationality. I am not sure if it was my jet lag, foolishness or the fact that this person already knew the answer but I told him, “American.”
Once we had our baggage, we started out of the terminal to look for a cab to take us to our hotel. In the few hundred yards it took to get clear of the terminal building, I was asked again about my nationality. This time I think I said “Italian.” One person actually asked me if I felt safe in Pakistan. I did not. We caught a few hours’ sleep in a hotel, returned to the airport, and re-boarded a plane bound for Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan.
What we found was a media circus. Journalists from all the major TV networks and newspapers across the globe were everywhere. Yet while everyone knew that war would be coming to Afghanistan, at that time there was really nothing to print or talk about. America was lining up its allies and setting up logistics operations to deploy troops. Humanitarian aid agencies like CARE were discussing contingency plans with the UN and government representatives from America and Europe to line up funding for relief action once the fighting started in Afghanistan, as it undoubtedly would. But there was nothing really happening that a photojournalist could photograph for the evening news.
The media was desperate for a story. Anywhere you went you risked having a reporter accost you or thrust a video camera in your face in an attempt to gain some newsworthy blather.
The Sheraton Hotel was renting out its roof so the media could have a single spot to set up cameras. I went up there once out of curiosity. They had taken up more than half of the roof. There were actually tents set up for computer equipment and a tent for commentators who had to report during the heat of the day. The commentators’ tent was spotlighted for broadcasting at night. In front of this tent was the largest assortment of video cameras I had ever seen. They looked ominous, almost like weapons. You could actually watch a reporter speaking in the tent, take the elevator down to the lobby, and catch that reporter’s broadcast on the BBC, CNN or NBC.
The media had booked all the hotel rooms in Islamabad. The Sheraton had 297 rooms, of which 290 were filled by members of the media. Media staff were sleeping three, four and five to a room. This irony was not missed by the NGO response staff. The media were there to film humanitarian workers coming into Pakistan to help in the response effort, and yet the media had taken the living space away from these workers, who now had to find sleeping accommodations elsewhere. In essence, the media presence was inhibiting the very response action they had come to document. Yet the media wonders why they are often looked on with disdain, even distrust, around the world.
The day after our arrival, Nicolas Palanque arrived. The team was complete and through a local contact, we found a few rooms in a small hotel. We did what coordination had to be done with the government and UN representatives. Soon it became clear that we were not close enough to the action to be effective. We needed to be in Peshawar, near the border with Afghanistan.
CARE had maintained a large office in Peshawar for years. Although CARE did not have development or relief operations in Pakistan, the Peshawar office functioned as a logistics staging area and communications hub for Afghan operations. Peshawar was also a hotbed of terrorist and Taliban activity as well as one of the biggest arms manufacturing and drug trade centers in the world.
The drive to Peshawar from Islamabad takes three hours over a well-maintained, hard-surfaced road. Anne had arranged for a 4-wheel drive vehicle to pick us up. The journey was pleasant enough. It was a warm sunny day. The conversation in the vehicle was light and sometimes focused on the work ahead. About two hours into the trip our driver pointed out a pro-Bin Laden madrasa, or Muslim school. It could be a potential choke point if trouble started on the border and we needed to evacuate back to Islamabad.
A little further down the road we crossed a bridge that signified the beginning of what the government of Pakistan called “the Tribal Areas76.” I was told that many in this section believed that Afghanistan actually started once you crossed this bridge. Even in the most peaceful of times the government had a hard time controlling the Tribal Areas. With a U.S.-backed war in Afghanistan imminent, this region was a potential boiling hotbed for anti-U.S. sentiment.
The Tribal Areas was like the Wild West—but instead of six guns, the bad guys were carrying AK-47 rifles and B-40 rocket-propelled grenade launchers. The terrain looked much like parts of our American Southwest. There were rugged hills, mountains and valleys perfect for ambush, as the Russians discovered a decade before on the Afghan side of the border. Warlords controlled sections of this wild territory and had their own well-armed armies to protect them. The people who inhabited this region carried a greater allegiance to Afghanistan, the Taliban and Osama bin Laden than their own government. It was also well known that Osama bin Laden supporters had infiltrated many of the police and security forces. For us there might not be any “good guys with white hats” on the tribal side of the bridge.
Even on this warm sunny day I had no doubt that we had crossed both a physical and political boundary. We had gone from an area that had somewhat of a security problem to an area where extreme violence was common.
