Montreal Gazette
Thursday, November 8, 2001
Page: A1 / FRONT
Section: News
Byline: LEVON SEVUNTS
Column: LEVON SEVUNTS In Afghanistan
Source: The Gazette
After surviving 13 years of fighting and three gunshot wounds, Safuddin figures he is pretty lucky.
He has only one wish: to survive long enough to till his field alongside his father, just like 13 years ago when he, a 16-year-old farmboy, picked up a gun to fight the Soviet occupation.
“I miss my wife and my two children a lot,” Safuddin says as he scans opposite hills for any sign of Taliban gunners.
Even though U.S. B-52 strategic bombers have just finished dropping 24 powerful bombs on the Taliban positions less than 2 kilometres away, Safuddin doesn’t take any chances.
He raises his head from the trench just high enough to peer through the embankment. His pakul, the traditional Afghan beret, is almost indistinguishable from the yellow dust that floats around after each step.
Safuddin, 29, and a dozen of his comrades have been guarding the forward positions of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance for 24 days now.
The deep, narrow trenches, cut into the side of the Puze Pulekhomry hill just opposite Taliban positions on the strategic Kala Kata hill, have become their refuge, their abode and might even become their grave.
“We are too close to the Taliban’s big guns,” Safuddin says casually. “American bombs are also a big worry.”
The village cemetery on the top of the same hill just metres from their forward positions is a constant reminder that life is a rather precarious undertaking in these hills.
Neat, round craters from shelling that pock the face of the hill like chicken pox are another reminder.
For Safuddin and his friends, the day starts at 4:30 with the morning prayer. Then it’s time for breakfast: several cups of tea with nan, the round, flat Afghan bread.
After eating, it’s time to fight while the sun is behind their backs and blinding the Taliban gunners.
After a short firefight, everybody waits for the U.S. air strikes.
The Taliban hunker in their bunkers and stop responding to sporadic machine-gun fire at their positions.
Taliban anti-aircraft guns go off only occasionally in anticipation of a strike.
After each bombing run, Taliban soldiers fire a couple of rounds from their heavy machine guns, just to remind Alliance soldiers they are still there.
Safuddin and his friends spend the rest of the day killing time – and trying not to get killed.
They play cards and gorodki, an old Russian game taught to them by a visiting Russian TV crew. Only instead of cylindrical sticks, which make different shapes that have to be smashed by another stick, the soldiers are using DShK 12.7-millimetre machine-gun casings.
There is no television and the only entertainment is watching a firefight in the valley bellow.
The front line goes right to the Tajik frontier. Not far from the border, there are two houses with a field between them. One house is controlled by the Taliban, the other by the Alliance. The frontline positions are 300 metres from each other.
Soldiers cheer every time the shots come from the Alliance side and curse when the Taliban house responds. The houses belonged to one family before the war, they say.
There is not much talk about the future: why bother worrying about something that might not happen?
Shah Murad, 29, the machine-gunner at the forward position, hasn’t thought of what he is going to do after the war. The question startles him.
“I’m a soldier, I shoot a machine gun,” Murad says. “That’s my job.”
When asked what he will do when the war is over and there is no need to fire a machine gun, he takes a long pause to answer.
“Maybe I’ll become shopkeeper,” he says, irritated. “I don’t know. I don’t look that far ahead.
“I’ve been fighting since I was 16. First I fought the Russians, then the Taliban. I didn’t have time to learn a trade. I’m a machine-gunner.”
As we speak, the Alliance mortar crew on the neighbouring hill starts a duel with Taliban gunners.
The Taliban shell lands about 120 metres from where we sit. The Alliance soldiers don’t even flinch. Some are busy preparing tea; for others, it’s time to put on traditional mascara – many Afghans believe it protects them from the evil eye.
And while shells ping-pong from one hill to another, a half-dozen soldiers pass along a tiny round mirror to check their appearance.
The second Taliban shell lands even closer to our position, and Commander Fayz Muhammad starts getting nervous: with two crews of foreign reporters, the last thing he needs is a shell landing in the middle of his positions.
The third shell nudges even the most stubborn reporters, as we realize that the Taliban are shelling not the mortar position, but us.
We rush to get out of their range and as we walk through the cemetery we run into a funeral.
About 20 men sit around a freshly covered grave while a mullah reads verses from Koran. The anti-Taliban gunners fire another shell.
The inevitable response comes in less than a minute. The Taliban shell lands right in the middle of the Alliance positions we have just left.
As we rush to our horses for our trip back, we hope that Safuddin hasn’t used up all of his luck.