Reporter had rare view of Kabul bombing

The sound of the jet engine changed. It was louder, lower.

"Listen," my colleague Amir Shah whispered. A powerful concussion. The house trembled, the windows rattled.

It was scary. But more frightening was Amir Shah's murmur: "Oh my God. Oh my God."

The second night was worse.

Powerful explosions reverberated through the night. An ammunition depot near the AP house. There were bursts of anti-aircraft guns, the thud of exploding ammunition.

It was relentless. Sher Aga, an elderly gray-bearded nightwatchman, crouched against a far wall, hugging his knees to his chest, his frail hands trembling.

Each night we worried that the phone would ring and alert our neighbors, the Taliban's feared Vice and Virtue Ministry.

The city was blacked out nightly from 9 p.m. when the power was shut off, and even the light in the screen of our satellite phone might be visible from outside. We put a blanket over it.

As far as we knew, AP photographer Dimitri Messinis of Greece and myself, a Canadian, were the only Westerners in all of Taliban-held Afghanistan. And although we had Taliban permission to be here, we knew we could easily arouse suspicion.

Dozens of Taliban officials and their Arab comrades were living in our neighborhood, Wazir Akbar Khan, and a ringing phone might lead them to imagine that we were directing the bombers to their targets.

Our hosts, the Information Ministry and its official Bakhtar News Agency, were nervous, too.

They had managed to get around the Taliban's ban on journalists because in June the AP had signed a contract to buy Bakhtar's reports. The AP has such contracts the world over, and this one was also a safety precaution for Amir Shah, our correspondent, because a professional relationship might offer him some security, perhaps reduce the chance of arrest and a beating.

According to Afghan traditions and Taliban interpretation of Islamic law, the customer relationship obligated Bakhtar and the Information Ministry to help us when we pleaded daily for permission to return to Afghanistan.

When the World Trade Center and Pentagon were attacked Sept. 11, I had been in Kabul for nearly three weeks covering the trial of eight Christian aid workers.

The United Nations and most aid organizations left on Sept. 14. I followed the next day because Pakistan was sealing its border and I had to prepare our bureau in Islamabad for the story to come.

Two weeks later I was ready to go back to Afghanistan, but like the hundreds of other journalists in Pakistan I could not get permission.

Finally, on Oct. 23, Amir Shah telephoned to say the Taliban's prime minister, Mullah Mohammed Hassan Akhund, was allowing me in.

On Oct. 25 our taxi crossed the border. A turbaned Taliban guard with a Kalashnikov rifle hopped in. Messinis, Amir Shah and I squeezed into the back seat.

In Jalalabad, 45 miles away, we waited, sipped sweet green tea with military intelligence officers, listened while they railed against the West, eventually got a reluctant guard to take his rifle and come with us to Kabul.

The road to Kabul is a bone-jarring four hours over a rock-strewn surface. But after weeks of trying to get to the capital, just being on the road felt like meeting an old friend.

In Kabul, the Taliban authorities who had let me in were jittery. Would residents, terrorized by the nightly bombing raids, attack the only foreigner in town? What about the al-Qaida operatives who roamed the streets in the early evenings?

Keep a low profile, and don't wander the streets, said the information minister, Qatradullah Jamal.

We moved slowly and cautiously, avoiding streets and markets where Arabs might see us.

I dressed as I always did in Kabul – long shirt, baggy trousers and a scarf. I didn't wear the all-enveloping burqa.

A Taliban passport official once had a heated discussion with me and concluded: "You're a strong person. We have a name for a person like you — a man."

News travels fast in Kabul, especially when it's about a stranger in town. A foreign stranger. A FEMALE stranger.

Within a day of our arrival, military intelligence officials stormed into our office and hauled us off to their compound.

"What is a foreigner doing here?", we were asked.

But our papers were in order and as we sipped more sweet green tea, our interrogator showed his pistol.

"I need this for when the U.S. commandos come," he said.

He apologized for the dusty table, saying the staff spent most of their time in the basement because of the bombing, and left the windows open hoping bomb blasts wouldn't break the glass.

As we spoke a jet flew overhead. Then we were allowed to go.

The next day it was the Foreign Ministry's turn to haul us in. "Not one hour, not one minute can you stay. Just get out!" said Zahid, the deputy foreign minister.

But the information minister, Qatradullah Jamal, got wind of it and invited us over. In his office, a Kalashnikov at his feet and a pistol in his holster, he rang the prime minister, complained about the Foreign Ministry, and we were allowed to stay.

No one followed us. However, we got picked up twice more by police, who were baffled to see a foreigner in Kabul.

Ordinary people greeted us with typical Afghan warmth. Thrilled to see Westerners, they were forever giving us sweet tea, candy if they had it, chunks of raw brown sugar if they didn't.

They would tell us how bad they felt about the Sept. 11 attacks, and about their bewilderment at being caught in the cross fire. The bombing campaign targeted military installations in Kabul, but occasionally bombs strayed and killed civilians.

Gradually the attacks moved north of Kabul and life became a little quieter, but the military stalemate remained virtually unchanged until last weekend.

By Monday the Taliban's enemy, the northern alliance, was on the outskirts of the city.

Taliban soldiers were edgy. Tanks rumbled through the streets to the city's edge to encircle Kabul.

That night the U.S. jets returned. Shortly before 7 p.m. a powerful explosion blew the glass out of the windows of the AP office and sent me flying across the room. The air outside was thick with smoke and dust. A woman in a burqa ran down the street with three children. We hustled them into our basement.

Two days earlier the BBC had been allowed to bring four people into Kabul. We sped in reverse to their office, picked them up and headed to the Intercontinental Hotel, 15 minutes away.

But we hit a Taliban roadblock. Four pickup trucks were loaded with Taliban, armed with rifles and rocket launchers, talking nervously, shouting, speaking into static-filled radios, yelling into our car.

"Where are you going? Who gave you permission to be here?"

We spoke softly. Amir Shah cajoled, showed our documents. For 15 minutes we negotiated, uncertain whether the jets overhead would target the trucks around us or whether Arab militants would arrive to take out their anger on us.

Eventually we got to the hotel, but it was a sleepless night as tank fire boomed from the nearby front line.

By 6 a.m. Tuesday it was quiet, and we were about to see a very different Kabul.

Amir Shah and I went for a quick drive through the city. The Taliban checkposts were gone. Shouts of congratulations could be heard. Horns blared and hundreds of men on bicycles rang their bells.

As the sun rose over the foothills of the Hindu Kush mountains, the northern alliance rolled into town. I was thankful to be here and watch it happen.

APNP-11-18-01 1204CST