Welcome to Kabul

Kabul International Airport, Afghanistan

Members of the Taliban around the I love Kabul sign at Kabul International Airport

We got to Kabul. It may seem adventurous to some. That we were here. Let me puncture that. And we need to. Yes, Afghanistan is dangerous. But not everything that happens here is alien to us. We got an internal flight from Mazar-e-Sharif to Kabul, like flying from Manchester to London, Berlin to Frankfurt. An airline, just that. We had met the Taliban many times and this was our new normal. Seeing them run an airport or provide the security wasn’t anything to write home about. Some did. If we always see these places as exotic we won’t get near to understanding them. Why do people do this? Is it to make their travel special in a way? To bring back stories and show photos and have others think them incredible? There is danger, there is hardship but some take it far too far. Some will say this is Edward Said talking, I haven’t read the book but I know the general message. It’s like the west largely seeing Pakistan as full of danger but India full of colour, a poor lazy reading of both countries which are as complicated as any country, but that won’t stop the great western explorer wearing walking trousers in a country where the whole population manages to dress itself all year without looking like it’s going camping, making superficial comments about a set of people who learned long ago that their lives and ways are a game. It’s sad and it helps nobody. What do you want? The truth? So do I. 

So here we were. We saw the sign. Most westerners want a picture with it. Is it special? It’s metal, plastic, some lightbulbs. It’s a signifier, I get that, I am here you can say, fine. So we got our pictures. The Taliban were resting on the grass near the sign. Hang on, now I’m doing it, who are THE Taliban? The few men I saw lying on the grass after prayers? Well there were around four of them, they are certainly members of the Taliban, and likely go along with most of what it as an organisation says but are they THE Taliban? Depends on how you’re using the THE but let’s be accurate, I saw members of the Taliban who told us we couldn’t take pictures of them, we explained we wanted pictures with the sign, they were confused why anyone would want to. They were about to be disappointed with the rest of the people who got off the flight who were to repeat the photograph. So they moved to another bit of grass, looking back on us posing next to the sign. 

It was calm now but this was the site on the news seeing thousands of people running to get onto the evacuation flights, people falling from those planes, people being lost in the crush. It seemed a simple story, the Afghans needed saving, but there are 39 million of them, would the west save them all? Was it even the west’s responsibility? Some couldn’t remember why they first came here. 9/11. And then twenty years of fighting, at times confused. Why are we still here? A mission was started and it can be finished too. So it finished. Inside of the decisions are people’s lives, affected. There was plenty to criticise. But it was calm now. The Taliban taking over was slow, many didn’t believe it would happen. When it did there was panic and many ran. The surprise of that had now gone as the Talibs lay on the grass and listened to the call to prayer from the mosque inside the airport. This is what they had wanted, an Islamic emirate. Others clearly didn’t want this so there would be tension. 

What would happen to us? Nobody knew. That bit is true. Yes there was a risk of dying here. We didn’t know how the Taliban in the capital would act compared to ones we met in Mazar-e-Sharif, we had seen riots being quelled on the news reports. Kabul, like the rest of Afghanistan suffered from a kidnap threat and ISIS were rising. So yes there was risk but some people got overly excited. Wearing hiking trousers does that to some, I guess. I’d done some medical training and was carrying blood clotting agents and tourniquets (I may still need them) but what I was using up most was antibiotics, oral rehydration sachets and sympathy for traveller’s diarrhoea. The other major risk was road traffic accidents. Kabul’s extensive experience with bombs and bullets meant it had excellent facilities in trauma care. Alongside the danger, I wanted to know the truth to build a picture from. Bit by bit. We were here for a week at least. I did feel this was an incredible opportunity, that history was being written here. But also that it was being written with people’s lives. Who were they? The people in Kabul. I like looking at a landscape but I’m much more interested in taking pictures of people, I wanted to know them. And I would. Welcome to Kabul. 

From the last post

“Young boys. Some awkward around their guns. The majority friendly. Older Taliban commanders told me they didn’t give them guns until they were eighteen, before that they were scouts or ferried explosives around for them. Young boys. I’d been their age. What was I thinking in my twenties? Well, I was being offered an arranged marriage, no thanks. I wanted to escape, I wanted adventure. A relative in Pakistan showed me a shotgun. I was a young boy. I wanted to show off. I wanted to be noticed. I wanted to understand the world but I was bad at maths, science. I was nowhere near thinking I needed to understand myself. I was easily influenced, by my mosque, by cooler friends, by older men. I wanted to be liked, accepted. These young men I met here, some wanted to swap phone numbers. Were we the Great Satan of the West? No, we were cool kids with cameras, speaking English, wearing different clothes. And they wanted to be a part of it. Take my picture. Take my picture. Take my picture.”

Read “Let’s head to Kabul” here