CARE’s office in Peshawar was a well-established complex. There was a large main building and room to park five or six vehicles. At one time it must have been a huge private home. Now, it housed numerous offices, storage areas, and meeting rooms. The compound was surrounded by a 10 to 12-foot high cement wall, a foot thick, with sharp glass shards embedded along the top. There were guards at the gate. Normally I hate high walls. In Peshawar I learned to love them.
CARE also rented a number of staff houses in secure areas. Nicolas and Anne were billeted in one such house and I was located in another. I wondered whether the reason they split us up was to ensure that all of us would not be kidnapped or killed together. The staff house I stayed in had four bedrooms (each with its own bathroom), a large living room and dining area. There was a guard at the front gate armed with a 12-gauge pump shotgun. We had an excellent cook who had left Afghanistan with his family years ago. He had been working for an American NGO and left his homeland because he fell under suspicion of the Taliban. We could even get cable TV within 24 hours if we knew what palms to grease. The method of hooking cable up was throwing the cable over your compound wall. The streets were literally covered with cable lines. It looked like black spaghetti.
At that time there were several hundred CARE staff members at the Peshawar office or living in Peshawar. CARE had a total local staff of about 500, including those working in Afghanistan; all but five were Afghanis. A number of the Afghan staff and all foreign staff had been evacuated out of Afghanistan after the World Trade Center attack.
The office was extremely well-run. This is a remarkable achievement and typical of all CARE country offices. The majority of CARE country offices are staffed by people from the countries served by that office. I interviewed section leaders in the Peshawar office, almost all of whom spoke English. They seemed to be anticipating my concerns. They had handled the situation so well I started wondering if I was really needed.
It was about a week after my arrival in Peshawar that I noticed the dull pain and stiffness. I found that I had difficulty standing up for more than 45 minutes at a time. I seemed to tire easily. Lifting was a struggle. I assumed this was some form of a strain since I had to carry all of my equipment—computers, sat phones, personal luggage—with me all day in case of evacuation.
When men and women were crossing borders facing death, it is hardly the time to raise your hand and say, “I don’t feel well today.” I said nothing and just went to work. I would see my doctor on my return home.
My first priority was to coordinate with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and other NGOs regarding potential refugee operations on the Pakistan side of the border. I will never forget the first few times that I met with the UN or my NGO colleagues. I felt like the odd man out. There was generally a surprised look at seeing an American. Some actually asked what I was doing in Peshawar. It was a good question. At that time no other international agency would allow staff with American passports into this area. There were international staff from Canada, England, France, Germany, and other European, Middle Eastern and Asian countries but no Americans. As far as I could tell, I was the only American in Peshawar besides the Americans at the U.S. Consular office. And the U.S. Consular office was so heavily fortified that it looked like a World War II bunker system.
The Taliban had an office two short blocks from the CARE office. Bands of Taliban could be seen along the streets. Street vendors had a successful business selling pro-Osama Bin Laden t-shirts. I began to sign my e-mails to CARE headquarters in Atlanta with the salutation, “The Last American in Peshawar.”
The UNHCR meetings were key to my CARE/USA assigned mission to develop plans for CARE Pakistan to respond if one million refugees from Afghanistan crossed the border. Jamal, a CARE Afghan senior staff person accompanied me to these meetings. Jamal became a friend, counsel and political strategist. He was about 5’ 9” with jet-black beard and hair. He wore glasses and traditional Afghan dress. Although he was younger, he looked stately, like a college professor. We had more similarities than differences. Jamal was a family man. He had deep religious convictions but did not overstate them. He believed in peace, cooperation and helping his fellow man. As always with the Afghan staff, I felt like asking, “Why do you need me?” I soon realized that as a senior American with years of disaster response experience, my strength was that I could open doors that Jamal and others could not, and I could make recommendations that might have been difficult coming from an Afghani.
The daily UNHCR meetings were held at 9:00 A.M, and there must have been 25 or more NGOs attending, including the International Rescue Committee, Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children, and World Vision. Some NGOs were totally Arabic-speaking. Because of the number of attendees, the meetings were held under a large open-sided tent on the shaded lawn within the UNHCR compound.
