The state-run Spinghar Hotel is the best in Jalalabad.  A nice garden provides a perfect approach to the renovated hotel building.  But its location near the Governor’s House and certain defence installations is a cause of concern among the hotel employees.  A few of them whispered in my ear whether it was safe for them to continue working and living in a hotel which could become a target of the US aerial strikes.

            This concern is shared by other residents of Jalalabad, the biggest city in eastern Afghanistan.  Ajmal Khan, a young university graduate, said he shifted his family of eight from Jalalabad to his native Kama district a few days after the start of the US bombing on October 7.  But he said his mother, sisters and brothers felt unsafe even in rural Kama and the family eventually decided to head for Pakistan.  A tough journey through mountainous terrain enabled them to enter Pakistan illegally and reach their new home in Peshawar.

            That Afghanistan is at war yet again is evident in and around Jalalabad.  Tightened security, checkpoints on roads, pick-up trucks loaded with Taliban fighters and their ammunition, electricity blackouts and the strictly-enforced night-time curfew are some of the obvious signs of war.  The official Radio Shariat, its air-time already crowded with Taliban propaganda, has started broadcasting patriotic battle poetry.  As if the scars of 23 years of fighting, triggered by the communist revolution in April 1978 and fuelled by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, weren’t enough, the Afghans are now required to undergo another indefinite round of suffering.

            The Taliban were clearly in a generous mood when our group of 23 international journalists reached Jalalabad last month.  This was the first time that the foreign media had been allowed to set foot in Taliban-ruled parts of Afghanistan.  The primary purpose of the two-day visit was to the show to the world the civilian casualties caused by the US aerial strikes.  But the Taliban Governor, Mulla Abdul Kabir, considered number three in the Taliban hierarchy after supreme leader Mulla Mohammad Omar and Mulla Mohammad Hasan Akhund, agreed to the reporters’ request for a visit to the Jalalabad airport, a frequent target of the US jet-fighters and Tomahawk cruise missiles.  It was surprising because the airport is also a military airbase.  The mediapersons were taken to part of the airfield where a radar station had been hit by a cruise missile and turned into ashes.  Mulla Kabir explained that he wanted the journalists to visit both military and civilian targets and compare the damage caused by the US aerial strikes.  “After visiting the airport and the Khrum village where about 200 innocent people were killed, you can judge that we have suffered more civilian than military losses,” he argued.

            Khrum, nestled in the Torghar (Black Mountain) range about 35 kms from Jalalabad, was in ruins after suffering direct hits recently.  An unexploded bomb and missile shrapnels littering the destroyed village were clear indications of an air attack.  The stench of death permeated the air as corpses of cattle and goats lay around.  Over two dozen fresh graves were visible in Khrum.  Survivors said some of their dead were buried in neighbouring villages.  Most of the dead, they said, were waiting to be retrieved from under the rubble.  I felt the number of dead was less than 200, probably around 100.  But irrespective of the numbers, the stark reality staring us in the face was a whole village razed to the ground only because the pilot mistook it for an Osama bin Laden training camp or a Taliban ammunition depot.  Khrum’s location in the Torghar, where the Afghan mujahideen established several bases while fighting the Soviet occupation troops, brought about its misfortune.  Villagers claimed these camps were no longer operational but obviously the Americans think otherwise, hence the repeated aerial strikes.

            On our way to Khrum earlier, the Taliban had stage-managed three small but noisy demonstrations by school children.  Led by their teachers and some village elders, the boys shouted anti-US and pro-Taliban slogans and vowed to wage jihad for the glory of Islam and defence of Afghanistan.  Pakistan’s military leader General Pervez Musharraf also attracted the ire of the protestors for assisting the US in attacking Afghanistan.  In fact, some of the villagers in Khrum and in roadside bazaars on our way made their displeasure known over the presence of Pakistani journalists in the group.  Earlier, aggrieved Khrum villagers had tried to attack western reporters with the spades and shovels they were using to remove the rubble of their fallen houses.  “First you drop bombs and then come here to take pictures of our misery,” shouted the more vocal among the lot.

            Back in Jalalabad, the Taliban took us to the Sihat-i-Aama Hospital where 17 injured Khrum villagers were receiving treatment.  Among them was three-year-old Rahmat Bibi, her legs broken and her head bandaged, crying aloud while asking to be taken to her dead mother, one of the victims of the aerial strikes.  One-year-old Jan Bibi and her three-year-old brother, Gul Khan, were lying in the same hospital bed, unaware that they had been orphaned. Doctors said they were facing shortages of drugs.  It wasn’t unusual in a country at war for the past 23 years.

            The Taliban didn’t show us all their military installations that were hit in the aerial strikes.  They were also reluctant to take us to the bazaar in Jalalabad to talk to common people.  Their argument was that the people were very angry following the US attack and it would be difficult for the Taliban to ensure the security of the reporters, more so of those from western countries.  However, I was able to visit the bazaar after getting special permission from the Taliban Governor.  The shopkeepers complained of a slump in business, while the customers said they couldn’t afford the price hike.  Most shops were open and food and fuel weren’t in short supply.  But the people said the day-time bombing had badly affected life in the city.  Still it was amusing to find the shopkeepers as well as buyers rushing out on the street to catch a glimpse of the US aircraft which had just come to carry out their routine, morning bombing raid. Nobody was running for shelter.  Instead, they were pointing at the skies looking for the jets flying at a high altitude.

            Why did the Afghans have such a fatalistic approach to life?  Pat came the reply from one Abdur Rahman: “After two decades of war, we have become used to bombings.  Most Afghans no longer fear death.”