During the briefings, Pakistani fighter jets from the nearby military airbase streaked overhead. They made hearing almost impossible. Between the noise of the jets taking off and landing, we could hear only snippets of birds chirping in the trees above us, of people talking on the street on the other side of our protective wall, of the occasional call of street merchants and the grind of new four-wheel drive SUVs. These meetings were always an odd blend of war activities mixed with the serenity of daily life.
These meetings were designed to give participants information about refugees along the border and to bring us up to speed on what was happening in the volatile Tribal Areas, where the UN hoped to establish refugee camps. The primary mission was to develop a coordinated response strategy, but the meetings actually accomplished little, as they were poorly organized and tended to ramble, leaving the UN and the rest of us in the dark about anything outside of Peshawar. We were at the mercy of our hosts, the government of Pakistan, and Pakistani officials seemed to be disorganized and reluctant to make decisions. After all, they were in an area they hardly had control of under normal circumstances.
The meetings usually started out with a briefing from one or more Pakistani government officials on the current government position toward refugees and the situation along the Afghan border. Confusion reigned in these briefings. If one Pakistani talked he would often contradict himself during the same briefing. If two spoke they would contradict each other. We heard that Pakistan would not let refugees cross the frontier; then we learned about the plans they were making along the Pakistan side of the border for refugee camps. We were told that we would soon have access to the border. Then we heard access would not be granted. Then we were told we could only send Pakistanis selected by the government of Pakistan to border refugee camp sites. And the NGOs and UN would have to pay the salaries for these selected Pakistanis. Then we were back to complete access for all NGO staff again.
According to the Pakistani government, construction of these camps was going to be done by companies only they could designate. Can you spell “b-o-o-n-d-o-g-g-l-e”? Every day we heard this from Pakistani government officials. And the UN representative seemed to be agreeing with them or made no attempt at definitive clarifying questions.
UNHCR would then brief us on their progress for refugee camp construction and planning. The government of Pakistan identified what land could be used for refugee camps, and UN teams were sent to survey these locations. Then the government told the UN that the locations that had been picked were no longer available. New locations were selected. Different UN teams were sent out. But the teams used different assessment tools, making comparison for site selection impossible. Sometimes, assessment teams did not know what was needed to build a refugee camp. In many cases, vital requirements for camp construction—water for drinking and washing, soil permeability for latrines, proper grade for drainage, road access and other key construction requirements—were simply ignored. The only real criteria in site selection seemed to be any place the government of Pakistan indicated the UN could access.
The most essential and most poorly addressed refugee site problem was security. The Pakistani government wanted to place the refugee camps within a few kilometers of the border. This would put them within artillery range of Afghanistan. Although this violated international law, the UN seemed to consent to this idea, or at least they did not object in front of us.
The major rationale for these meetings, namely the coordination of the relief effort, rapidly deteriorated. Everyone had wanted to avoid the typical NGO-UN-U.S. government feeding frenzy where NGOs pressured for lucrative contracts from the UN, the U.S. government and other donor governments. Money became more important than the work at hand. I had seen this same situation happen in Albania, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Sudan. The morning meetings among the NGOs were intended to allow a strategic distribution of funds according to NGO interests, strengths and capabilities. But the UN let this vital process fall apart. I soon heard that backdoor deals were being cut between UNHCR and individual NGOs for the management of key sites and activities.
To make matters worse, I had been sent into this situation without written terms of reference—“orders” in NGO jargon—on my mission. I had no clear documentation of why I was there or what I was supposed to accomplish. I had been told at CARE headquarters in Atlanta “to prepare for the potential movement of up to one million Afghan refugees into Pakistan.” However, without written terms of reference, I was technically under the direct control of CARE Afghanistan. They wanted to concentrate resources on setting up supply lines and maintaining their programs inside Afghanistan, not preparing for one million potential refugees.
I didn’t necessarily disagree with prioritizing supply lines and Afghanistan in-country program support over refugee relief, because I had some doubts that we were going to see a large-scale refugee movement across the border. However, a disaster planner must plan for all contingencies. What would CARE do if the exodus did occur? Would we say to the arriving refugees, “Sorry, but we didn’t plan for your arrival”? I felt that CARE was large enough to do both. Besides, planning for one set of options did not eliminate planning for another. I was, in effect, between the proverbial rock and a hard place—between what CARE Atlanta verbally told me to do and what CARE Afghanistan was planning for.
Still, I did what I could. I went to Islamabad and met with UN officials. With them I developed a “memorandum of understanding” that CARE would play a significant role in refugee camp management or the delivery of needed food and supplies in the region. I took this document back to Peshawar and persevered until CARE Afghanistan management signed it, thus committing CARE.
With Jamal and the help of others, we lobbied CARE management to rent additional warehouse space and provisioned this space with enough tents, blankets, and cooking material to assist 5,000 families. This stockpile served a dual purpose. Once things heated up, warehouses would be in short supply and the equipment we had purchased could be used on either side of the border.
Then the U.S. bombing began in earnest inside Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Our security procedures were ratcheted up. We no longer had the luxury of eating at restaurants, shopping, or even walking along the streets. I spent my time in one of three places: the CARE Peshawar office, the CARE guesthouse and the daily UN meeting. The NGO’s and the UN set up an emergency warning system using radios and telephones to notify everyone if fighting broke out in Peshawar. There were intense anti-American demonstrations in cities across the country, including Peshawar. Several times we had to evacuate the CARE office when the demonstrations became too turbulent.
I was starting to get that old feeling again. I wouldn’t call it a flashback, but it felt like Vietnam: the knotted stomach, the tingling down the neck and back, the feeling of complete vulnerability to outside forces. I knew instinctively that if the Taliban wanted to kill me there was little I could do to prevent it. I could change my driving routes and times to the office or UN meetings but the bad guys knew that I had to go to the CARE office to work and the CARE guesthouse to rest. By simply positioning one or two men at both points and waiting, it would be simple to eliminate my driver and me.
The night the bombing began, we were sitting on the front porch of the guesthouse after dinner. CNN told us everything we needed to know. Then our sat phone rang. It was my headquarters in Atlanta. For some reason they did not know that I was in Peshawar, although I did not doubt that I had relayed that information to them. I was to leave for Islamabad immediately. It was dark, and under normal daylight circumstances, the three-hour road trip to Islamabad was dangerous because of traffic accidents and bandits. And there was a pro- Osama bin Laden school between the capital and us. I was safer where I was. As we got off the phone, at my residence my guard with the shotgun was joined by two men carrying automatic weapons. My security had been increased.
CARE quickly sent an American security expert to Peshawar. Lynn Thomas was a former U.S. Navy SEAL and an expert in complex emergencies. Lynn stayed in the staff house in which I was billeted. Once Lynn was in place, our guard with the 12-gauge pump shotgun stayed but the men with the automatic weapons no longer showed up. The government of Pakistan had begun cracking down on the Taliban. Everyone felt that security was fragile but improving.
I took little comfort from the guard. I knew he must have a wife and family. What could he really do to protect us? Lynn and I discussed escape plans in case the house was attacked at night. Plan “A” was to go over the back wall, carrying money, passports, CARE ID and travel permits and lay low somewhere until the sun came up. We had no Plan “B.” As I had in other hot spots, I started sleeping with my escape clothes folded on my bed and my passport, money and other important papers ready to grab and go. However, there were times I thought about eating my American passport and try to claim I was another nationality if I were to be kidnapped.
The normally volatile border tribal regions had begun to percolate. We heard reports of a government helicopter being shot down, government buildings attacked and burned to the ground, government vehicles fired upon. It was dangerous. Still we focused on our mission. Then came an announcement at the UN briefing. The UN had declared the border a Class IV security area. This was bad. It meant that the UN would have no security for operations along the Afghan/Pakistan border region and that they were on orders from their headquarters that UN staff could not enter the area.
Despite the UN orders and a lack of security the UN officer leading the meeting wanted a show of hands from the audience indicating those NGOs that would be willing to work within this area with no security. Obviously the ones who raised their hands would get the lucrative contracts for work in border refugee camps. I thought the noise of the jets had distorted the words. Someone in the crowd asked for clarification. The UN representative repeated the message.
“God,” I whispered to Jamal, “I wish I had a recording of that statement.” We looked at each other in disbelief. Jamal shook his head and looked to the ground in thought or prayer. Sadly, the smaller, poorer NGO groups in the audience put their hands up while all the major NGOs took a giant step backwards.
Although the larger NGOs protested this UN decision, events would eliminate the potential for refugee camps inside Pakistan. The bombing began but there was no surge of refugees across the border. Instead, people scattered inside Afghanistan, moving back to their home villages, taking to the hills or heading for the traditional hiding places that had been used throughout hundreds of years of tribal warfare.
Because the Afghans did not leave their country they were not considered refugees under the formal definition of the term, but Internally Displaced People (IDP). Still, their status in life, their needs and the dangers they faced, were no different from those faced by refugees. The focus within the CARE offices soon shifted entirely to operations inside Afghanistan. This was a good thing, too. If the projected one million refugees, or even one quarter of that number, had crossed into Pakistan, with the indecisiveness and lack of control shown by the government of Pakistan and UNHCR, the results would have been catastrophic.
The bombings stimulated the Taliban to lash out at the world, and its leaders let it be known that anyone contacting the outside world from inside Afghanistan would be immediately shot as spies or traitors. CARE and other agencies needed information about IDPs and their immediate needs. CARE staff in Afghanistan understood the situation and acted heroically. Using satellite phones, couriers, and even public telephones, they got the information about IDP numbers and locations and the security situation to the Peshawar office. It was the type of unselfish heroism our military would acknowledge with medals in time of war.
CARE also began to probe the border to see if there were routes to bring supplies into the country. For one thing, the organization had good contacts among the commercial trucking companies. As in the Sudan operation in 1985, I have always been impressed that no matter what conflict area I have been in around the world, private trucking companies always seem to have the skill and daring to get the product through to the customers.
I began attending intensive planning and strategy meetings at the CARE offices aimed at expediting the movement of material and relief personnel across the border. These planning sessions were difficult for me. The CARE staff being asked to go back across the border to risk their lives were people with whom I ate and shared office space. It felt like the life-threatening tasks we were giving them rolled off our tongues too easily. Yet it did not seem to trouble my Afghan counterparts. They never hesitated or complained. I wondered about that. It troubled me and it showed.
The Afghan security officer, a stout man with a long gray beard who wore magnificent turbans and looked as if he had walked out of a Rudyard Kipling novel, summed up their bravery and my doubt succinctly.
“These are our people,” he said, “and it is our responsibility to help them, not yours.”
This war against the Taliban belonged to the Afghans. The exiled Afghanis in that CARE office did not avoid the responsibility toward their country.
After a particularly turbulent meeting, I walked with Jamal out of the CARE offices. I was still troubled with the fact that my friends so effortlessly accepted tasks that could get them killed. Jamal took my arm, stopped me and looked straight into my eyes. “You know, Paul,” he said, “we all pray to the same God.”
It was an amazing statement to me. In America, anti-Muslim feelings were brewing as if all Muslims were responsible for what terrorist thugs had done. Were there not innocent Muslim civilians also killed in the 9/11 attacks? Here I was on the rim of a war zone, watching Muslim men and women preparing to put themselves in harm’s way to fight our common enemy. These were men and women who would risk their own lives to protect me. I thought how wonderful it was that my Muslim friend would draw my attention to the God to whom we all prayed.
The war to topple the Taliban government in Afghanistan was relatively quick and successful. Afghan society opened up. Music could be heard again in the streets of Kabul. Men could walk the streets clean-shaven. Women returned to school. Kites flew freely in the clear blue sky. While the American bombs and troops got the press, I knew that much of the credit belonged to the Afghans themselves, Afghans I worked with in Peshawar. They carried a heavy load for a long time in their fight against the Taliban.
I returned to the U.S. and an immediate operation in a hospital. It turned out the pain I had been walking around Pakistan with for over a month was a double hernia. My recovery was slow. I also changed jobs and accepted a position as a consultant with the Center for Disease Control77, to research and study the implications of disaster response and planning from a public health and hospital perspective.
My initial area of study would be the U.S. jurisdictions in the South Pacific, an opportunity that I could hardly have imagined, a disaster planner’s dream come true. But sometimes dreams can turn into nightmares.
74 Fictitious name
75 Fictitious name
76 The semi-autonomous tribal lands consist of seven parts called “agencies”: Bajaur, Mohmand, Khyber, Orakzai, Kurram, and North and South Waziristan. There are also six smaller zones known as frontier regions in the transitional area between the tribal lands and the North-West Frontier Province to the east.
77 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the leading national public health institute of the United States. The CDC is a federal agency under the Department of Health and Human Services that focuses national attention on developing and applying disease control and prevention. It especially focuses its attention on infectious disease, food borne pathogens, environmental health, occupational safety and health, health promotion, injury prevention and educational activities designed to improve the health of United States citizens.